So I type in "Acer Ferrari" in Ebay and get like 4 listed starting bids at $200 this morning.

It stated "Please e-mail me first before you bid"

So I did.

I come back tonight and check my e-mail. He said

"Hello,

Would you be interested in buying this new item now ? My prices are
fair and I am willing to negotiate.
You can do that instead of all bidding process which takes time and
give you no reassurance you will win the item.

Let me know at your earliest convenience."

I am not listing e-mail, names, or links... but after I read this e-mail... all the auctions for these on ebay were cancelled.

So this is either a good marketing trick to get customers (if he was a real retailer, seller) or its just a scam.

I am not risking it, but just wanted to let others know, I had to post here.

It may not be a scam, but just a heed of warning.

Yeah. All of these kind of auctions are fraud. I do not know what is going on but hackers are stealing peoples passwords and putting fake auctions on for all sorts of items. Cell phones, laptops, cameras, etc. Watch out people. Anything that is too good to be true, probably is.

yea. i thought so. because the current seller account had good ratings, like 250 rating. I looked at his history... it was all movie collectibles, then all of a sudden, he is selling a whole inventory of computer parts. hmm. figures.

They do that because if you make a purchase not using the Ebay system you have no legal protection. You just sent money to an individual basically on nothing more than the honor system. There is no legal contract or receipt of any kind so it is definitely not worth the risk. Thanks for the heads up.

that's to bad that people are ruining it for others, because about half of the business I do on ebay, I do through auction ending early, dealing with the customer directly. Ah well, I guess now I will just have to wait my auctions out

If you use the "buy now" option, it's perfectly safe. But you do it directly with the seller, you could be in trouble.

Edit: I re-read and now see you're the seller. It is best to let ebay handle. That way both you and the buyer have legal protection.

Because I do some of my selling directly, I only have a feedback rating of like 9, so I don't have the Buy it Now feature available yet...i've got two auctions up right now though...so those should push me over 10 so I can use Buy it Now. By the way, on a side note, for you ebay users who don't leave feedback, I don't like you

Sidenote, about EBAY feedback....
Just so you will know, I have an EBAY feedback of 76 with 100 percent positive, and I have done close to 200 transactions on EBAY.
I am an extremely low volume EBAY'er.
It is very hard to get people to leave feedback.
When I sell something, I NOW do this (didn't use to do this):
1.) Send a thank you to the buyer, tell them that tracking number/s will follow, ask them to send an email when they get the item and are happy with it. Remind them that I will post feedback for them the same day they post feedback for me.
2.) Send tracking info, and tell them to email when they get the item and are happy, and again remind them about feedback.
3.) If I see that they have received the item, and that a day or two has passed, and they haven't emailed, I email and say everything in numbers 1 and 2 above.
Doing ALL of this helps, when I am the buyer I post feedback for the seller, then email them. I tell them that I have posted positive for them, and ask them to do the same for me.
Doing all of this helps a lot, but I still get feedback posted for me on less than 70 percent of transactions.
People are lazy!

Andrew
Austin, TX

cool thanx for the info, my dad was looking for a 1.5 ghz pc from ebay, ill warn him now.

Thanx

Yes aamsel, leaving feedback is very good to do. I always leave feedback.

The point was before the transaction, and not after. Sellers try to get you to buy "not through ebay, but privately" which is kind of unsafe and unprotected.

To clarify, the response from the seller when he said "buy it now" was not the "buy it now function through ebay, which is perfectly safe" but buying it directly from him instead without a receipt and proof of transaction, which ebay provides."

Honest sellers would not oppose to using an escrow service, so if they shy away from such a suggestion you'll know they're not for real.

Check out this eBay help page on escrow:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidenc...nt-escrow.html

Escrow has been a problem with fraud on Ebay because many escrow services are rigged, they tell the seller that they've received the funds, then after the seller ships the merchandise, suddenly the escrow service disappears or claims no knowledge.

As a minor ebay seller (~200) I don't take escrow either. But I can take credit cards and such, or take payment through paypal.

Yes, I got that part of it, and I fully agree.
I was just tossing my $.02 in about feedback.

Andrew
Austin, TX

There have been a great number of phoney escrow sites. Ebay I believe has it's own now which is the only one I would trust. A co-worker of mine suggested to a seller to use the ebay one and the seller replied asking to use "a site where he already had an account". This other escrow site turned out to have only be registered as a valid domain for ONE WEEK. After this fact was brought to the seller's attention, he never heard from the seller again. Go figure.

Edit: Link to Ebay's escrow service:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/escrow.html

Here is the response after I told him I was interested. $1420 sounds like a good deal for a brand new Acer Ferrari.

"Hello,

The final price including shipping and insurance will be 1420.00USD

We don't know each other so we need a safe way to conduct this transaction.
eBay offers purchase protection plans for these situations
They will decide how you pay me so you can be insured for the entire value of
this purchase.
In case you don't get what you are paying for, you get a full refund from eBay.
I have deposited $20,000 as purchase protection in an eBay managed account.
I am not able to withdraw any money from this account while there are any
possible
refund requests (60 days since the last transaction)I need you full name
and shipping address now I will contact eBay and they will get back to us when
the needed
verifications are done and you got the purchase protection.
This may take a few hours, so please be patient. You will be able to verify the
validity
of your purchase protection after you have qualified for it
They will give us a transaction number. Please keep it safe. Should a refund is
needed,
you e-mail them the payment proof and the transaction number in order to get
your money back.


Thanks in advance."

I typed the Item Number in The ebay Escrow link above, and it was invalid (check the first post and it was already removed really fast.)

I didn't know about the ebay Escrow process, which sounds interesting and effective, but for this one. I was just testing the seller. Still sounds like a scam to me. Not sure though. If you guys want to try it for the price, I would not mind giving you the sellers information.