Another too good to be true item??

There seem to be far more scammers on eBay lately. Many that claim to be from "California" are actually fronts for businesses in China. I ran into one a couple years ago selling "precision protractors". The item did arrive, but was badly damaged. When I contacted the seller their answer was "that's to be expected when shipping all the way from China". We went round and round for 3 weeks until I finally told them that unless the item was replaced I would open a complaint with eBay. Low and behold a new undamaged protractor arrived special delivery in 3 days.

I now only buy from vendors I can verify are headquartered in the US. Sometimes it takes some research to dig through the layers, but in the end it pays off. I'm sure there are plenty of scammers in this country. The difference is that they are accountable to our laws, and the credit card companies have access to their cash flow.
 
Knock off is the name of the game in that area of the world. Everything from medicine, food to non-life threatening things. If it's not knock off, then it's fake. Like judges, constitution, law, freedom, liberty, and even history text books. This sounds funny, but its' very true. They make up pretty much everything.

But we do get cheap stuff that we can't afford otherwise, so not all bad.
I just got screwed with a battery order and in a process of getting my money back. The seller is gone.
 
Wow! Mitutoyo Absolute calipers for 1/4 the price of HF calipers. :rolleyes: The seller has been selling since last March and has already sold more than 200.
It does raise the question of how we as buyers can become more defensive. This particular seller has negative comments, most in the past month and pertaining to a scam or non-shipment. Both strong reasons to avoid this seller. Actually, if you want a real deal, four gallons of epoxy from this seller for less than $10 and free shipping worldwide via USPS!:laughing: Buyer beware!
 
rgray said:
The ebay feedback system seem to be broken.
Last year I suckered for a too good of deal on a 3D printer.
Shipping from china so would take awhile.
Seller had pages and pages of items....then the next day nothing...then couple of days later pages of items again.
I followed the tracking number and that kept me at bay for the 3 weeks or so till the package got here.
I was shipped a 50 cent piece.
So went about the process to get my money back. And looked into the sellers feedback etc.
Hundreds of positive feedbacks that told of him being a scammer.
When I attempted to leave negative feedback I was not allowed to do so.
Others could not leave negative feedback also so left positive and wrote about him being a scammer.
When I initially bought I looked at the feedback score and baised my purchase on that. If I had read the feedback I would have known not to make the purchase.

Ebay wanted me to do a police report to get my money refunded.
I never did it and my credit card company refunded the amount.
Ebay is quickly becoming a buyer beware outfit.
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I have never not been able to get a refund on a paypal purchase.

Looking at the sellers positive feed back on the dividing head... about 100 positive feed back for purchases less that $1. .15c jewlery pendant... they are scammers... like I said I did order one though.

I did have a $2500 laptop show up on my credit card a couple years back. It was shipped to me then diverted in shipment to an address 200 miles away. I received a UPS notification that the package had been diverted... even before I saw it on my credit card. I did file a police report, just a formality for my credit card company. Local cop called the cops in Portland and they went out and picked up the package from a little old lady that was holding it then going to forward it to someone (I was able to give the local deputy the forward address from the UPS notification). I was impressed with my local sheriff's deputy for following up... I think the little old lady should have been investigated though... mail fraud is a federal offense I believe!
 
I notice that the original ad, and a similar one I found yesterday both had seller names that were random groups of letters. I find that suspicious all on it's own.
 
How does the scammer make money here? I only sold one thing on eBay, but I did not get paid until the buyer got delivery, as I recall. These guys can get around that some way?
 
Because, if I knew that, I think I have a bunch of new Bridgeports that I could let go for, say, $79.95.
 
Winegrower said:
How does the scammer make money here? I only sold one thing on eBay, but I did not get paid until the buyer got delivery, as I recall. These guys can get around that some way?
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Thats what I don't understand... The only thing I can think of is that they hope no one notices that they didn't get their thing and keep that money? It doesn't seem to make sense to me.
 
That's one of the low cost scams. If you don't pay a ton of money for something, maybe 10% of the usually large number of buyers will forget they spent that relatively small amount of money...until it's too late to file a claim
 
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