Someone is trying to sell Dynamik's bike on ebay!! SCAM

[bobalou]

Great.. it's now off eBay. This is one of the first I've seen that they removed so quickly.

[cyclemanpat]

good...it is off.............job well done guys!!!!!! Thanks for the help.

[Xterra Racer]

Good job.

There are lot's of e-bay scams out there....but there are also the real deal.

I bought my MTB (Trek STP 400) brand new in the box from a guy on e-bay. Paid $2000 instead of the retail price of $4500. The guy only had a few listings in his feedback, so I was really leary. I e-mailed him and had him take some additional pics so I knew it was real and then also got some of his info and had him checked out. Basically, I was able to get his name and find out where he aquired the bike and then checked with that shop to make sure it was all on the up and up.

If someone is going to sell a high dollar item on e-bay, they shouldn't mind giving you this kind of information. Just gotta do your homework and not get taken advantage of.

[Florian]

nice job pat. perhaps all of us who post pictures on here should put some kind of watermark in the photo. in hindsight, i wish i had've done that with my bike photos

Watermarking isn't the solution, unless you do a transparent marking all over the picture, which is annoying IMHO.
And a small stamp in the corner of a picture can easily be removed.

Two months ago I've integrated a protection, which prevents hotlinking images for eBay auctions, but there's no 100% safe solution against this type of fraud.

[cadence90]

I just received notice from eBay that this "auction" has been cancelled by them. That was very fast action by eBay. Thanks again Pat et al.

[bobalou]

I just received notice from eBay that this "auction" has been cancelled by them. That was very fast action by eBay. Thanks again Pat et al.

Cadence, which method did you use to report the item? Sometimes I wonder what gets the best response from them.

Just to let you know what I did, I selected "Help", then "Contact Us" under Help Topics (on the left of the page). They then give you a series of three drop-down (I'm guessing via javascript) topics to narrow the reason. Ultimately I reported it under "Report a listing you think is fraudulent (you didn't bid)".

What irked me is they ONLY allowed sending the item number, no explanation's were accepted. I haven't gotten a response from them like you did so I wonder if you used a different method. My email system is slow though so that could be why.

[cadence90]

I just received notice from eBay that this "auction" has been cancelled by them. That was very fast action by eBay. Thanks again Pat et al.

Cadence, which method did you use to report the item? Sometimes I wonder what gets the best response from them.

Just to let you know what I did, I selected "Help", then "Contact Us" under Help Topics (on the left of the page). They then give you a series of three drop-down (I'm guessing via javascript) topics to narrow the reason. Ultimately I reported it under "Report a listing you think is fraudulent (you didn't bid)".

What irked me is they ONLY allowed sending the item number, no explanation's were accepted. I haven't gotten a response from them like you did so I wonder if you used a different method. My email system is slow though so that could be why.

I went to "services"; "eBay security center"; "report a problem"; "report problems with eBay members"; "problems with sellers"; "the problem you have with your seller isn't listed"; "continue"; "email"; then I filled in the item number above, and in the text box said this was a fraudulent auction, and referred them to this thread.

I agree with you that it is a cumbersome process, and unless one picks the correct dropdown, it won't let you list the auction if it has not ended yet, which is weird. That's why you have to pick the "the problem you have with your seller isn't listed" dropdown. It took me some trial and error....

eBay acted extremely quickly, but you know that bike and others will probably show up again some time as scams. Think of it: the time we spend trying to help, learn, diffuse info, others are spending on scamming. Still, it's worth the effort of course. Glad it all worked out.

[bobalou]

then I filled in the item number above, and in the text box said this was a fraudulent auction, and referred them to this thread.

That's what I wanted to do -- refer them to this thread.. but the option I chose didn't allow an explanation! Anyway, I bet that's what did it too.

Thanks for the procedure, I'll probably use that next time if I have to.

[mises]

Just for clarification - COD only ensures that you receive something in a box - not necessarily the something you paid for. The scammer in this case could get a bike box and a gas pipe frame and ship it off COD quite easily and not hurt his margins much at all.

[cadence90]

Just for clarification - COD only ensures that you receive something in a box - not necessarily the something you paid for. The scammer in this case could get a bike box and a gas pipe frame and ship it off COD quite easily and not hurt his margins much at all.

I doubt these scammers are ever shipping anything at all. They are working off a computer, often not even their own. That is why it is extremely important not to open links on emails supposedly from eBay, PayPal, etc. and never have the same ID/password for online accounts.

Once, I "bought" $2,000.00 of telephone cards from "sellers" in West Virginia, Delaware and Oklahoma. In this case the actual sellers were legitimate and were selling phone cards for vending machines, I guess.

It turned out that someone, using a computer at the University of Tsiengtien, in China, got into those accounts, got into eBay customers' eBay/PayPal accounts (of course, I had never bid on a single phone card, let alone the hundreds I supposedly bought) and "paid" himself with these "sales".

Believe me, it was about 4 months of headaches, emails, affidavits, etc. Eventually, PayPal reimbursed me everything....so, a word to the wise....