Comments on: EBay is Decadent and Depraved

By: Lee Carley

Lee Carley — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 05:27:57 +0000

Hey Fred,

I am hoping that this is the Fred Garver I used to know from the Beachcomber.
If it is Thank God, because I would feel a bit weird about saying hey…
Fred,
I need help.
I want to come in.
I’m a mess,
Lee

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CrunchGear » Blog Archive » EBay is Decadent and Depraved…

By: emma

emma — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 09:43:19 +0000

cool blog!

By: james davids

james davids — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 09:05:28 +0000

any one intrested should email me on jamesdavids_160@yahoo.com

By: james davids

james davids — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 09:04:00 +0000

hello sir/ma,
This is Mr James Davids from manchester united I base here In uk but I am a citizen of this country am from western africa(nigeria).my son have been woring me about the new playstation3 so I will like to know if you do have that right now and if you do I will like you to email me the price of the one that has a lagest memory in your store and I will like you to help e in processing this order cause I have to get it to nigeria before the ending of this month so I will like you to send the feedback as soon as you get this email and I will also like to know if you accept paypal or credit card for the terms of payment.

By: jonanne

jonanne — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:45:44 +0000

Sold a laptop on ebay, was bid up to 535 by someone in Nigeria with no feedback. I told him I only ship to US (like it said in the auction) he offeref addt’l $50 to ship to Nigeria. I told him no. Nevertheless, I got an email from “paypal” that I got a payment of 585. Of course, I didn’t follow the link, rather typed paypal manually, and the money was not there. Ebay refunded me the money after I chatted with them online.

By: Shaun McMahon

Shaun McMahon — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 01:21:34 +0000

Ebay may be going bad for people trying to sell stuff but it is an absolute Godsend for buying new electronics. I rarely go into a store to buy anything anymore as I always know I could get it for half the price on ebay. Also when it comes to electronics stores down here in Adelaide, Australia, its hard to actually find anything that can be called “new.”

By: Gadgetnfo » Has EBay Become a Scam Site For Electronics Sales?

Gadgetnfo » Has EBay Become a Scam Site For Electronics Sales? — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 21:47:30 +0000

[...] EBay is Decadent and Depraved [Crunchgear] [...]

By: HST

HST — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 05:08:57 +0000

In regards to the image accompanying the article. It is a drawing done by Ralph Steadman, the long time collaborator with Hunter S Thompson. Thompson once wrote an article titled “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.” So there you go.

By: mac's rule

mac's rule — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 18:44:19 +0000

You could just setup your preferences to block people in countries to which you do not ship…

By: Powerbook "Platinum"??

Powerbook "Platinum"?? — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 15:04:53 +0000

How did you get a bid? An obvious scam, there is no such animal. I might have gone for a Powerbook Latium. Now there was a machine…..

By: DJ

DJ — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 12:49:31 +0000

I had this happen to me 5 years ago with a Powerbook Platinum right I was selling.

Lousy scumbags (may they die of cancer, these human cockroach wastes of space) overbid on my auction… then they asked to pay by money order COD, and I agreed to it at the time… I shipped, and they tried to pass off a counterfeit money order at the UPS store.

UPS said they called the cops but the guys got away.

I got my laptop back and had to re-list it. By the time I got the laptop back from UPS, got time to do a relisting with paypal, etc. (I was extremely busy starting a business at the time), it was 2 weeks after the original listing.

I lost about $800 in value in those 2 weeks, because the Platinum was in serious shortages around the country in many areas when I first listed, and 2 weeks later, the thing was available everywhere.

I would gladly have GIVEN away that $2500 laptop if I could have seen those dirtbags caught, and in prison.

By: Tommy

Tommy — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 10:52:42 +0000

Nick:

That’s because PayPal doesn’t have a verification system for the whole world - yet. But there IS a way to ensure that your get your money from overseas PayPal users - just wait a few days until the “real” money is in your account, that’s what most sellers do to me (I always wondered why they waited excactly 2 days to send the goods…this goes for nearly EVERY experienced seller!) and I finally figured it out…it’s because of the “real” transfer from our visas to the actual PayPal account - it simply takes 2 days! After that it’s all good!

Birdseed:

I stand corrected, and you’re right - Australians are 100 % okay too, probably New Zealand too but I don’t have experience with these yet :)

By: You all are f$&*in idiots

You all are f$&*in idiots — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 07:14:47 +0000

They taught us in high school to do our homework. It’s obvious that none of you blokes remember this. If you want to sell/buy something in a public forum you have to take a proactive stance to insurance the integrity of the sale. eBay offers many options to prevent this type of circumstance. You can’t just throw something up there and expect a smooth transaction. So, don’t go complaining when it’s plainly your ignorance that is at the heart of the matter.

By: It's Nick

It's Nick — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 06:54:39 +0000

Good advice but I’d like to add that Ebay should have a mandatory “Scam avoidance” site that all users have to pass a test at the end to show they at least know the basics to protect themselves. Even at the least to be able to post an auction in a high risk category like computer chips or things like that would be great.
Also “Make my auctions visible only to countries I will ship to” would be a nice option to keep it down or at least make it harder for them (yes I know about proxies but it would make the scammers lives more complicated. It’s amazing that Ebay doesn’t put as much effort into curbing fraud as ISP’s spend on limiting Spam.
One other thing I did was setting the option in Paypal to not accept from outside the US, and only accept payments from verified accounts, and I only ship to the verified address. Otherwise they can send it Western Union or Moneygram and I’ll ship it anyplace if they pay the shipping and customs, and I’ve had a couple people who did when buying an online game account years ago.
I have nothing against selling to people in other countries (aside from the obvious high risk ones) but the real problem is the address verification system doesn’t work overseas and Paypal doesn’t offer seller protection on them either so if in doubt, tell them to ship outside the US (though I would take Canada or even Mexico as I never had a problem, same with some European countries like Germany or Sweden, etc) it must be prepaid with western union or moneygram, then you know the money is in the bank when you pick up the check at the counter.

By: birdseed

birdseed — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 05:09:51 +0000

Tommy, a couple of points. Africa is not a country, it is a continent. Nigeria is a country in Africa, England is a part of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands are not referred to as Holland in official terms.

I would also like to point out that Australia and New Zealand are reputable countries to deal with. I know that they are on the other side of the planet, but lets not forget them!

By: IniQUitY-

IniQUitY- — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 04:15:38 +0000

I ordered a Flash Drive online (4gb), I received a 256mb Drive that was Firmware flashed to show up as a 4GB drive, Any data copied to it would show up as Binary and was unusable.

Took me 3 months but I finally got my money back, and I no longer use Ebay, I would rather pay the extra couple dollars and get my products from a reputable company.

By: Trapper

Trapper — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 03:01:11 +0000

Dude get a clue…in the ebay seller prefs you can set where you are willing to ship and where you won’t ship…chillout before you get an lamer

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 02:19:09 +0000

I had this exact same problem.
Four times I tried to sell a HTC Windows mobile PDA that I could not get the hang of.
I listed it, BAM! It was bought via “Buy it Now” buy a scammer with ZERO feedback trying to scam me into sending the phone to his “son” in Nigeria going to college.
All three times this was tried.
They will send a spoof PayPal funds received email, trying to make you think you have been paid on the item, for the correct amount, but when you look at your PayPal transaction record in your PayPal account, “surprisingly” there is no money.
This happend four times in a row. Each time I sent eBay an email to their “trust and safety” department. eBay must be backed up with fraud, because what should have taken 24-48 hours according to the email that immediately bounced back to me from eBay, it took seven days for someone to get back to me. All I received back from eBay at that time was a form letter.. It was not until I replied to eBay again that a real human responded and credited me my listing fee back.
eBay has a huge problem with fraud!
HUGE!
They should have much better buyer and seller verification. Each time that the fraudulent buyer bought from me, when I got his address and phone, it was a non-working phone number and an address that did not exist. Can’t eBay do a little verification?
In addition, could they not let the seller block bidders with ZERO feedback?
At least allow this on larger ticket items.
eBay sure does charge a lot for the kind of fraud to go on.
They get you for listing the item, then they get a cut of the sale, then if you get paid with PayPal, they get a cut there too!
Wow, that is a lot of cash, I wish someone would come up with an alternative..
Let the scammers have eBay!

By: Tommy

Tommy — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 00:37:58 +0000

Safe countries to sell to:

Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Germany, England(UK), Canada, America, Japan, Holland(Netherland), Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Jordan.

Reason for placing these in the “safe category:
Well policed, good law-enforcement, stable political situation,
effective mail systems, good natured people (because of wealth)

Generally “unsafe” countries to sell privately to:

HongKong, Russia, China, Vietnam, Lithuania, Turkey, Nigeria, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Africa, Armenia, Lebanon, Liberia, Hungary, Bulgaria,
Albania, Bosnia.

Reason for placing these in the “unsafe” category:
Rogue law enforcement, mafia, poverty, politically-unstable,
war, unrest etc. These things doesn’t count for all these
countries - it’s just problems with various countries that makes
it difficult to get safe transactions trough. With poverty (Nigeria)
and Rogue law-enforcement - the criminal ratings go sky-high
and there’s high risk of disgruntled post-workers, thieves etc.
that have little or no moral (or can’t afford to have moral) etc.

If you guys think that I’m being “select, racist and biased”
you’d be totally wrong (look at the lists again) I’m only
talking about my experience with TV, Trades, Business and
people in general. This is not to say that any of the “unsafe”
countries are totally unsafe - not by any means. I believe
that most people are honest and safe no matter where
they come from - but some countries doesn’t do enough
to enforce the law and thus fall into the “unsafe” category
because the crime rate increases with the lack of employment,
law-enforcement etc. Anyone with just a “minimal” understanding
of the human mind will already know this and trade safely.

Blocking “all countries” is just plain stupid and will get you
bad deals because you COULD get more, but THINKING about
the world situation and UNDERSTANDING the different cultures
WILL pay off in the long run - so use your minds and exchange
experience rather than run off to hide ;)

I wish you all good luck and happy trading!