scam?

Yes I would bet it's a scam. People come to us all the time after getting ripped off kicking themselves.

$1250 is well under the cost Sager gives resellers for the 5660.

Ebay is one of the biggest breeding grounds for rip offs involving laptops.

Spain also happens to be a good place to hatch this kind of scam from. One of my coworkers tried very hard to work out a deal where he would be protected in case fraud was the case, but moneygram's rules RE: Spain in particular make it impossible to get your money back when (not if) you get ripped off.

If someone is legitamately selling them below the price which Sager sells them (ie, actually shipping after getting the payment), I can guarentee you they are from a not-so-legitamate source (stolen).

Bottom line: Unless you use a Visa/MC approved and insured for international transactions (Paypal does not do this!), you have no protection against fraud.

I know the auction you're talking about. When I saw it I thought it was too good to be true. Alas, it is.

I would NEVER buy anything from ebay

unless of course its a car and I have an inspector check it out real good

BIG SCAM!!!

I bid on an IBM ThinkPad and a couple of guys from Belgium offered me wonderful deals.

Re: scam?

Heh, even WESTERN UNION has notices posted about NOT using Western Union for eBay payments.

Spain and Italy are the two countries that come to mind for scam artists.

Maybe when the Lagosians (?) figure out no one is going to offer their bank account for "transfering hundreds of millions of dollars" from some ex-government official (or dictator's wife, or...), will they jump on this Western Union/eBay scam band-wagon.

-myrkat

PS: You should report the seller to eBAY so they can close this account (and force him to open another w/ different forged credentials)

Apparently you have never dealt with eBay. There are far fewer scams than legit deals on eBay than you might think Otherwiae it would have never grown to what it is. I have bought over 60 items on eBay ranging from a few dollars to severl thousand. I havent had any problems nor do a majority of eBayers. You must be smart and know what your looking for and make sure you have some kind of recourse. Buying from someone outside the country doesnt sound to bright unless the seller has somekind of verifiable history. I have bought 2 items from China on eBay and was very happy with price and shipping speed. Someone solicting you outside of eBay is almost always a scam. Buying something at an incredible saving far below what you should expect to pay anywhere else is usually a scam too. Somethings are too good to be tru and are ususally designed to seperate you from your money. Most of eBay isn't like that. Powernotebooks is probably the biggest dealer of Sagers on eBay and thay are absolutly reliable.

Caveat emptor

davkenrem


You can buy from ebay all you want but there's no way in hell I'll ever attempt to think of buying anything off it(besides one thing ). I've seen so many scams its pethetic lol. As I said the only thing I will buy on it will be a car since its almost impossible to find the one Im geting elseware. Im glad your happy with ebay though.

well your young, you get wiser as you get older,

Well, we can take the good with the bad. I am in the middle of the road when it comes to eBay - too cautious to shop & buy regularly, yet I do feel comfortable enough for that "every once in a while" search for exotic (to my locale) items.

I think davkenrem hit the nail on the head: Buyer Beware (paraphrase/summary); I mean, I would never recommend eBay to a novice user; however, if there were a good sampling of intelligence in someone, then I'd say "go for it" - but also warn them (or remind them) of the typical scams.

Vigilence will yield desirable results in this case, as in most others.

-myrkat

good point,

eBay is not for novices

you need to be able to think and figure out if " this is too good to be true."

As long as you buy from someone accepting a credit card for payment (like through a seller using PayPal), you are completely protected and can ask your credit card company to remove the charges from your bill if you don't get what you were bidding on.

this is a new 5660 correct? then yea its prolly a scam. but used ones go for that price.

Nothing wrong with ebay

We've purchased over $100,000 in computer equipment from ebay. You need to look at who you are buying from. I've never had one single problem. There are scams out there but if a $50,000 item is being sold for $500, well, you know the saying.

Brian

Re: arghh

This is exactly how the scam works. He will tell you that this will be your protection against fraud. He will be wrong and you will be putting yourself at risk.

As an aside, I recently have started to see a rash of very official looking eBay "Security Update" emails that ask you to enter your eBay username and password into a form in the email. The form would get submitted to an (unsuspecting and unsecured) 3rd party site and sent to a hotmail address.

What does this mean? Check the LOCATION of the items the user has previously sold. In most cases, sellers do not check their accounts on a regular basis (present company included), and will not notice if their account has been hijacked. If all of the previous items sold were sent from NY or LA and not SPAIN, then you know something is up.

All in all, I'd say don't take any chances with your money. If you are willing to spend that amount of cash in the first place, you are better served by saving up for a few more days/weeks and purchasing a legit, warentable, domestic laptop from one of these fine establishments.

I've been buying and selling on Ebay since 1998 and have bought things ranging from books to computers and laptops and have never been ripped off. It is by far the best source for anything collectible and a great place to sell stuff. You just have to be careful. You have to research the seller and read all of the feedback very carefully. This is especially true with laptops. There are a TON of laptop scams on Ebay right now.

My advice is to use a recognized escrow service (Ebay recommends www.escrow.com) for any big purchase like a laptop. If the seller wont use escrow then find another seller. And if the seller suggests an escrow service, make sure its a reputible one, one of the known scams that they're pulling off is setting up fake escrow services, you send the money to the service and it vanishes. I'd also recommend not sending money to Spain, like its been mentioned it seems that a lot of scams are originating there.

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a seller from Spain that had a too good to be true brand new laptop for sale. They wanted me to Western Union them the money. I wanted to use escrow and they said no. After a while they suggested that I send the money Western Union to a fake name and a different country, then when I receive the laptop I change it to their name and country (sound familiar??). I'm guessing that they've found a way to change that information themselves once they have the Western Union money change control number. Just the fact that they suggested something like that was a huge red flag for me.

If I were you I'd save the extra pennies to buy a new Sager from PCTorque or find a legitimate seller on Ebay that'll use escrow.