OT: An ebay fraud story (cross post to OOT)

[Tuco]

Thought i'd share this story here as well cause its, well, the internet forum. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I'm now convinced that a very large amount of fraud goes on at Ebay. Forgive my ignorance, as I always thought that it was minimal in scope. Here is what happened today.

My wife has a huge Marilyn Monroe collection. You could say she's somewhat obsessed. Lots of vintage magazines with MM on cover, collector plates, dolls, MM wine etc. She's been collecting since she was teenager. She's always telling me how much its worth to wit i'm forced to point out that it doesnt matter much cause she will never sell it.

Since she started collecting, she has always wanted an autograph. The problem is that they go for several thousand dollars due to rarity. So she collected loose change for a couple years (in Canada we have coins for everything under $5 so change accumualates quickly) and saved up $2400. I told her that I would match the amount from the poker BR so she could get the autograph for her birthday. Off she went to Ebay.

She found a signed studio contract for marketing rights to MM's name for the film "Gentlemen prefer blondes". She quickly became very excited, especially after seeing that the seller was a power seller with over 6000 sales to his credit with 99% approval rate. The seller also had a store called "Broadway Rick’s Strike Zone" that specialized in memorabilia and had been in business for many years. He also offered a 14 day money back guarantee. Sounds good.

So we had the requesite family discussion and decided that the most we would bid was $4051. The extra $51 was so we might outbid someone with a $4000 max. The bid 24 hours before the auction closed was $2750. We waited untill 3 minutes before the auction ended and put in our bid. We became the high bidder at a little over $2800. We kept hitting refresh and waited to see what happened. We were high bidders right up untill the last 5 seconds when, after a flurry of bidding, we won the auction for $4050.03. Yayyyyy!

It took about 30 seconds for me to realize that someone had put a bid in at the end of the auction with a maximum bid 97 cents below our max. That would seem to be quite the fluke right? Then after looking at the bidder who competed against us, we noticed he was a new member that had only bought 5 items, all out of the genre and under $100. As my wife made excuses why this could all be legit, my poker reading skills (even dulled by all the online play) realized right away this was not right.

So my wife sends a message to the competing bidder to see if they were in fact bidding in good faith. No answer. Hmm. Then, she gets an email from another memorabilia dealer (completely out of the blue...guess he stalks all winners of this guys auctions) with this link:

web page

Apparently, this cheeseball has been doing this for years, with many complaints and an MSNBC report about him, yet Ebay continues to let him get away with it. Why they wouldn't want to protect their customers is beyond me. So what if he's a power seller? This is a publicly traded company for christs' sake.

Wife is currently disgusted with the human race and the hunt for a MM autograph, as well as an honest dealer continues.

Cant wait to really f up this guys feedback. Sent all this to Ebay but looks like they dont care.

Tuco.

[HesseJam]

This is frightening. I would have been suspicious too.

[crazy canuck]

How could he know you're max bid? Did he hack ebay or had inside info?

[Shoe]

Yea, that sucks. Unfortunately ebay makes more profit (they get a percentage of the final price, so people doing this actually helps their bottom line). That's probably why they don't go after these guys very much.

[Reef]

Did you end up paying him? I would definetaly have not. Simply reported him to ebay and wrote this post to as many newpapers / newstations that you could.

fck this guy up.

[Tuco]

[ QUOTE ]
How could he know you're max bid? Did he hack ebay or had inside info?

[/ QUOTE ]

I have no idea. It just didn't smell right that the auction went from $2800 to $4050.03 (97 cents below our max bid) in the last 5 seconds of the auction. That, coupled with his ADMITTED fraud in earlier auctions leads me to believe that he did it again.

Maybe a power seller that posts here can speculate? Granny?

Tuco.

[gorgeous]

Check the bid history for any bid retractions. Anyone can bid an obscene amount to find what your max bid is and back out, leaving you the high bidder.

[Adde]

Did you end up paying him? I would definetaly have not...

Did you? I hope not. I wouldn't either.

Adde

[pointcount]

i personally hate ebay. And after the last digital camera I bought off there I do not take power sellers seriously.

[TobDog]

Ok, my ebay .02 worth. Yes you probably got teamed on, I had a guy that worked for me that knew a team of people that used to do that when selling antique type stuff, at least they said they did, they would bid up the item near the end and if they got the high bid, they would retract the bid, this was all done 1 day before the end then about 5 minutes before the end. You should definately email ebay on this because it is giving them a bad name, and as we all know, ebay is about making money, lets see if they are about customer service too. Let us know what happens with it if you pursue it. BTW, I think if you pay for the item and receive it, you have less power to make your case.

good luck

tobdog