Just how scared should you be of ebay?

[f5loar]

If this don't scare you about buying mandolins ebay nothing will. Both running at same time. Check both out before the first one gets pulled:
http://cgi.ebay.com/1936-Gibson-Fern...QQcmdZViewItem
and again at:
http://cgi.ebay.com/1936-Gibson-Fern...QQcmdZViewItem
Now who wouldn't want to save $18,000 on the same mandolin?
I've already reported the first one.

[Kip Welty]

i offered em 100 bucs

[MikeEdgerton]

The second one is Mitch Simpson. He's had this up before.

[Dave Greenspoon]

OK, now what am I missing here? How do you know that this is a bogus mando? I see the headstock binding doesn't match the rest of the instrument, and that the fretboard extension seems out of place, but what are the real giveaways here?

[f5loar]

How can 2 sellers living 1000s of miles apart sell the exact same mandolin on ebay at the same time. There's your sign! As stated, Mitch Simpson of GA owns the mandolin and the 2nd listing for a lessor price stole his whole ad and photos. What is scary is had not the real seller still had his running at the same time how would know? You wouldn't. The 2nd ad is very real except the last line about contact seller before bid. Another scray fact is I reported it this morning and ebay still has not stopped the bogus one.

[f5loar]

Oh and Dave, there is nothing bogas about the real '36 Fern. It's the 2nd ad that is bogus. Nothing funny about headstock binding. Nothing funny about fretboard extension. All componets correct for year stated. This is a very nice Fern and to be honest I'm shocked the real one has not sold yet at this price. To stay a '36 F5 Fern is rare is an understatement. Any 30's all original F5 is rare.

[Dave Greenspoon]

Ahh, now I get it. It's about the hijack! Thanks for the help.

[grassrootphilosopher]

Like I mentioned in the other thread, ebay does not care about customer relation.

In a case like this one I would not think about paying that kind of money without scheduling a personal handover or a transfer in person via a trusted individual.

The mandolin community that might consider the purchase of an instrument this valuable is small, no doubt. I wonder if anyone that is not much into playing music would buy an instrument like this one for the investment purpose alone. I have my doubts. Therefore I think that prospective buyers would insist in a personal transfer. Here the "game" would stop, I guess.

What I think in these cases is that data mining is what it´s all about. People contact these criminals for whatever purpose (like telling them off, making fun of their scam scheme, offering them low money or even offering them the buy now price). These gangsters therefore have email and maybe other data (through a little research), that they can use for other schemes. This is what´s really scary.

So go law and track these folks down and give them a hard time.

[MikeEdgerton]

Let me expand on that a bit. We all tend to get our hackles up and want to tell scammers off, make their lives tougher, let them know we're on to them. We fire off an e-mail, maybe a few dozen. The problem is that in most cases (not all) these guys are better at being mean than we are. I'm a computer professional, I work in this field and have for many years. I've seen people absolutely devistated by making an argument personal with a hacker. I did it once and the guy managed to hack an online account that wasn't even associated with the account that made it personal to the tune of several hundred dollars out of my pocket. That was many years ago. Many of you post a lot of personal information online, almost anyone can be found online. Don't become a target. Report these things but don't feel the need to show these guys how smart you are by getting into a personal war. Nothing online is anonymous no matter what you think.

[John Flynn]

Mike: Take the "Gandhi" approach if you want, that's your choice, but I believe in what Edmund Burke said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Also, I disagree that it is a computer issue. It is a criminal issue. These folks are no different from any other kind of criminal, they just use different methods and tools.

I applaud those people to strike back and realize it IS personal. The hackers and scammers have already made it personal. Think about this: What would happen if every honest person online committed to full out assualts on these folks? My guess is that it would cut into their profits, make them desperate, get more of them caught. Making crime personal is the fuel that gets that kind of thing done.

[MikeEdgerton]

I don't take the Gandhi approach, I report everything. If I err it's on the side of caution. Throw that to the wind if you want and make it personal with a criminal. Hopefully you don't end up with more problems than you figured. I do this for a living and I don't play with fire, you can choose to do so if you'd like. If you even think you're denting a scammers business by throwing yourself into the fray on a personal nature you don't understand what they are doing. They exist by the sheer volume of things and you're just a blip. Witness the way they just keep popping up. There are methods of reporting in most sales venues. Concentrate your efforts there, you have a better chance of slowing it down. Take it to a personal level and you're now at a disadvantage simply because they know more about you than you know about them. Good luck, I hope this works out for you.

[Steve Cantrell]

Ditto to what Mike has said. I've been in IT Security for several years and before that was a fraud investigator for a multi-billion dollar business. You'd be surprised at what kind of info someone with knowledge of public databases can gather and then use to make your life a torment. There are good channels out there for reporting this scum, and somewhere behind them is a guy buried under a mountain of leads to chase. It takes time, but it usually turns out for the best.

[TomTyrrell]

I agree with Mike on this one. All of these scammers have "Delete" keys and they know how to use them. They will NOT be bothered by any emails they receive. Send a thousand if you want, they won't be bothered. If they have some spare time they might use whatever info you send them to make a little more money hacking your identity but there is nothing you can do to make life or "business" difficult for them. You are wasting your time.

As far as blaming eBay for all this, it isn't their fault. If you want to report the bogus listing don't tell eBay (unless the real listing is YOURS), tell the guy with the real listing. HE can report the bogus listing as a copy of HIS listing. Joe Public cannot do that. Joe Public has no standing with eBay. It doesn't matter how much of an expert you think you are, to eBay you are just another PITA trying to get somebody's auction cancelled.

[Skip Kelley]

Mike, That is excellent advice to be extremely cautious online! There are some people who are just plain evil who will do anything.

[ApK]

As another IT pro and old-school hacker, I agree, Mike, Steve and Tom have it right. If you try to engage, you will at absolute best accomplish nothing, more likely get frustrated at your failure, and at worst get seriously damaged yourself.

But, Tom, I'm pretty certain you are mistaken about one thing.
Joe Public can and should report it and eBay does process and act on those reports.
Just like if it was not a duplicate but some other obvious illegal ad.
The owner of a competing ad is probably MORE likely to be the PITA than a disinterested potential bidder.

Observe, and report.
It is very surprising that the first ad is still up. I've just reported it as well.

[JEStanek]

Think of it as if it were a real world crime instead of a cyber crime. If I saw someone shop lifting an object in a store, I would tell the store. Would I go up to the thief personally and tell them I'm on to them? Nope. I don't know anything about them, what they might do immediately to me. Telling the store is safe and gets their trained staff to deal with the problem and keeps me safe.

Jamie

[Mike Bromley]

Oh yes, and if you put your birthday up on a BBS, try to make sure you lie about your age. That's the first thing a harvester will get, and a very essential piece of info! And for all of you lovely folks with classifieds on here, try NOT to put your street address in the ad. That makes you a sitting duck.

The above remarks fall into the category of: "don't advertise", that is, don't make it easy for the thieves to nail ya!

[TomTyrrell]

But, Tom, I'm pretty certain you are mistaken about one thing.
Joe Public can and should report it and eBay does process and act on those reports.
Just like if it was not a duplicate but some other obvious illegal ad.
The owner of a competing ad is probably MORE likely to be the PITA than a disinterested potential bidder.

Observe, and report.
It is very surprising that the first ad is still up. I've just reported it as well.

You reported ONE of the listings as a fraud. How does eBay know that one is the fraud? Maybe this item was listed before and the first one is the copy. Maybe they are BOTH copies of a previous listing. EBay can't just take the word of an uninvolved party, they have to do some research. Research takes time. Time costs money.

[TomTyrrell]

Oh yes, and if you put your birthday up on a BBS, try to make sure you lie about your age. That's the first thing a harvester will get, and a very essential piece of info! And for all of you lovely folks with classifieds on here, try NOT to put your street address in the ad. That makes you a sitting duck.

The above remarks fall into the category of: "don't advertise", that is, don't make it easy for the thieves to nail ya!

Another thing that can make you a target is listing your inventory of "Things To Steal" in your signature block.

[ApK]

You reported ONE of the listings as a fraud. How does eBay know that one is the fraud? Maybe this item was listed before and the first one is the copy. Maybe they are BOTH copies of a previous listing. EBay can't just take the word of an uninvolved party, they have to do some research. Research takes time. Time costs money.

Yeah, I made that same point about research, time and money that other thread, remember?
Doesn't matter who reports it. The bad guy can report the real listing and claim the good guy copied him. They have to investigate no matter what. And they do. Sometimes it's not as quickly as some people would like. My automated report said they will likely get to checking it out within 72 hours, and I suspect the more reports from customers that they get, the quicker they might look a particular issue.
And, as it happens, many fraud ads are detected and pulled sooner than that.
As I said in that other other thread, I think they do a pretty reasonable job considering what has to be done.
Maybe the SafeHarbor department just needs to hire some extra people for the holiday fraud season.

ApK
p.s. while both ads are still up, I'll make a prediction: either, 1) the ad we believe is the fraud will disappear within 24 hours. or 2) both ads will be suspended within 24 hrs while they sort it out (the duplicate serials is a flag no matter which one is real). Mark my words. Really..check your watches and MARK! ;-)

[allenhopkins]

Another thing that can make you a target is listing your inventory of "Things To Steal" in your signature block.

Hey, Tom, I'm taking this personally...!!

In general agreement with the tenor of the last few replies. I think many of us want to be Charles Bronson (in the Death Wish films), exacting personal revenge against the evil around us. Especially when we can do it sitting at our keyboards, without having to tuck a Glock in our pants and cruise the mean streets. On the other hand, unless we've been personally swindled, the best course would seem to be to use our specialized mandolin expertise to inform the auction site administrators that there's a fox in the henhouse.

As for being scared of eBay -- I'm not, and I don't think most careful purchasers need to be. I'd never spend $31K or $49K on an on-line transaction over an auction site. I wouldn't spend a tenth of that on an instrument I hadn't played, from a seller I didn't know, even with the protections offered by PayPal or my credit card company.

I've bought about a half-dozen instruments on eBay: Merrill aluminum bowl-back, Howe-Orme mandolinetto, Oscar Schmidt Guitaro autoharp, Polk-A-Lay-Lee (don't ask!), Mexican Weissenborn copy, and two Johnson resonator instruments, a ukulele and a tri-cone guitar. Most I've spent was $450. Never risked more than I could afford to lose, always checked seller feedback, and only went the eBay route when the instruments were unobtainable locally, or through the Internet sellers (like Elderly) that I know I can trust. So by being sensible and cautious, and knowing a little bit about the territory, I felt that I didn't need to be scared.

There's another current thread about a "Gibson F-5" eBay scam, in which F5Loar states that the person who'll probably get hurt is the newbie buyer who thinks he/she's getting the bargain of a lifetime, only to find that the mandolin is a fake. I agree. But if one has accumulated a little knowledge and experience, eBay buying can be pretty unthreatening, as long as one exercises "due diligence," as they say.

[man dough nollij]

Hey all you IT guys: wouldn't it be fairly easy for E-Bay to set it up so that pictures can't be poached from their site? That would make it a lot harder for this type of scam to work.

[Tom C]

For an instrument that expensive, I would buy a plane ticket for a few hundred and pick it up under the conditions that it would be like I was buying from an independent seller. Not because I bid the highest so I am obligated.

[ApK]

My prediction #1 has come to pass.

The first ad is dead.

Batting a thousand so far

[ApK]

Hey all you IT guys: wouldn't it be fairly easy for E-Bay to set it up so that pictures can't be poached from their site? That would make it a lot harder for this type of scam to work.

Nope, they cannot. They can only make it slightly more difficult to grab a picture, and anyway, that would not affect this sort of thing one Iota.

People do not perpetrate (much less succeed) in auction scams just because they can borrow someone's low-res picture.

ApK