OFF TOPIC: eBay scams, and general heads up!

[dwf1004]

Hey all:

As mentioned before, there's some people out there that are running scams on eBay. I see that this is starting to become more of an occurence, and since eBay is one of the outlets that I look at for anything these days to see if I can save a couple of bucks, this is very unsettling to me.

I am currently in the prospective market for an Apple Powerbook, and in the process of my search, I pulled up 68 items, 30 of which were created by people (in some instances, the SAME people) with zero feedback, and just created usernames, ie. last day or so. Obviously that's not something I'm gonna jump right into, given the previous alert on the site.

Point being, if it's happening there, you can bet that it will eventually happen just as prevalent on the musical instrument aspect there. Now, this should come as no surprise, but I want to provide a heads up to make sure that prospective EBMM buyer's don't fall into a trap that could be ugly.

The moral of the story is to bid in confidence after doing your homework, and don't just jump at something that looks too good to be true....I'm sure that you know the old adage. The guy I'm getting my Sil from has been registered since MAr '99, has 2749 feedback listings, with a 99.7% positive rating, so (so far) this isn't a call to arms saying "don't get burned like me". I've had real good luck with that, building my gear up thru that route, and the only thing that required money to "fix" were new tubes for my 5150.

I hope that the good folks at eBay can get on top of this trend and squash it quick.

Thanks for your time, kids, and apologies for the off topic post.

 

[Daggo]

I look at e-bay all the time, but I have never bought or sold anything through that portal.

Given your comments, I wonder if it would ever be possible for me to do so, since I would have to register a new name that would have no feedback associated with it.

Is using e-bay something like applying from credit? Do I have to buy and sell a bunch of low-value items to get my positive feedback rating high enough before I can sell a higher value piece of musical equipment?

If that is the case, then I suppose a criminal could do the same thing and suck people into believing that he/she is legitimate before going for the big scam.

Personally, I am not willing to take the chance at all, which is why I use e-bay to help me determine the value for used gear and look for similar deals in my local pawn shops. The extra I have to pay so that the dealer makes a profit is worth it to me.

Daggo

 

[tvanveen]

I've bought and sold lots of stuff on ebay and have never been burned...you just don't buy a high dollar item from someone with no feedback.

Daggo - the best way to build up feedback is to start with small items. Strings, t-shirts, dvds. Once you've bought a few things you'll have feedback and easily start selling stuff.

Really, I think most people are decent folk and don't want their feedback screwed up, you just need to use a little common sense.