Careful of this possible ebay scam

[johnboy]

eBay Motors: 2004 Airstream Safari 28W travel trailer (item 300238373317 end time Jul-02-08 01:41:37 PDT)


Seller has had 2 consecutive buy-it-now for $5600 on a '04 safari 28 footer. Sounds very familiar to the craigslist scam that has been going on for months where the seller has a similar unit (for the exact same dollar amount) for sale. Unit is "in storage" and "you can contact storage and transport to get your trailer".

Must be a big-time scam. Someone probably hijacked the poor ebayer's account (200 all-positive score). They probably don't even know it yet.

johnboy, ebayer since 1996.

[overlander63]

It had ended with "buy it now". I reported the auction to Ebay, but it's too early to actually get someone on the phone. Ebay is based is California...

[Ganglin]

Also reported to Ebay and sent the buyer a note.

Might be good if someone else sent the buyer a note so he doesn't think it's just one person yanking his chain.....?

[johnboy]

You might have just sent the hijacker a note. A lot of times the hijacker will have control of the account, has probably changed the email including (possibly) the users email account.

I've worked with online ecommerce for years and have had access to literally millions of user's account information. One of the worst things you can do when you sign up for anything (e.g. airforums.com or ebay) is to use the same password as you use for your email account. When you use the same password, suddenly there are people that have access to your email account.

To prove my point one day, we took 10 users out of our database for a large corporation (you've all heard of them but I can't mention the name here). Of the 10 users, we successfully logged into the email accounts of 4 of these users using the password they supplied to our client along with the email address that they supplied to our client.

Just some suggestions from an old-timer.

cheers, jb

[overlander63]

The ad has been pulled. There is a whole thread here with hundreds of these scam auctions shown. They are all virtually identical in their configuration.

[Ganglin]

All is well - copy of reply we received:

Thank you for your concern. We appreciate you looking out for us. As of late this morning, the item was removed from eBay and our deposit was refunded. Honestly, we thought that it might be to good to be true, but sometimes you hear of the stories where people sell things for others without knowing what their value is....and we took a chance. It was too good to be true. Thank you again for your concern. Jamie

I invited them to join Airforums and look for their Airstream here.

[Sonnentag]

Hello....we were the ones that fell for the good deal this morning.
Thank you ganglin for the heads up.
We thought that we would post the e-mail we received at 5:30 pm this evening AFTER the whole auction was ended and our money was refunded....so I guess this guy has no clue.

Roger and Jamie
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Cartes @ scammer@gmail.com

Hi,

I am emailing you regarding the trailer that I have for sale . I saw from you email that you are interested in the trailer.So, as you can see in the pictures , the trailer looks and works perfect and I must tell you that this is a regretful sale but I have some problems with my family and it must go now.Everything on the trailer works like new, no hided problems.Since I have a lot of problems and I am very busy , I am not able to make this transaction in person and I prefer closing the transaction trough an eBay purchase protection program because is this way both of us are protected . If you don't know how does the eBay Vehicle Purchase Protection Program work please let me know so I can help you. I used it several times (as a seller but as well as a buyer) and everything was perfect.
The trailer was inspected by eBay and they approved the sale through their service . Since I am not able to close this deal in person I decided to include shipping & handling fees in the final price ($ 5,600 ) and you will not have to pay any other taxes to register the trailer on your name.
The trailer is registered in TX where I am living right now but it is located in Florida at Worldwide Shipping company and from there it will be shipped to your address. The payment must be sent to eBay and ONLY BY BANK TRANSFER ( they not accept cashier checks or money orders as method of payment for this kind of transactions ).
If you are interested in going ahead with the transaction please let me know your full name and shipping address so I can open a transaction case through eBay with your details.

If not, please let me know as well in order to look for other buyer.

Best Regard,

John

[Pfredd]

Whenever you suspect that an eBay listing may be a scam, the only thing you should do is contact eBay.

Do NOT send anything to the lister, otherwise he now has your contact info.

You can put it on your watch list, as the lister has no way of finding out who is watching the listing.

Just be patient and wait to see if eBay OKs it. You shouldn't be bidding till the last few minutes (or less) anyways...

The old addage "If it looks too good to be true, it probably is" is not an addage on eBay, it's a hard and fast rule. :-)

Dave

[TomW]

Originally Posted by Sonnentag

Hello....we were the ones that fell for the good deal this morning.
Thank you ganglin for the heads up. ...

Welcome to the forum, Sonnentag,

You will find this forum full of great members just like ganglin.

Tom
p.s. Kudos, Ganglin

[azflycaster]

Welcome to the forums.
Here is a link to a very large collection of ebay fraud sales. Most of the links in the posts are dead, but it will give you a taste of how many of these things are listed. Good luck with your trailer search.
http://www.airforums.com/forums/f348...ere-20119.html