It's been updated..

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On 08-Feb-08 at 01:24:50 GMT, seller added the following information:

I AM SORRY BUT I HAVE HAD TO CANCEL THIS AUCTION. THE MAIN REASON IS THREATENING EMAILS I AM GETTING AND ALSO THE FACT THAT EBAY WILL CLEARLY BID THIS UPTO £10M AND THEN TRY AND DO ME FOR THE FEES.

I HAD NO IDEA THIS AUCTION WOULD GET THE GLOBAL RESPONSE IT HAS AND ITS JUST A SHAME THAT EBAY WOULD RATHER THREATEN ME THAN ENGAGE ITS CUSTOMERS – BUT I GUESS THAT’S JUST THE WAY LIFE IS THESE DAYS.

I WOULD LIKE TO WISH EVERYONE ALL THE VERY BEST AND I HOPE TO SEE AS MANY OF YOU AS POSSIBLE ON PLACES LIKE WWW.TAZBAR.CO.UK GO ON, GIVE THEM YOUR SUPPORT. ONE OF US MAKES NO DIFFERENCE – THOUSANDS MAY DO, MILLIONS WILL!

SORRY FOR ENDING THIS EARLY, HOPE YOU ALL UNDERSTAND WHY I HAD TO.

ANYONE WHY STILL WANTS TO BUY THE LAPTOP PLEASE SEE MY AUCTION ON WWW.TAZBAR.CO.UK

Gone, but...

... is it also forgotten? Did anyone who saw the auction see what the final post-pull bid was? Just curious...

ebay just doesn't seem to care

My impression of ebay is they'll pay lipservice to scam busting, but that is it.

A simple example - search for "wholesale list". A wholesale list is a scam where someone advertises a iPod, or a Hi def TV, or a Trampoline etc. complete with picture and a low price. So suckers bid, or hit the "Buy it now" thinking they're getting some bargain item and get an email of wholesale outlets for their efforts. As I type there are 20 suckers bidding on an iTouch wholesale list. They may be suckers who should have read the text but they are also being conned.

How hard would it be for ebay to stop the wholesale list scam? The answer is not hard at all. They could start by banning pictures against those kind of items, and shoving wholesale lists into a category all by themselves. They could even plaster the auctions with warnings and popup acknowledgements to indicate the item was just a list, not an item.

This is just one scam that runs and runs. It seems that counterfeit goods are also a popular scam on ebay. How hard would it be to offer advice on how to identify a counterfeit item such as a memory card? Or to weight ratings on certain items based on buyer's ability to spot fakes vs genuine articles? Or to limit sales of certain items to certain regional areas, or merchants with established ratings? Or to identify repeat scammers by their IP address or the text of their adverts? Or for ebay fraud teams to purchase suspect items to identify if they're counterfeit before a buyer gets stung?

The fact is ebay really doesn't seem to care so much. The reason may be in paypal. Once a fraud is reported they freeze the paypal account with the funds still in it. A few people probably work through the drawn out complaints procedure and get a refund. What happens to the rest of the money? I expect that eventually it goes in ebay's pockets, as does the all of the advertising, keywords, paypal commissions etc. the scammer used to place their ad. I would not be surprised if ebay make a tidy pile of money from the scammers.

So their anti-fraud measures feel more like lip service. At the end of the day, it'll hurt them more than anyone else to let the site continue this way. If ebay is associated with thieves and conmen, buyers will stay away.

sadly deluded

well if it was a marketing campaign for tazbar, then it worked,

I hadn't heard of it, but now I have I had a look, and just like ebay it's rammed full of everyone else's shit that they don't want! people hocking their second hand goods to try and make a little money, professional sellers selling their goods to try and make a lot of money.

it's exactly the same as ebay in principal, and will I imagine, in time be subject to the same kinds of scams etc... (albeit that there are less things here as it doesn't seem to be as popular).

there is no way of getting around it.

A few years back I bought a sega megadrive, I got it from a car boot sale, it didn't work. I lost out.

I met the guy, spoke to him, paid in cash and shook his hand, a lt more than you get on ebay, and i wasn't surprised when it didn't work, in fact I almost expected it not too.

there really are no guarantees... and no system of any online shop will create a workable guarantee that neither sellers nor buyers will fall foul of scammers, and they'll be investigated at length, fairly and impartially with compensation being paid. (and if they do the scammers will just scan the auction house site rather than the traders).

if you want a real guarantee like you'd get at a real shop, then chances are you might actually have to go to a real shop...

ebay has it's place, paypal has it's use, as do all the other ebay copies (like tazbar) and the various money moving organizations...

but so long as money will change hands, people will try to think of ways that they can make money illegitimately.

Western Union

Western Union transfers are virtually instantaneous, meaning that if you receive the fake notice, all you have to do, is come to the nearest WU agent, and see if the money is there (you do not even need the notice, just some ID)

If the money is there (unlikely) ship the item, if the money is there, do not. It is quite simple.

The moron who would get ripped off by “WU Scam” deserves it, for Darwin reasons.

@Viral Marketing?

I'm guessing it is or just coincidence that the seller was based in Shropshire as are Tazbar, looks like their 'Corporate Headquaters' is in fact a residential address, nice..

not everything works on the internet

So go down tesco, its probably cheaper there anyway.

Leading www...

There are good and rational reasons for *not* pointing the A record for the base domain at the company's web site. The main one is that a domain hosts many services, and the web site doesn't really have any better claim than any other service. The Internet hosts many different services, of which HTTP is only one.

In fact given the default logic (and importance) of mail delivery the email servers arguably have first dibs on the A record. However, given that many web browsers will try a leading www if the base domain fails to resolve, simply omitting the A record is logical.

If you don't type the www then yes, you are just being lazy.

It's a very common form of laziness so from a marketing point of view pointing the A record at the web site makes a certain amount of sense. Making allowance for somebody else's laziness doesn't make it any less a matter of laziness however.

...Ronny

ebid.net?

anyone have an opinion/experence of uk.ebid.net ? looks kinda like ebay, before they sold out.

DNS

Ronny - with all due respect, I don't think you understand how DNS is involved in the delivery of E-Mail.

MX records and A records are nothing to do with each other, and you can easily have A records for www.somedomain.com and somedomain.com pointing to the same webserver (configured with name-based virtual hosts and therefore hosting hundreds of domains), while separately having the MX record for somedomain.com pointing to a mail server (that could again handle mail traffic for multiple hosts), allowing the mail to be delivered regardless of what the A record(s) point to.

That said, if the domain doesn't have an MX record, then most mailers will attempt to send to the server pointed to by the A record (I think). But otherwise it doesn't matter.

As you say, of course, there are plenty of other services that are hosted on the internet, and indeed we might have "ftp.somedomain.com" and various others. But as most people (certainly in the general public) want the website, it makes sense to have the truncated "somedomain.com" be assumed to be "www.somedomain.com".

</rant>

It's just as easy for sellers to rip you off...

Cry me a river..It's just as easy for sellers to rip you off:

a) Promise the item has been sent, wait a month and say the post office returned it and you put it in the post again, it should be there in a couple of days. Repeat until the 60 day reclaim period is up.

b) Send wrong item, get buyer to send it back, promising to refund the postage. Dally around using variations on method (a) until 60 days pass - you got the money *and* you got the item back!

Remember to always use negative feedback as a weapon - after all, the seller has the last word even though the buyer sent the money five minutes after the auction ended.

c) Send broken goods and put tiny disclaimers in the auction that the buyer should always pay for postal insurance and the seller is not responsible for damage during transit. Use tit-for-tat feedback to enforce your position. Finally, after much bargaining say you'll change it but buyer has to pay return postage. Best case scenario: You offloaded a broken item onto some poor sucker for full retail price. Worst case: You sell an item and make a small profit.

d) Sell stolen foreign goods which are the wrong region/language for the buyer. Put this fact in tiny writing in the middle of a fifty page garbage-padded description. Use tit-for-tat feedback to make sure the buyer doesn't complain.

It's much better for buyers to feel safe then it is for sellers. The sellers must be making money despite the bad buyers - if they weren't, they'd stop doing it.

am I the only one

I've been on ebay and have a few claims filed against me. I always one because I ship with a confirmed receipt. and a tracking number Paypal has refunded me when I was scammed

And this is why I don't sell on Ebay anymore.

In all my time dealing with Ebay - a few hundred transactions all said and done, I've only ever been stung as a seller. Partly my own fault i know, I should have refused to deal with Americans - the notion that people in other countries might use different video formats never occurs to them.

That said, even when the complaint went to paypal, paypal staff clearly understood that the item was exactly as described and working exactly as described - just not working the way the buyer wanted it to - they awarded in the buyers favor. I don't understand why they even bother having rules instead of just saying 'Full refund at buyers request, no questions asked'

I'm still more then happy to buy from them - a sensible buyer should have no risk of issue.

Re:sadly deluded

As DR says, Ebay is not the only place that you can go to get scammed....likewise I have bought a couple of things at car boot sales that have gone badly wrong, but yet more that worked perfectly. The fact is that whatever you do, the likelihood is that someday, each and every one of us will be diddled by a scammer. Of course, you can lower your chances of being scammed by using a bit of common sense but in some cases it's just down to luck.

Personally I've bought about 20-30 items from Ebay and have been lucky in that I've never bought a dodgy one, even when buying PC parts, console games and the like. I've also sold two mobile phones and despite a single mail from a scammer (who I told by return of email that I'd sell him the phone in exchange for his sisters virginity), managed to sell both without incident.

All you can really do is to protect yourself as much as possible - like when you use a cashpoint, cover your fingers so the pinhole camera in the fake fascia can't see what pin number you enter. Chances are, you'll still get scammed someday but at least you will have done what you can to prevent it.

scams

I got had once when I sold a few items to a seller he claimed they had never arrived.

Sadly I did not send via recorded delivery so i could not prove I had sent them.

Ever sicne I have used recorded delivery for stuff I sell on there, I just charge a litte more for postage.

Re: viral marketing

Possibly, but if you check out the guy's feedback he has been a reasonably active eBay seller in the past. It could actually be a genuine protest.

piss poor viral marketing

oh dear, they couldn't even be arsed to stick a fake auction up on their own site...http://www.tazbar.com/Search/Search.aspx?q=sony&desc=False&section=1, the user (class-it) doesn't exist and provides no link through to this amazing interweb bazaar sale of his shite laptop.... maybe they should worry less about ebay and more about their choice of online pr agency

ebay feedback

eBay feedback blackmail is getting a bit ridiculous now. I think they should allow more space for explanation when you give or receive negative feedback so each side can explain the situation.

As a seller on eBay, you can be blackmailed by buyers who just don't like the item or say they haven't received it, and then threaten to leave -ve feedback.

I also suggested a combined price+P&P column to eBay ages ago as I am sure many others have done.

I too have had experiences with PayPal and have not been impressed by their policies or 'arbitration'.

Does anyone know the best way to get payment when selling on eBay for a private seller (i.e. safe and without having to pay a large %age to anyone).

PayPal - not much protection and costs

Cheque - need to wait at least 1 week AFTER payment has gone into my account before I know it is safe to send the goods - this means a 2 week delay for the buyer.

BACS transfer - does not give the buyer any protection ??? Need to give a stranger your bakn details.

Any others?

Never been stolen from!

I have never been the victim of crime in my entire life. If I was robbed in a park I would be a scarred for life. Correction ... I have been robbed and only ever been robbed in EBAY! If I was robbed 5 times in the same park I would want to see someones head on a block.. makes you think hmm???

This was my auction, I am class-it

I have given the register my email address at my blog so they can confirm I am who I say i am!!! To confirm my identity I have used the email address published on my blog to register here!

My Blog is http://class-it.blogspot.com

The biggest scammers are Ebay!!!!

25,000 (and counting) emails seem to agree!

One final note.

This was not an inented "viral marketing" or any other kind of advertising.

I wish I was that clever, but the reality is that I was bored one night and thought Id have a dig at ebay!

It simply struck a chord with thousands of people accross the world - Sellers that get ripped off day in day out by Ebay

The laptop did sell yes, but got only one bid and i lost £50 on it - so great scam there!!!!

Use you head!

It is posable to be scammed anywhere, either on the net or face to face.

Rule 1 is simple If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

Rule 2 is if the seller promises like for like feedback they are clearly expecting a problem, so leave it.

Rule 3 if the spelling and grammar is bad, then it is likely that some urchin is trying it on. *Example* On a listing I read for an 03 reg Audi A4, amongst the appalling howlers the seller had written

".....so don't bover trying too scam me becos I am an Solisitor and I no all the scams'.

He was, however he was bright enough not to put in the ad "steering lock broken' or "Drivers door handle/lock damaged'.

Basically read the ad well, read the feedback they have received and given and get a feel for the type of person you likely to be dealing with. If in any doubt leave it.

Always a good idea to ask the seller a question that way you gauge by their response and if the item is listed through a hijacked account then the true account holder should reply with "what the f**k????'.

Finally see what else they have been selling and buying, if the item you are looking at is "out of character for them?

I agree ole' ebay is a minefield at times but nine times out of ten those scammed usually have walked in to it.

I am anonymous for this post because I don't want to end up like Clarkson!