Like many of you, I have bought a number of things off of eBay. I’ve never had a problem, but then again, I’ve never bought anything over $30 either. Still, I see people selling items in the multi-thousand dollar range, even cars!
So obviously if you get screwed out of a $2 baseball card, it’s no big deal. But when my $5,000 Persian rug doesn’t show up after I’ve sent the money, what happens?
I know you can give someone ‘bad feedback’, to stop them from screwing others in the future but what stops that person from logging on as a ‘new seller’ the next day under a different alias, and scamming someone else?
Seems to me a resourceful criminal could make a business out of screwing people on multiple bids all day, every day and coming back with a “I sent that diamond ring in the mail last week…didn’t you get it?” lame excuse to weasal out of their deals.
Yeah, I’m with Athena. If you’re gonna buy something on eBay, don’t use most of your life savings. If you’re dying for something that badly, see if you can arrange to meet the person and pick it up.
the ebay newsgroup has tons of stories like this, not that much though. Some people get neg feedback over a transaction of $4.00, one guy 66 cents for postage & then no one wants to buy from them.
I got scammed on a Patrick Roy (hockey goalie) autographed pic. Turns out the guy had been swapping names (he was on name #3 or #4) because folks wouldn’t take their stuff to get authenticated.
Didn’t someone recently get arrested for thousands of dollars of Beanie Baby fraud, tho?
They say the Lord loves drunks, fools and little children.
Two out of three ain’t bad.
I’ve bought several items in the $200-500 range. Have one that I haven’t received & am starting to get nervous about; the others were all happy endings.
Since eBay guarantees all purchases up to $500, that’s my cutoff. Over that & I would use an escrow service.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.