OK. My laptop gave up the ghost the other day, and since I need one for work, I was looking around on e-bay for a new one. I came across thislisting. There was a buy it now price and a “make an offer” button. I didn’t want to spend as much as the buy it now, but I figured what the hell and made an offer for $225. This offer was rejected immediately. (I’ve never run into the make an offer option before, but I figured the seller likely set a minimum price and anything below that was rejected.) No big deal, right? I was looking for a real bargain and didn’t get it. Then I get an email:
This email strikes a warning cord with me. The fractured grammar, the “e-bay contacted me”…it just raises some warning flags, but if they are really willing to let me have the laptop for $255, I’ll but it in a heartbeat, I still need one. The seller has been an e-bay member since Oct '05 and has a 100% feedback, from a large variety of people, but still…
Does anything here strike anyone as hinkey, or should I go ahead and buy this laptop for $255?
Total scam. eBay doesn’t declare a damn thing except when they yank auctions or entire accounts for fraudulent or infringing activity. Otherwise, auctions are completely the responsibility of the person that listed them and eBay will not intervene or declare anything for any reason, nor would they contact any seller unless there was a damn good reason to do so – like informing of potential fraudulent activity on their account (either by or against them) or something like that. What’s more, the “best offer” thing is completely up to the seller to accept or reject. eBay doesn’t even enter into it, and no policy would ever declare you the winner if your offer was rejected for any reason. Only if he accepted your offer would you be deemed to have won the auction. Either way, it’s all automated. eBay staff members don’t have a thing to do with it
The seller’s history appears to include sales of similarly valuable items. However, I can’t help being suspicious. It could still be a hijacked account or something.
In general, you should never ignore even the tiniest bit of ‘gut warning’ you experience on eBay - it’s better to walk away empty-handed from a genuine bargain than it is to be too trusting and get scammed.
It’s a way for them to first find out what your highest bid is before they offer it to you.
Total scam.
It would have turned out the same no matter how many bids you’d made or what the final price was. Someone would have bid against you, driving the price up until you stopped. Next day it would be offered to you at that price, on some technicality or other.
It seems to almost be standard operating procedure at ebay now. As is tiny price, huge shipping cost.
OK, call the seller, who claims that that email wasn’t from them, but was a scam, likely from someone phishing for info from me. Fine, I kinda thought so, but…how did they know what offer I made?
Hijacked account would be my guess. There’s no other way they could get your personal information through eBay (including bid/offer histories) unless you bid or made an offer on one of the auctions the hijacker appropriated.
It sounds like a compromised account (unless the seller is also lying about not having sent the email). Interesting though - in most cases, compromised accounts are used to make fast bucks by selling nonexistent high-price goods, or buying high value items for which false payment will be rendered, but in this case, it sounds as though the scammer has gained access to the account and just sat there waiting for an opportunity like this to arise.
You might contact the eBay management. If the seller is doing this regularly, they will take appropriate action. If it’s a fluke, they may investigate a hijacked account or security breach.
Accounts in good standing (both buyers and sellers) are a coveted target of eBay phishers for the very reason that a few folks brought up in this thread…the tendancy to want to trust an established reputation.
Feedback is just one layer of data to consider when navigating eBay.
What the Hell is that? Do the “eBay system” lords implant me with special eBay larvae that give me super powers and immortality? Do I get a special hat like the Pope’s, or like the Burger King crown?
Although that is a possibility if he has an easy password or has fallen prey to a rogue Phishing E-Mail, I actually meant that the seller’s account was probably hijacked. You can’t get all of a bidder’s personal information any time you want, but you can if they win (by whatever means, including accepted Best Offers.) The seller would also have access to any Best Offers made by eBayers on a particular listing, which would explain why the hijacker would have known how much Weirddave offered.
I’d be willing to bet that if the hijacker didn’t have the seller’s PayPal account information as well, he probably would have concocted some excuse to redirect payment to his own PayPal account, or required some other method of payment.
It is for reasons such as this that I never click eBay links in E-Mails. (My E-Mail client won’t let me anyway if the sender’s top-level domain doesn’t match the TLD in whatever links are in the E-Mail body) That’s one of the good things about eBay: Almost anything eBay notifies you about in E-Mail will have some sort of corresponding conformation in your My Ebay page. Messages from sellers will also appear in My Messages, and win/lose notifications will be obvious by where it sits in your Won/Lost panels. Auction pulls or bid cancellations won’t though, so you just have to check on those manually.
The urgency expressed in the email appearing to originate from the seller may indicate that the seller’s account was compromised by being left logged in on a computer to which a person other than the seller has access - in this case, the scammer wouldn’t have the account details, only the ability to log in to the account for a number of hours until the login cookie expires.
