Anyone with get scammed by Ebay book sellers?

"John Yamamoto-Wilson" wrote in
message ...

The fact that the seller cannot spell the title of the book he or
she is selling, or do the rudimentary amount of work needed to see whether
it might have some scarcity or collectible value is part of the attraction
of eBay.



Indeed. I picked up my copy of the late Francis Dvornik's *Early Christian
and Byzantine Political Philosophy* (Dumbarton Oaks, 1966), 2 vols. on eBay
a couple of years ago for about $10.

In this case, the seller made two errors:

(1) She listed the volumes separately about a month apart--thus to the
casual observer, she was, each time, selling half of a broken set. I had a
strong feeling the other half would turn up, so I bid the first time around
and was lucky enough to catch the second volume.

(2) She also misspelled Dvornik's name. Fortunately, other of my search
terms brought the book up and I recognized the misspelling immediately.


One can understand what a bargain this was, if one knows that Dvornik has
cult status among (Catholic) students of East-West relations. Consequently
his books are much sought after. *Early Christian and Byzantine Political
Philosophy* can easily go for $150. The two complete copies on ABE right
now are at $300 and $350:

http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/...cal+Philosophy



William M. Klimon
http://www.catholicbookcollector.com

But God
bless those sellers who don't know their colophons from their elbow!


And also God bless those sellers who put books on E-Bay that are obscure and of
little general interest, but are highly regarded by viola players and other
quasi-musicological types...I just nabbed (for a few bucks) a beautiful set of
"Essays in Musical Analysis" by the venerable Donald Francis Tovey on E-Bay.
(Sir Donald wasn't on E-Bay...his books were.)

If I had purchased these books in a London Shop, I would have paid lots more.


Plus I would have had to spend lots of money to get to London.

I like E-Bay.

Jonathan

wrote in message .. .
I am writing a magazine article regarding the increasing amount of
fraudulent booksellers on ebay. I would love to hear stories of anyone who
either has information or has themselves been scammed when trying to buy
books on ebay (or even if YOU were the scammer!). I've noticed a lot of
booksellers knowingly pass off Book Club Editions as first editions, as well
as people who list books as first editions when they are clearly marked as
later printings.

I've heard stories of people selling signed books that were signed by
imposters, and people who bid up their own auctions to drive the price up.

I'd love any stories you may have, as well as any info you may have on who
some of these sellers are. If you'd like to remain anonymous, please tell me
and I will absolutely respect that. You can either post a reply here or
email me directly at .

Thanks, and hopefully this article will draw enough attention to this issue
and have an impact, because this practice is completely out of hand!


I was interested in a book which was listed at an opening price of £4
with no reserve. As I really dislike leaving bids ahead of the auction
close, I contacted the seller to advise that I was going away over the
weekend so would he like to end the auction now, and I would happily
pay him £40? No one was twisting his arm, it was a fair and upfront
offer. Besides, if I hadn't left a bid, someone else might have bought
it for £4 and he would have lost £35. Now, I appreciate that this is
technically an Ebay rule infringement, but I understand that neither
Ebay nor Ebay sellers view it as a serious one. Ebay still get their
fee, and the seller gets a choice of what to do.

Imagine my surprise when a bid suddenly appeared for the book within
20 minutes of my email being sent. This, after the book had attracted
no interest in 4 days. So I did a quick bit of checking and discovered
that the bidder had frequently bought things from the seller, and vice
versa. In fact, a good 25-30% of their respective feedback was from
each other, and it was of a very weird nature e.g. overly
enthusiastic, almost making fun of the whole system.

I thought about the situation and decided to place a bid. Instantly I
was outbid. I placed bigger and bigger bids - and was amazed to see
the bids shooting up to £5,000 (five thousand) pounds. By this time I
knew that something really fishy was going on. Then the seller
suddenly ended the auction. I sent him an email saying that I would
report the whole matter to Ebay. He sent me an email asking me to call
him.

When I called him I could not believe my ears. He told me that
whenever anyone expressed an interest in one of his books - whether it
be a general enquiry like mine, or in placing a bid - that he would
ask his friend to shill the bids up to either a satisfactorily high
level, or else to chase all other bids off, just to find out what the
book might be worth. It meant that not only had he cheated several
people but that his feedback profile was false. And he told me he had
ended our auction because he was worried about Ebay spotting the high
level it had achieved.

I had heard that Ebay were notoriously lax about investigating such
issues, so when he offered to sell me the book for the £40 I had
originally offered - in exchange for my silence - I decided to accept.
I thought I would pick up the book at a fair price and just avoid him
like the plague in future. Why should I get embroiled in a policing
Ebay? But I should have guessed that anyone so shady as to rig
auctions and post fraud feedback would not honour their commitment: he
started stringing me along, suddenly terrified that the book might be
worth even one penny more than we had agreed. For a month he kept
saying that he couild not sell the book because his wife was reading
it; etcetera etcetera. Finally I had had enough, and told him to keep
his lousy book, and that I would report the matter to Ebay and walk
away. Whereupon he sent me a couple of very sinister emails, saying
that he had got a criminal record for violence, and that he knew where
I lived.

It came as no real surprise for me to learn that an Ebay seller with a
feedback profile of 1000+ was in actual fact a convicted criminal.
Anyway, I went ahead and reported the matter to Ebay; I also put in a
bid on one of his other auctions so that I could post a warning via
the feedback system to other buyers to the effect that this man was
shilling bids with his friend.

The result? Ebay let him off the hook. I forwarded them original
emails in which this man admitted shilling bids and in which he
admitted both to a criminal record and making physical threats. They
turned a blind eye to his antics because they were making money from
him. They also removed the warning feedback I had posted about him
saying that it had nothing to do with that actual purchase.

I am now EXTREMELY suspicious of ALL Ebay sellers and usually only bid
when I know the seller personally. Undoubtedly there are a great many
common crooks who are probably selling off stolen property, and they
manipulate the Ebay system in any way possible, knowing that Ebay
eagerly turn a blind eye.

As a bookseller of ten years standing, most of that via printed
catalogues or ABE, I know there are far more reliable and sensible
ways to buy or sell books than to risk dealing with rank amateurs and
criminal types. But I can see that the allure of a possible bargain is
a difficult one to pass up.

Good luck with the article. I hope my one convulted experience proves
of some assistance.

On 12 Apr 2004 09:56:51 -0700, (Haunted
River) wrote:

wrote in message .. .
I am writing a magazine article regarding the increasing amount of
fraudulent booksellers on ebay. I would love to hear stories of anyone who
either has information or has themselves been scammed when trying to buy
books on ebay (or even if YOU were the scammer!). I've noticed a lot of
booksellers knowingly pass off Book Club Editions as first editions, as well
as people who list books as first editions when they are clearly marked as
later printings.

I've heard stories of people selling signed books that were signed by
imposters, and people who bid up their own auctions to drive the price up.

I'd love any stories you may have, as well as any info you may have on who
some of these sellers are. If you'd like to remain anonymous, please tell me
and I will absolutely respect that. You can either post a reply here or
email me directly at .

Thanks, and hopefully this article will draw enough attention to this issue
and have an impact, because this practice is completely out of hand!


I was interested in a book which was listed at an opening price of £4
with no reserve. As I really dislike leaving bids ahead of the auction
close, I contacted the seller to advise that I was going away over the
weekend so would he like to end the auction now, and I would happily
pay him £40? No one was twisting his arm, it was a fair and upfront
offer. Besides, if I hadn't left a bid, someone else might have bought
it for £4 and he would have lost £35. Now, I appreciate that this is
technically an Ebay rule infringement, but I understand that neither
Ebay nor Ebay sellers view it as a serious one. Ebay still get their
fee, and the seller gets a choice of what to do.

Imagine my surprise when a bid suddenly appeared for the book within
20 minutes of my email being sent. This, after the book had attracted
no interest in 4 days. So I did a quick bit of checking and discovered
that the bidder had frequently bought things from the seller, and vice
versa. In fact, a good 25-30% of their respective feedback was from
each other, and it was of a very weird nature e.g. overly
enthusiastic, almost making fun of the whole system.

I thought about the situation and decided to place a bid. Instantly I
was outbid. I placed bigger and bigger bids - and was amazed to see
the bids shooting up to £5,000 (five thousand) pounds. By this time I
knew that something really fishy was going on. Then the seller
suddenly ended the auction. I sent him an email saying that I would
report the whole matter to Ebay. He sent me an email asking me to call
him.

When I called him I could not believe my ears. He told me that
whenever anyone expressed an interest in one of his books - whether it
be a general enquiry like mine, or in placing a bid - that he would
ask his friend to shill the bids up to either a satisfactorily high
level, or else to chase all other bids off, just to find out what the
book might be worth. It meant that not only had he cheated several
people but that his feedback profile was false. And he told me he had
ended our auction because he was worried about Ebay spotting the high
level it had achieved.

I had heard that Ebay were notoriously lax about investigating such
issues, so when he offered to sell me the book for the £40 I had
originally offered - in exchange for my silence - I decided to accept.
I thought I would pick up the book at a fair price and just avoid him
like the plague in future. Why should I get embroiled in a policing
Ebay? But I should have guessed that anyone so shady as to rig
auctions and post fraud feedback would not honour their commitment: he
started stringing me along, suddenly terrified that the book might be
worth even one penny more than we had agreed. For a month he kept
saying that he couild not sell the book because his wife was reading
it; etcetera etcetera. Finally I had had enough, and told him to keep
his lousy book, and that I would report the matter to Ebay and walk
away. Whereupon he sent me a couple of very sinister emails, saying
that he had got a criminal record for violence, and that he knew where
I lived.

It came as no real surprise for me to learn that an Ebay seller with a
feedback profile of 1000+ was in actual fact a convicted criminal.
Anyway, I went ahead and reported the matter to Ebay; I also put in a
bid on one of his other auctions so that I could post a warning via
the feedback system to other buyers to the effect that this man was
shilling bids with his friend.

The result? Ebay let him off the hook. I forwarded them original
emails in which this man admitted shilling bids and in which he
admitted both to a criminal record and making physical threats. They
turned a blind eye to his antics because they were making money from
him. They also removed the warning feedback I had posted about him
saying that it had nothing to do with that actual purchase.

I am now EXTREMELY suspicious of ALL Ebay sellers and usually only bid
when I know the seller personally. Undoubtedly there are a great many
common crooks who are probably selling off stolen property, and they
manipulate the Ebay system in any way possible, knowing that Ebay
eagerly turn a blind eye.

As a bookseller of ten years standing, most of that via printed
catalogues or ABE, I know there are far more reliable and sensible
ways to buy or sell books than to risk dealing with rank amateurs and
criminal types. But I can see that the allure of a possible bargain is
a difficult one to pass up.

Good luck with the article. I hope my one convulted experience proves
of some assistance.


Nothing funnier than seeing an admitted liar, cheat, and thief
complaining about someone else lathering him in his own slime.

The first sentence of your little rant is enough to get you
permanently NARUed from eBay.

Good day,


John Pelan

"John Pelan" wrote in message
...

Nothing funnier than seeing an admitted liar, cheat, and thief
complaining about someone else lathering him in his own slime.

The first sentence of your little rant is enough to get you
permanently NARUed from eBay.

Good day,


John Pelan


The whole thing sounded like performance art, didn't it?

Kris

John Pelan wrote:

The first sentence of your little rant is enough to get you
permanently NARUed from eBay.

The first sentence of Haunted River's posting was actually:

I was interested in a book which was listed at an opening price
of £4 with no reserve.

Looks pretty innocuous to me, John. Do tell us what sinister designs you
find lurking beneath its apparently innocent facade!

I guess you mean the second sentence:

As I really dislike leaving bids ahead of the auction close, I
contacted the seller to advise that I was going away over the
weekend so would he like to end the auction now, and I would
happily pay him £40?

That suggests HR hadn't actually placed a bid, in which case that would be
against eBay policy:

"eBay prohibits email offers to buy or sell listed items outside of the eBay
site"
(http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/...ebay-sale.html)

The correct approach would have been to bid the item up to £40 and then
contacted the seller asking him/her to end the auction early:

"It is acceptable for sellers to end a listing early in order to sell an
item at the current bid price to the high bidder. Bidders are permitted to
contact sellers with requests to end a listing early; however, sellers are
under no obligation to do so."
(ibid.)

However, I don't think one gets "permanently NARUed" for one infringement.
Certainly, I fought quite hard on one occasion to get eBay to NARU someone
whose behaviour was far worse than this. I gather it took three complaints
before they took any action at all, and a few weeks later the suspension was
listed and he was back (the same seller has, I believe, been NARUed again at
least once since then, but is still selling on eBay).

More disturbing is HR's claim that

Ebay let him off the hook. I forwarded them original emails
in which this man admitted shilling bids and in which he
admitted both to a criminal record and making physical
threats. They turned a blind eye to his antics because they
were making money from him.

I think this stems from the "three strikes and out" policy that they seem to
employ, so from the complainant's point of view it seems that nothing has
been done, when in fact eBay have notched up one complaint, but don't
actually do anything until more complaints come in. That doesn't seem a very
good way of dealing with things, though, because it doesn't take into
account the severity of the infraction. The case of a seller who admits
shill bidding and threatens violence is clearly more serious than that of
someone offering to buy something outside the eBay site but, from what I
understand, eBay deals with both in exactly the same way.

Nothing funnier than seeing an admitted liar, cheat, and thief
complaining about someone else lathering him in his own slime.

Sounds like one of those syllogisms about Cretans. I mean, suppose he was
lying when he admitted being a liar? Anyway, I do hope you're not going to
start wishing him "sausage" in prison and all those other things that so
poisoned the season's good cheer when you laid into him last Christmas...

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 09:20:21 +0900, "John Yamamoto-Wilson"
wrote:

John Pelan wrote:

The first sentence of your little rant is enough to get you
permanently NARUed from eBay.

The first sentence of Haunted River's posting was actually:

I was interested in a book which was listed at an opening price
of £4 with no reserve.

Looks pretty innocuous to me, John. Do tell us what sinister designs you
find lurking beneath its apparently innocent facade!

I guess you mean the second sentence:

As I really dislike leaving bids ahead of the auction close, I
contacted the seller to advise that I was going away over the
weekend so would he like to end the auction now, and I would
happily pay him £40?

That suggests HR hadn't actually placed a bid, in which case that would be
against eBay policy:

"eBay prohibits email offers to buy or sell listed items outside of the eBay
site"
(http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/...ebay-sale.html)

The correct approach would have been to bid the item up to £40 and then
contacted the seller asking him/her to end the auction early:

"It is acceptable for sellers to end a listing early in order to sell an
item at the current bid price to the high bidder. Bidders are permitted to
contact sellers with requests to end a listing early; however, sellers are
under no obligation to do so."
(ibid.)

However, I don't think one gets "permanently NARUed" for one infringement.
Certainly, I fought quite hard on one occasion to get eBay to NARU someone
whose behaviour was far worse than this. I gather it took three complaints
before they took any action at all, and a few weeks later the suspension was
listed and he was back (the same seller has, I believe, been NARUed again at
least once since then, but is still selling on eBay).

More disturbing is HR's claim that

Ebay let him off the hook. I forwarded them original emails
in which this man admitted shilling bids and in which he
admitted both to a criminal record and making physical
threats. They turned a blind eye to his antics because they
were making money from him.

I think this stems from the "three strikes and out" policy that they seem to
employ, so from the complainant's point of view it seems that nothing has
been done, when in fact eBay have notched up one complaint, but don't
actually do anything until more complaints come in. That doesn't seem a very
good way of dealing with things, though, because it doesn't take into
account the severity of the infraction. The case of a seller who admits
shill bidding and threatens violence is clearly more serious than that of
someone offering to buy something outside the eBay site but, from what I
understand, eBay deals with both in exactly the same way.

Nothing funnier than seeing an admitted liar, cheat, and thief
complaining about someone else lathering him in his own slime.

Sounds like one of those syllogisms about Cretans. I mean, suppose he was
lying when he admitted being a liar? Anyway, I do hope you're not going to
start wishing him "sausage" in prison and all those other things that so
poisoned the season's good cheer when you laid into him last Christmas...

Hello John:

Quite right, second sentence... It is disturbing that eBay allows for
a three strikes policy when some very serious infractions occur. Of
course they also allow idjits like Barker to ruin sellers feedback by
complaining when he couldn't figure out how to wind a clock...

I did pick up a rather rare volume a couple of years ago because
Barker so badgered the seller with demands that he end an auction
early that the seller withdrew everything from eBay. Some time later a
mutual acquaintence suggested that not only would I be far more
pleasant to deal with, I'd likely pay a better price. The book wound
up on my shelf, but the poor man is still soured on eBay from his
meeting with the Toad.

My only seasonal wishes for Mr. Barker were that he sit on an Easter
egg and hatch it, as I've always wanted to see a cockatrice...

Cheers,

John

I wrote:

The case of a seller who admits shill bidding and threatens
violence is clearly more serious than that of someone offering
to buy something outside the eBay site but, from what I
understand, eBay deals with both in exactly the same way.

Someone e-mailed me to point out I only know Haunted River's side of the
story, and of course that's true. So perhaps I should make it clear that the
above is a comment on what appears to be eBay's policy in general, rather
than on this particular incident. I'm very likely wrong - or partly wrong -
on both counts (i.e., both as regards this incident and as regards eBay's
policies in general), but I'm just calling it the way I see it.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com

"John Yamamoto-Wilson" wrote in message ...
John Pelan wrote:

The first sentence of your little rant is enough to get you
permanently NARUed from eBay.

The first sentence of Haunted River's posting was actually:

I was interested in a book which was listed at an opening price
of £4 with no reserve.

Looks pretty innocuous to me, John. Do tell us what sinister designs you
find lurking beneath its apparently innocent facade!


I think it was just two weeks that Pelan leapt in to accuse me of
selling fraudulently-acquired photocopies of rare dustwrappers,
overlooking the fact that this was the point I was actually trying to
make e.g. that I was myself cautious about sending people free scans
of rare things because I suspected they were up to no good.

That's what Pelan does in his haste to pursue his vendetta: he leaps
to false conclusions.

CB

"John Yamamoto-Wilson" wrote in message ...
I wrote:

The case of a seller who admits shill bidding and threatens
violence is clearly more serious than that of someone offering
to buy something outside the eBay site but, from what I
understand, eBay deals with both in exactly the same way.

Someone e-mailed me to point out I only know Haunted River's side of the
story, and of course that's true. So perhaps I should make it clear that the
above is a comment on what appears to be eBay's policy in general, rather
than on this particular incident. I'm very likely wrong - or partly wrong -
on both counts (i.e., both as regards this incident and as regards eBay's
policies in general), but I'm just calling it the way I see it.

Someone emailed you off list? Jesus, talk about a stalking campaign.
There are clearly a few empty-lived obsessives out there.

The seller DID make these threats. I forwarded the emails with
original headers to Ebay. They or the Police could have liased with
the sellers ISP to validate them, if Ebay had wanted to take any
action (which they didn't). Only those deranged few who have devoted
their lives to stalking me have an interest in arguing otherwise: and
why should I lie? No one was mentioned in my post.

If the cowardly stalker who emailed you off list would care to dispute
this I suggest that he or she does so publicly. (Though they were
probably emailing you under a sockpuppet id anyway.)

CB