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Old 10-21-2005, 04:07 PM   #1
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What's going on with ebay

We have been looking for our perfect Airstream so I do keep an eye on ebay everyday matter of fact. This week ive noticed 3 trailors coming back on after they had bidded out reserve met and all. What's going on?


Becky
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Old 10-21-2005, 04:27 PM   #2
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Folks love to bid. Few perform. When listing anything on eBay you have to accept that the lower the feedback rating the less likely you have a serious bidder.
I saw the same thing last week when I was chasing an Alfa Romeo. A zero feedback buyer failed to perform. Buyer relisted and sold for about $1200 over retail book... time will tell if this buyer will close the deal.
On the other hand if you find an item that goes higher than you want to pay .... just wait a few days and then email the seller.
Lots of bargains on eBay.
I bought my coach there, and I saw another 35' funeral coach go for less than $20K last week!
Like anything you have the time to wait for, "you have to kiss a lot of FROGS!"
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Old 10-21-2005, 05:56 PM   #3
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ebay is fine but....

When looking for the perfect Airstream don't limit yourself to just e-bay. Check the classifieds here, and on www.airstream.com and www.rvtraderonline.com just to start. Also look in your local newspapers - and check the online versions of newspapers too. A lot of folks who retire to Florida do so in Airstreams, then pass on. Their relatives are usually eager to unload the units without having to transport them, etc. so quite often good deals are found in the south. I notice a LOT of Airstreams also tend to end up in Texas too.

If you are near a GOOD dealer and you aren't interested in a new unit, make friends. You'll be amazed how many people trade up as their children get bigger, then trade down as they leave the nest. The dealers like to get the used units off the lots FAST - so as not to tempt the people who might pony up for a new one - so if you've got a bit of cash you can sometimes get very good deals.

Happy trails on your ongoing search. And do follow the advice of the previous post. I searched high and low... then remembered how much I loved rehabbing my old house... and in a rare moment of sanity, bought a new one.

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Old 10-21-2005, 06:10 PM   #4
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Vintage Airstream Classifieds..

The site for Vintage Airstream Club classifieds is located at www.airstream.net rather than airstream.com...

They seem to average almost 100 trailers and motorhomes for sale at any given time, without craziness, fraud and gaming of E-Bay... Still worth having someone physically present to look at items offered, but lots to look at.. Not everyone there is e-mail and internet savvy, but that can be an advantage as well, since postal mail and mailed pictures limit competition...

RVTraderonline usually has at least 50 used Airstreams listed, plus an equal number of new ones posted by dealers eager to sell... Search in category of travel trailers or motorhomes, and specify Airstream brand but do not limit geography or years...

From time to time people list Airstreams stumbled upon, which are often fixer-uppers but interesting.. We found '74 Excella 31 at dealer in Pismo Beach for less than $2K during Nor-Cal rally earlier this month... No takers..

John McG
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Old 10-21-2005, 08:49 PM   #5
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Anybody who bids on ebay more than 3-4 hours before a sale ends doesn't understand how little they are accomplishing. I really don't think they're driving up the price, but serious money doesn't plunk down 'til it gets crazy right at the end. I agree that high priced bids from low-feedback bidders means that it is easy to back out when you don't have reputation to lose -- johnny-come-lately folks on eBay can live without it, yah mon?

Can't say I'm thrilled with www.airstream.net. Somebody is scanning their ads and trying to scam folks who list 'for sale.' Don't be surprised if you face a bit of 'prove it' if you show interest in a trailer there -- just be up front and honest. I'd say good people have no trouble recognizing each other -- as long as one pays in real cash and the other shows valid title! Here are a couple replies I received from listing my Argosy there:

Goofy Reply #1. "I saw your ad in the RV by Owners system on the internet. I just wanted to let you know about the RV classifieds system I found where my RV sold after many inquiries shortly after listing it. You can check out that system at the following address: http://www.rvfsbo.com

"I have been using the internet for years to sell and buy and know how difficult it is to know where to advertise. For owners selling their own RV with no broker fees, this is the best system I have found. I'm sure one of the reasons their site gets the RV sold quicker and gets so much more response than the other RV systems is that they also show your ad in many other RV classifieds sites which gives your ad great exposure. Plus they are the only system I found that has a way to eliminate those overseas scam emails that we have all been receiving.

"Just thought you might be interested.

"John Becker"

Okay, I wasn't born yesterday, but does anybody know if this is more than a shill for just a different sales site? Be careful where you list your email address. I dunno, I've got so much spam that it can't make much difference any more...

Goofy Reply #2: (as seen on ASForums threads before)
"Hello Bob,

"Thanks for the mail and infos,
i will pay you $4,000 for the trailer and i am letting you know as i have said earlier that the payment will be by check.

"I will inform my associate to send the check to pay you for the trailer and he will send a check of $7,300 and you will deduct $4,000 and make the remaining $3,300 to the Transporters that will coming to pick-up the trailer and sign the trailer paper with you.

"I want you to send me your full name,address and phone number so that the check can be send to you.

"I'II be expecting to read from you soon.

"Thanks for your concern.

David Wallace."

Wasn't born yesterday. Sorry. Doesn't sound like a native English speaker that says "I'll be expecting to read from you soon." Hmm... though I'd be ahead of the game if I paid their $3,300 and still owned my Argosy...
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Old 10-21-2005, 08:55 PM   #6
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Have any of you tried using the bidding software that is out there? What kind? We have thought about giving it a try to get that last second bid in.
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Old 10-21-2005, 09:01 PM   #7
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I think you'd want to read 'How to play ebay?' at http://www.airforums.com/forum...ad.php?t=15236

Buyer beware! Read: 'So you want to buy a trailer that is 3 states away????" at http://www.airforums.com/forum...ead.php?t=7387
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Old 10-21-2005, 09:19 PM   #8
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I'll check it out. Thanks!
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Old 10-21-2005, 09:21 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Canoe stream
Anybody who bids on ebay more than 3-4 hours before a sale ends doesn't understand how little they are accomplishing.
Maybe. I always bid the absolute amount I am willing to pay and let proxy bidding work. Sometimes I get the item, mostly i don't. But here is the important point - I am happy either way!

Mark
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Old 10-21-2005, 10:46 PM   #10
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I too do the maximum I am willing to pay and let proxy bidding take care of it. I have and have known of others to fall victim to the bidding frenzy.

I searched for over a year before buying my airstream. Strangely, some real nice folks in Washington state, who had a newer unit I could not get to and look at before it sold found the Trade Wind I eventually wound up buying.

The search was somewhat frustrating, there is not allot of airstreams in the pacific northwest compared to other places. I did have folks on the list go and look at a unit in Southern California and gave me an honest opinion. Airstreamers are the most unique group of people I have had the pleasure of of being a part of.

So best advice is be patient, know what you are looking for and know how much you are willing to pay. Good luck!

Les
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Old 10-22-2005, 01:56 AM   #11
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Scam alert

Quote:
Originally Posted by Canoe stream
....

Goofy Reply #2: (as seen on ASForums threads before)
[/COLOR][/COLOR] "Hello Bob,

"Thanks for the mail and infos,
i will pay you $4,000 for the trailer and i am letting you know as i have said earlier that the payment will be by check.

"I will inform my associate to send the check to pay you for the trailer and he will send a check of $7,300 and you will deduct $4,000 and make the remaining $3,300 to the Transporters that will coming to pick-up the trailer and sign the trailer paper with you.

"I want you to send me your full name,address and phone number so that the check can be send to you.

"I'II be expecting to read from you soon.

"Thanks for your concern.

David Wallace."

Wasn't born yesterday. Sorry. Doesn't sound like a native English speaker that says "I'll be expecting to read from you soon." Hmm... though I'd be ahead of the game if I paid their $3,300 and still owned my Argosy...
This is a common scam! Here's a writeup from another site about how it works:

"They typically pose as foreign buyer's agents and are offering to pay MORE than the asking price for your boat. They always pay with very real looking cashier's checks. In return for paying more than your asking price, you are asked to send the buyer or a shipping agent the amount of the overpayment after you have deposited the cashier's check in your bank.

WARNING! These cashier's checks are forgeries! Federal banking law requires that cashier's checks be credited to your account within 5 days of deposit. However, the check is not made good until it has cleared at the issuing bank. Your local bank will likely not catch the forgery until the check is returned to them, and this can take as many as 3 to 4 weeks after you deposit the funds. By that time you (having access to the funds and thinking the check was good) will have already sent the money to the buyer. When your bank discovers that the check was a forgery, you will be liable for returning the total amount of the forged check to your bank. Basically, the scum bags have stolen your money.

In an additional twist, if they scam artist scum are successful in getting your money with the original overpayment scam, they will target you again. Usually they will try to get the rest of the money back by claiming that the buyer has recently died and is unable to complete the purchase. They will ask for an entire refund on the money that does not exist because the original check was a forgery."

Watch out!

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Old 10-22-2005, 04:46 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rebel beck
We have been looking for our perfect Airstream so I do keep an eye on ebay everyday matter of fact. This week ive noticed 3 trailors coming back on after they had bidded out reserve met and all. What's going on?


Becky
Becky -

Why don't you send an email to these persons and ask them why they relisted these units? Then you can evaluate their answers to see if they make sense.

I know from experience that no matter how honestly and completely you try to describe something listed on Ebay, any 2 people looking at an item will see it differently. While I would never personally bid on an expensive vehicle (such as a travel trailer) without seeing it myself, many people do so. Sometimes when they acually see it after the auction ends, it isn't what they expected. So, the seller may let them out of the deal and relist the item.

There are also quite a few dishonest bidders on Ebay who just bid on items, with no intent of buying, in order to screw up the system. Many times these bidders can be identified by their feedback ratings - they either have a low (perhaps a "0" rating, or a low percentage of positive feedback).

I came across a big time scam on Ebay a few months back, and reported it to the Ebay authorities. First, the seller had "manufactured" a large number of positive feedbacks for himself, so it looked like he was a reputable, established Ebay seller.

When you looked at the items he had sold before, however, they were all items that had sold for under $1.00 - things like "Grandma's favorite soup recipe".

When I spotted this scammer, he had just listed
several hundred high ticket items, complete with nice pictures ("Gallery" featured) and descriptions (all copied directly from the manufacturers' websites). Every one of these items was listed as "new", and with "Buy It Now" prices that were about 25%-50% of the normal retail price. The seller only accepted Paypal as his accepted means of payment.

When you read the fine print in the body of the description of these items, however, you saw that he wasn't actually selling any of these expensive items at all. He was actually selling a CD telling you where you could buy these items.

In a matter of a few hours after he had listed all these items, there were dozens of people who had closed on these items at the "Buy It Now" prices, apparently without even fully reading or understanding what the scammer was doing.

There may have been others besides me who spotted this scam and reported it to Ebay. I don't know. All I know is Ebay delisted all these items, and terminated this seller within a couple hours of when I reported it.

I was an Internal Audit Director for a large multinational corporation for many years, and was often involved with fraud, theft, crime and corruption inside and outside our company. I would love to hear some of the stories that the auditors and fraud control people in Ebay could tell.

John
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Old 10-22-2005, 05:07 AM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flyfisher
...I would love to hear some of the stories that the auditors and fraud control people in Ebay could tell...
i heard of one involving muscle cars, where the "seller" would post pics of the car, answer questions, take the deposit, and disappear. there was another variant of that where the seller robbed the buyer when he came to pick up the car that wasn't there. scary stuff. i've been lucky, i guess.

i've bought several cars off eBay over the years. a few years back, i bought a 'Cuda AAR from a guy up north. the car turned out pretty nice... about what i expected, though it WASN'T matching numbers, as he stated in the ad. i didn't find that out until several months later.

then, the guy e-mailed me a few months later and asked me to bid up another car he had listed, because he felt like it was worth more than the current bid.

buyer be ware, as they say!

jp
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Old 10-22-2005, 05:33 AM   #14
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Lightbulb

I mentioned my 2nd example had been discussed before. Nothing new under the sun...

Sample threads:
'Seller BEWARE!' -- http://www.airforums.com/forum...ead.php?t=5344

'The SCAM!' -- http://www.airforums.com/forum...ad.php?t=17929

We're preaching to the choir. I know I was a fairly sophisticated lurker before I signed up for ASForums -- we can only hope somebody less experienced gets clued in before they get burned.
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Old 10-22-2005, 08:21 AM   #15
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the old Nigerian scam strikes yet again

hi- now they've taken it to rental properties. My wife's family has a swiss apartment in the alps that she listed for rent on VRBO, a site we've had really good luck with on the other end, finding condos for our vacations. A week ago she had an inquiry from BRIGHTHALLAGENCY777 , wanting to rent for 40 days for a Christian conference! In november! Poor english syntax, big hurry, calling us brother and sister- some of the giveaways of this scam. I played him along, as on ebolamonkeyman.com, telling him he could have it for free, if he donated to the Pakistan relief fund. He wrote back sayng the check was already made out to me, for too much, blah blah. That same day VRBO notified me of this scammer. Once they saturate a market, they move on. If it sounds too good to be true, it likely is. I had fun for a week though! -tim
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Old 10-22-2005, 08:50 AM   #16
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I just sold my '53 Flying Cloud from an ad at airstream.net. I had an interested buyer from Michigan on the phone before I could edit the ad to get the photo up. She was here, cash in hand and took it home a few days later. She told me a friend who lives nearby me was familiar with the trailer, I presume because of the 'Crunch goes the Flying Cloud' thread about it here. I hope they enjoy it. It was a cool Flying Cloud! Last week I sold my Toyota pickup to a local buyer in 48 hours off cars.com. Again, another easy, pleasant, honest transaction. I DID get one 419 scammer inquiry on the Toyota tho... I emailed the letter to Yahoo! and they closed that email account.

In July, I sold a '50 canned ham camper for a friend using my eBay account... it was a cool little trailer and had the original interior complete with yellow and white vinyl upholstery. The stove was like brand new. The birch had some stains from old leaks, but the trailer hadn't leaked in years, and it was one of those trailers that, once inside, you just couldn't wipe the smile off your face 'cause it was SO neat! The exterior had been painted in white latex house paint, but it still looked pretty good. I used the premium photo option with supersize and had a dozen photos up. I had a link to twenty-five photos on my Yahoo! photo account. We also made the trailer available for inspection and listed email addresses and phone numbers for contact. I encouraged questions. We represented the trailer as 'ready to camp in', nothing more.

Anyway, we listed it at $2500 reserve, which I thought was a little high, but it was what the owner thought she wanted. It met reserve the second day, and a 'sniper' bid in in the last few seconds at over double the reserve. He hadn't contacted either the owners or me prior to bidding. To his credit, he completed the transaction in a timely fashion and then sent a shipper for the trailer and it went out of state. He got it and FedEx'd ME the next day that he wanted his money back; that I'd misrepresented the trailer 'cause he wanted it to show with his restored trucks... blah blah blah... gonna sue me in his state for misrepresentation blah blah blah... (which, of course he could do... but undoubtedly would lose since the transaction occurred here and I have no 'point of presence' in his state, but would still cost attorney's fees to defend there.)

He beefed the transaction with eBay which subsequently closed for lack of action...

He got a lawyer there to send me letters, and I retained counsel here and have responded twice... and haven't heard anything recently... if I don't hear anything in the next couple of months, I presume it's a dead issue... but geez... what a pain! Over a trailer I didn't even own, set the sale price, or make any money on! AND, he's never re-contacted the actual seller of the trailer! Go figure...

I don't think I'l use eBay again for high-ticket stuff. Despite being as honest as possible, there's just no pleasing some people! At least if they come to you to inspect the item it's more difficult for them to claim that you scammed them somehow.

Roger
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Old 10-22-2005, 01:47 PM   #17
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I new about the scams. We just sold our old camper on ebay in fact the guy just picked it up. By the way great guy paid cash. But anyway our old camper was on for 7 days with a reserve I had over 20 emails wanting me to sell it right out to them. To me that's just not fair. We also sold my car on autotrader they are to pick it up Tuesday and are coming from Kentucky, we had already spoke with our banker on how to handle the transaction a whole lot more money than our camper so we are doing bank wire from there bank to ours and I'm not about to sign that title over until I know it is in my account.
It's a shame what the world has turned into, us being from the south use to like just a good handshake you know.
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Old 10-22-2005, 04:46 PM   #18
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Bidnapper

I use Bidnapper. Have had it for about a year now and my win rate on Ebay has increased 100%. I feel there's so much bidding up that I'm very happy not participating in auctions until the last minute. I recommend it, though it costs. Tom
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