Latest eBay Scam
Yesterday, The Digerati Life talked about the latest eBay scam. I have heard of it on the news about a month ago. A quite good amount of money had been stolen before the scammers were caught.
What happened? A bunch of guys were following various bids (apparantely for all kind of products; no preferences). Once the bids were over, they were contacting the 2-3 highest bidders who lost, pretending to be the seller of the product they just lost. They would lie that the winner of the bid could not go through with the transaction (either a change of mind or the incapacity of paying). That’s why they decided to offer to sell it to the next highest bidder.
All good and nice, although, according to my knowledge, so far there’s already a couple of flaws to the scam. First of all, as far as I know 90% percent of all transactions on eBay are done through PayPal. Once you have won a bid, the amount you have engaged to pay is automatically deducted from your PayPal account. In case you don’t have the money there, they are, further on, automatically deducted from your bank account or credit card that you have provided to PayPal. The way the system works is that, whether you like it or not, once you have won a bid, the amount you have taken the responsibility to pay is automatically taken away from you.
As eBay itself puts it:
A bid or Buy It Now purchase on eBay is considered a contract and you are obligated to purchase the item.
Whenever anyone contacts you about an item you have just lost to a higher bidder, as excited as you may be about your “luck”, take a step back and thoroughly analyze the situation. Try to find out who that bidder was and even contact him/her and have them confirm their retraction.
The bottom line is that such actions are the first signs of a possible scam. It’s not always the case, however, better safe than sorry. Oh, and one more thing: if it’s too good to be true, it usually is!
Let’s go deeper into our scammers’ story.
In those cases when they managed to fool their victims into believing luck has struck them, the next step was to arrange for the payment. What the scammers would ask is that you wire transfer the amount of money you have bid to an Eastern European country. Their promise was that once they got their money they would deliver the products. Needless to say the last part of the agreemant never happened.
Such payment arrangements are the second sign of a possible eBay scam. A seller accepting only one method of payment (and especially when that is a wire transfer) should always raise a red flag that that seller might be involved in fraudulent activities.
What can we learn from all of this?
- If it’s too good to be true, it usually is;
- Always try to know who you’re dealing with on eBay;
- Be skeptical of any eBay seller who only accpets one method of payment (especially when that is a wire transfer);
- Be skeptical of any out of the ordiary deal proposals from other eBay members;
- When something smells fishy, do your reasearch: try to find out as much as you can about the seller/buyer. You could even contact eBay. You can rest assured they would be more than happy to help you out, especially when you tell them you have serious concerns about someone trying to pull a scam on you.
