Epidemic of Ebay outlaw parts sellers - Fraud galore

[Wolfchen]

Google "fraud" :
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain.
E.g. obtaining money through making false - misleading statements.

Seen too many warning posts about bad Ebay sellers over the last 6 months to ignore them as just another user axe to grind; quoting one immature member on Superbikes.net.
Been on "good" bike forums like ours and the growing list of buyer complaints about the epidemic scale of ebay seller fraud takes your breath away.

Hey if its not my imagination once-mighty ebay is going through a severe midlife crisis with shyster sellers who take our money and then don't ship or your part arrives completely useless & Not-as-described. Like my Radian gas tank that arrived with old, not-pictured damage in 2009. Ebay promises much & then it doesn't deliver to its buyers.

Could relate my recent tale of getting-a-bad-wire-harness via deception woe but then some people may not understand the meaning of deliberate seller fraud. In my experience, as a 100% feedback Buyer with over a 100+ transactions, its getting to be a bad joke doing business with these nasties.

Poor Admin. Decisions: Default Corporate Stupidity
Its not just the money, its huge blocks of time & wasted effort, delays. Most of the time one gets their money back via dispute resolution.
Then there are cases where ebay sides with the seller over admin. time limits; like when a seller deliberately doesn't send a Buyer Invoice & conveniently ignores the seller's blatantly false claim of not getting paid.
Meanwhile the seller pockets any cashier's check or money order until AFTER the dust has cleared.

This is outright corp. hypocrisy, theft & executive stupidity at its worst. Why?
Because ebay resolution only deals with Credit Card & PayPal issues. Nice.
That way they get their final value fee, no matter what. Grrr!

I've heard well-intentioned comments: "Buyer beware" "Move on etc"
These don't address the issue and don't warn our members so they won't get burned.

For myself; I've almost quit using ebay over this latest outrage.
They turned a blind eye to this guy's unsavory practices.
AG's office in Calif. won't touch ripoff ebayers saying, "These are civil cases"

Yeah right - since when is seller fraud merely a civil case?

PM me if you want the ebay seller's user name.
He's getting quite a rep on bike forums.

 

[BigJimmyW13]

Internet fraud is handled by Secret Service.

Posted via Mobile

 

[YOURADHERE]

I hear ya. I recently had a crap run in with Ebay that luckily for me, worked out ok. I believe I'm done dealing with the independent sellers and will likely stick to members with "stores" and butt loads of positive feedback. My latest last month involved an engine for my ATV that was supposed to have extensive motor mods done(big bore/stroker, cams, piston, carb, etc) by a well known race shop. I bought it for one of those too-good-to-be-true kind of prices. I knew I was in trouble when the box arrived and on top the packing peanuts was a fake invoice that the seller had made stating the build total came to over $8000. When questioned the seller called me a liar, stated I had no clue what I was talking about, and threatened legal action because I slandered him. Crap like that will really ruin the whole buying online experience.

 

[Punkskalar]

I quit selling on ebay, I didn't like being associated with the whole thing....

It's sad, but I'll never sell on ebay again for a few reasons. Ebay buyers tend to think they have more leverage against you and they do through ebay and paypal together. Got ripped of more than a few times shipping overseas, as overseas shipping would sometimes take 30 days or more (customs, out of a sellers control) and the buyer would dispute the charges and still get the products... Forget all that!

And then selling used parts, might as well just give them away, as there will always be "something I didn't expect" when the buyer gets the parts...

 

[Splexin]

I am actually thankful for eBay.....who would've thought that old fuel tank badges would sell? I sold mine with no problem and recouped half the cost of buying new ones. That's selling smart. Sell the old to buy the new. I've done the same for years with used computer electronics. Then again, I have 100% positive feedback and describe every detail of the item in such a way that no dispute would arise. Lots of pictures etc. Never had a problem.

I also bought my XS650 from eBay.....no issues there either......bike was actually better than I expected......

When I was selling $3000 professional cameras I did have one person who purchased two cameras dispute the item model # when it was written plainly in the title. He knew he would lose but was being a prick about it anyways, and trying to get me to give him a partial refund. I was like "Hell no!" and held my ground. Needless to say I had a $7500 hold on my PayPal account for a month but other than that just a nuisance. He lost the case, of course and I never heard from him again.

I never ship overseas. Foreign buyers can leverage the excuse "I didn't understand" too much and hope that you won't want to mess with having it returned......

I've just learned to hold my ground and not give in to any demands.....if you're in the right and have described everything properly you don't have anything to fret about.....the people at eBay/PayPal aren't all that stupid.......

As a buyer I've never had any major issues either. Just stick to buying from well-known buyers with lots of positive feedback.

 

[78gold]

Well I do call it Evil Bay but as a colonist out here in the middle of nowhere with no neighbor within Coooeee (Unles you count NewZealand) Its the only way we can get gear at a reasonable price sometimes.

I have been buying (and occassionaly selling) through ebay for years now.

I dont sell anymore as I have been ripped off 3 times and am sick of winners not paying, not contacted, disputing goods etc. I have always posted plenty of pics and full descriptions but ebay dont care.

The flip side is I still buy on ebay. I have bought 10's of thousands of dollars of bits and peices for my Trans Am, MGB's, Triumphs (old and new) and now the xs.

I have been ripped off three times, once on a plate (yep ceramic plate) which broke in transit from here in Oz due to being posted in an envelope with no packaging. Seller claims ok when she sent and she didnt charge extra for packaging.

Another was a Scalextric car from Uk which simply didnt arrive.

Last (and most costly) was an intake manifold, timing chain and sundry bits for the 403 olds in my Trans Am. Manifold was cracked and seller was no longer an ebay seller. Took ages to arrive and Paypal had released the $.

I really think that this was a small price to pay when I have saved as much as I have.

My biggest gripe these days is all the "Institutionalised" sellers who list thousands of items at buy it now or 99c with large postage costs making searching for what you want harder. Ebay has in some ways become a victim of its own success.

Anyway I still buy on ebay, mostly from Oz or the states, but have found less smaller/private sellers in the U.S. are willin to ship to Australia due to issues mentioned in other posts. Its a pain as we either just cant get a lot of stuff here or its ridiculously priced.

Just my 2c worth.

Ride Safe everyone and hope to get back accross to visit US next year. (Had a great time in 2009)

 

[gggGary]

I have bought and sold a lot of stuff on fleabay and still buy quite a bit. I don't sell there often anymore preferring to use good old XS650 and craigslist to sell my parts. I have bought $10-20,000 vehicles on ebay several times and even sold an $80,000 airplane. only minor issues as a buyer or seller. I once sold a bike from a guy in New Jersey, I never met the owner, or saw the bike, I sold it to a guy in Georgia and I never met him either. I got paid and sent half the selling price to the owner. the whole thing worked out perfectly and we all were happy!
I guess I am lucky I have shipped around the world without an issue so far, I had some small parts get lost in the mail to Puerto Rico but they eventually showed up and the buyer repaid the money when he finally got them.
Note to self; don't buy or sell crotch rocket parts.

 

[KenN]

As a gun owner, I refuse to use Ebay or Paypal, the owner (same person) is a flaming anti-gunner.

 

[Wolfchen]

The Big Picture:

 

[xjwmx]

On the other hand a phony buyer cost me a few hundred. He won the auction and insisted on paying by check, and one written on some mutual fund or something. He had a whole phony identity as the North American head of some insurance company. When I gave a second chance offer to the next highest bidder, the deal was tainted and he didn't want the item anymore.

Then I relisted it and the winning bid was several hundred under the original second highest bid.

And...I've realized there would be a perfect ebay seller scam. I've not heard of anybody doing it, and I'm not going to describe what you would do, but be on your toes. Deal only with people with lots of recent good feedback.

But there's so much available there that's not available elsewhere that I'll definitely continue to use it.

In the original old ebay days, before paypal, I was originally amazed that people could be trusted to send you the item after you sent them the money. Gave me a good feeling and it was a bit of a revelation. But I think that if ebay was a new startup, with the current national mood and economic situation, nobody would trust it enough for it to get off the ground! I'm amazed that it's not completely disintegrated into a huge scam in fact.

 

[pamcopete]

Well, I've bought 4 motorcycles on Ebay and I was happy with all of them. Still have them as a matter of fact. The deal is, though, that I only buy bikes that are within easy driving distance so I can go to the seller and see before I lay out the cash. Three of these bikes were non runners, so I guess I was really taking a chance with those, but they all just needed the usual TLC to get them back on the road. New battery, new PAMCO ignition, new handle bars, new tires etc. One of them needed a new set of carbs which I was able to get on Ebay for a very reasonable price and they worked perfectly.

Could I have gotten burned? Absolutely. I did have a near bad experience selling a camera that went into resolution in my favor. I bought a camera that I had to send to Canon for refurbishing that had a defect that was only apparent when using its USB remote feature, so I think it's possible that the seller was unaware of the defect because not many people use the remote USB feature. Another camera I bought, also a Canon, would not work in the manual mode, worked perfectly in auto, so, again, I think that the seller was not aware of the problem. This camera worked just fine in the remote USB mode and that's all I needed.

I bought a stator for the CB450 that I bought on Ebay. The seller clearly stated "no returns", but when I found he had sent me the wrong part, he immediately offered to take it back and gave me a full refund, including the shipping costs. He was a 100% seller. In fact all of the sellers that I dealt with were 100% or near to 100%.

There was an issue with the CB450 that I bought on Ebay involving the title and I withdrew my offer, telling the seller that he had to resolve the title issue first. He agreed to accept my withdrawal with no conditions and fixed the title issue before I came back and completed the purchase.

So, Ebay is definitely Caveat emptor , but so is life in general, but I have no plans to leave any time soon!

Ride. Enjoy. Life is simple.

 

[littlebill31]

As a gun owner, I refuse to use Ebay or Paypal, the owner (same person) is a flaming anti-gunner.

Then I hope you don't have any dealings with any of these:
http://www.nraila.org/issues/factsheets/read.aspx?id=15
These are just anti gun. The anti-hunting supporters, like Eddie Bauer, LL Bean, Microsoft, McDonalds, Burt's Bees, are another story.
I'm a lifetime member of the NRA. Trying to boycott them is futile.

As for ebay, and all the other classified/auction resources, I think the old adage of "Buyer Beware" stands true for all of these. That alarm bell should go off everytime you buy something. I'm a firm believer in trust nothing you hear and only half of what you see. I have found great deals on ebay and Craigslist and have been burned on both.
These companies are not here to help you, at all. If they were, then they would have no fees and/or verify all transactions to protect both parties. We know that won't happen. It all boils down to the almighty dollar.

 

[weekendrider]

Ebay who needs to go to E-Bay to get burned.
I'm a little under $400 wasted on SHIT items sold by members of the forum in the classified.
Twice bit, but it will happen no more.