eBay scammer or expert home burgler...

[allthatwhichis]

Check this out... It is an eBay auction for a QM32 card/software and an interesting "projector" with no lasers. The listing seems fishy as it wants you to contact him separatly through gmail. Whan I looked at his other items, he has close to 3000. All of them are for various low and high dollar items. Most have the same disclaimer to contact him at his gmail account. All this feed back are for these "floating golf balls". I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer but who would try and buy from this guy? I swear I have seen this exact listing before.

[cruch]

oohhh....looks scary!!! Smell like scam to me!!!

[laserLips]

ALL of his other items finish at the same time...adn strangly weather it's a picture of a poodle or a super monster truck, the buy it now price, he says, is $1000.

I'll have four monster trucks then please.
A load of balls if you ask me...how do we flag it for ebay?

[allthatwhichis]

A load of balls if you ask me...how do we flag it for ebay?

I was looking for that myself... I gave up cause soem work came in at... work.

edit:
I just jumped into a chat with eBay support. We'll see what they say.

[JimBo]

The other thing is why is he from London but not on ebay.co.uk he is registered with ebay usa?

Jim

[The_Doctor]

Just fired off a message to eBay too:

Subject: Major scammer alert, ID "hiltonbay".

"All auctions designed to close in 2 days.
All auctions unbiddable, seller will cancel bids unless emailed first, directly.
Seller wants arbitrary £1000 buy it now on ALL items, regardless of real value, many of which are obviously worth many times more.
Seller expects all punters to provide their email contacts before bidding, when they are entitled to remain anonymous unless they win.

It's possible the seller is the Ultimate Repoman quickly converting assets to money, but anyone in that position would be more likely to stay within eBay rules."


Unless someone can send legally acceptable proof that it is a scam, I doubt they'll act on this in time to stop the auctions. They didn't do a thing about that idiot with the '240 mW' pointers. Those were obviously either illegal or fraudulent, and either way at £20 postage per item that's gross evasion of eBay fees, yet they still did bugger all. Either it's double standards, and they allow serious scammers because they generally buy more listings and pay more final value fees, or they've stopped stamping on ALL laser sellers, regardless of type of laser sold. If they ARE still stamping on any laser seller, I'm keen to hear about why they did so.

[allthatwhichis]

I did a report through the one to one chat in hopes a real person would take more initative. The rep said he would report it to their... I forget the department... Here's hoping no one gets screwed by this seller.

If he is a repo man, he's a busy mofo!

[Lasermad]

This listing (320166503197) has been removed or is no longer available.

[allthatwhichis]

This listing (320166503197) has been removed or is no longer available.

Well that's good, now it is time to see if they took all his listings off.

edit:

Looks like he's got 3 items now, all floating golf balls... I'm gonna add him to my favorite sellers list, never know when I'll want to play golf in a lake.

[The_Doctor]

Bet they did. I got this reply:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us. I understand you find the selling
activities of seller "hiltonbay" suspicious.

I appreciate your concern on helping keep eBay a safe trading place.

You were right to be concerned about the said member's listing.

The item was listed by a third party using the said eBay member's
account without their permission. It's likely the unauthorised user
obtained the account password using a spoof email. Unfortunately we
weren't made aware of this until after the listing had ended.

We strongly advise you not to send payment for the item or respond to
any further emails regarding this listing.

Once we became aware of this unauthorised activity, we took immediate
action and we're now restoring the account to its original owner. For
privacy reasons, I can't share any further details regarding this
member's account. However, please be assured that we're dedicated to
keeping eBay a safe and reputable place to buy and sell.

Furthermore, please be informed that all eBay members have the right to
choose their trading partners. Just as a buyer has the option of
choosing trading partners by choosing which auctions to bid on, a seller
also has the option of choosing trading partners by rejecting or
accepting bids.

Because of this, sellers may cancel bids and end a listing at their
discretion.

Thank you for reporting this member to us. We appreciate the opportunity
to make eBay an even safer place to buy and sell online.

Nice to see that some things go well with eBay. I guess this was easy for them to prove something was wrong though, a case where the problem was clearly on their turf.

Slightly weird what that reply says about cancelling bids. I always thought they discouraged it, said a person could get thrown off eBay for making a habit of it.