Ebay Seller Fraud Warning - "Props1029"

[Jsimon999]

Last night I saw an auction for a Star Trek "hand-built" 20" shuttlecraft. The pictures used were of my scratch-build from earlier this year. The seller "Props1029" located in Michigan listed it for $5,000. His description of the item was a mere sentence or two.

Since he does not have that specific item to sell (it was sold to someone in Rhode Island who still has it), the seller was engaging in fraud. I notified him I was aware he was using my pictures for his auction and reported the listing to Ebay who are investigating him. His feedback has a couple negatives already from people who complained they paid but never received their items.

The auction has since been taken down, however, I thought people here should be warned.

Jon

 

[vidman]

thank you for the heads up :cool

 

[Apollo]

Thanks!! :thumbsup

 

[CSMacLaren]

I wonder if there is a way to set up some kind of a database, as such would be very useful and a defective go to place to look up the track records of eBay sellers. Discussion forums are hard to parse through for this kind of information.

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[TOS]

I always wonder what sellers/fraudsters like that are thinking. I mean Paypal guarantees the transaction, so when the buyer gets his $5k shuttlecraft and it looks nothing like the pics, or receives nothing at all, they're obviously gonna dispute the auction and get their money back. Where is the profit in this for the seller?

 

[Jsimon999]

That had me wondering as well, TOS. I'd like to assume he had a shuttle of his own built but if so, why not just post his. If his wasn't good enough, surely someone who dished out $5K would notice it wasn't the item depicted.

So, seems to me, coupled with his previous fraud rating allegations, he was trying for a big score and had a plan to get away with it.

Jon

 

[TOS]

Well we can be pretty sure the if there actually was a shuttle for sale it looked bad, or else why use someone else's pics? And with Paypal involved it would be hard to get with anything. I've seen this type of thing with non prop items too, I can only assume the sellers/scammers think that once they get the payment they'll just disappear and start a new acct or something, then find out later it's not as easy as they thought..

 

[Dao2]

What they do is stall as much as possible for the 90 day period to go over, and it works likely as they continue to do it, if it didn't I'd imagine it would stop. I've had someone do that to me here :| Fake tracking numbers, constant delays, etc.

 

[Raiders March]

What they do is stall as much as possible for the 90 day period to go over, and it works likely as they continue to do it, if it didn't I'd imagine it would stop. I've had someone do that to me here :| Fake tracking numbers, constant delays, etc.

They can't make that work for them now that paypal has extended their claim time in the resolution centre. The 45 day limit would sometimes let through the above type of activity, but now you can dispute a transaction nearly six months after it had been made.

 

[Dao2]

It's a 6 months limit now? Wow nice

Also they may be taking money in installments, not sure if paypal changed their policy on that but they used to not refund those, they wanted single lump sum payments.