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How to avoid getting cheated on eBay -- periodic post
What follows is a distillation of many people's opinions and
observations, including my own. Additions and corrections are welcomed. This document is copyrighted -- please don't republish elsewhere. HMTL version available he http://rg.ancients.info/guide. How to avoid getting cheated on eBay -- periodic post - - - IN A NUTSHELL: Fraud on eBay is common. Because eBay provides minimal protection against fraud, you're largely on your own. Avoid eBay auctions from sellers you don't know in which the seller keeps his own feedback private, in which he prevents you from contacting other bidders, or in which he has suddenly begun to sell expensive items when by looking at his feedback you see he has previously only bought items or sold inexpensive or unrelated items. - - - Online auctions can be a great way to buy coins. You can shop conveniently from your home or office any time day or night. There's a huge selection, and though the selection is skewed toward the bargain priced and aimed at bargain hunters, many big-ticket coins are auctioned as well. The big three online auction houses are eBay at http://www.ebay.com, Yahoo Auctions at http://auctions.yahoo.com, and Amazon.com Auctions at http://auctions.amazon.com. eBay is far larger than Yahoo Auctions and Amazon.com Auctions combined, with an estimated 85 percent of the market. Unlike most in-person auctions, online auctions typically stretch out over days and end at a specific time. The highest bidder when the clock strikes, wins. There are tricks to placing winning bids, and other tricks in maximizing the bids placed on items you're selling. The strategizing, ticking clock, and winning and losing impart a game quality to online auctions. Online auctions, in short, are fun. Fraud Online auctions can also be risky. Fraud is common. eBay contends that the rate of auction fraud on its service is very low. It says that only one "confirmed" fraud occurs per 40,000 eBay listings. That is indeed a low rate -- 0.0025 percent. The FBI, on the other hand, contends that the figure is much higher. As a part of its "Operation Cyber Loss" project, it determined that the rate of online auction fraud is about one in a hundred, or 1 percent. This is a very high rate of fraud, a whopping 400 times higher than what eBay contends. The FBI's figure is the one to believe. eBay, whose earnings continue to soar, is very reluctant to intervene in individual auctions, describing its service as merely a venue that brings buyers and sellers together. Its policy is that it won't interfere, for instance, with the auction of a blatantly counterfeit coin that's auctioned as an authentic coin unless it's contacted first by law enforcement authorities. eBay is very much skewed toward promoting the interests of sellers -- they're the ones who pay fees and earn eBay its profits. Though the vast majority of coin dealers are and have always been honest and reputable, questionable business practices and outright fraud have long been a part of numismatics, among mail-order dealers and flea-market sellers as well as dealers who sell on bourse floors, in-person auctions, and coin stores. The continued popularization of the Internet is just exposing more people to fraud. Common problems with online coin auctions include overgrading (sometimes with the help of fringe grading services), inaccurate or misleading descriptions, deceptive photography, counterfeits being sold as authentic coins (with or without the seller's knowledge), and outright nondelivery of coins purchased. All the online auction services provide buyers and sellers with some protection against fraud. eBay provides fraud insurance, but it's limited. It offers only up to $200 of insurance per item, with a $25 deductible. If you buy from a seller on eBay who is a SquareTrade participant (the SquareTrade seal appears in their auction listing), you're eligible for slightly more protection, typically $250, though this can range up to $1,000, also with a $25 deductible. Very few sellers, however, participate in eBay's SquareTrade program. Feedback One important protection against fraud is "feedback" -- a way for participants in a transaction to rate one another and for others to see those ratings. A large percentage of negative feedbacks is a clear signal to stay away from a particular seller. But feedback is far from foolproof. The ratings are always skewed positively, since leaving someone with negative feedback opens you up to receiving retaliatory negative feedback in return, and many people are reluctant to risk tarnishing their feedback record this way. One trick to avoid getting retaliatory feedback is to wait to leave feedback until the seller has done so first. Some sellers, however, don't give buyers feedback until they receive it first. At the latest, sellers should give feedback when the buyer receives the coin and indicates he's satisfied with it. For sellers, doing this is actually good protection, helping to prevent angry buyers from leaving negative feedback without first trying to work out a problem that may not be the seller's fault. What's more, a high number of feedbacks (PowerSeller status, for example) in itself doesn't always indicate that the seller doesn't sometimes engage in questionable business tactics. An eBay PowerSeller can have up to 2 percent negative feedbacks, which is a high percentage of deals gone bad to such an extent that negative feedback was given. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence that eBay is particularly lenient about responding to fraud perpetuated by PowerSellers, who through their heavy selling pay more in fees to eBay than other sellers. Still, feedback can be of some help. Read both positive and negative feedbacks. You can discount negatives when they appear to be retaliatory -- left in exchange for a negative feedback given to them -- or when the feedback is negative yet the comment is positive -- this indicates the person probably clicked the negative box when he meant to check the positive box. You can glean useful information from positives when the information in them is negative. The person in this case is sending a message that he was dissatisfied with the transaction but doesn't want to get set up for a retaliatory neg. Another good feedback technique is reading the feedback of those bidding on a coin. If they have a lot of feedbacks, and if the feedbacks are for buying similar coins, this can indicate they're knowledgeable about the coin or the dealer, which is reassuring. But you need to be careful about "shill" bidders, typically friends or business partners of the seller who bid on an auction to artificially drive up its price. Shill bidders often have a low number of feedbacks and a high percentage of feedbacks for buying from one or two sellers. Click on Search, then By Bidder, choose Yes for "Include completed items" and "Even if not high bidder?", and type in the bidder's ID. This won't be conclusive, however. Newcomers to eBay may feel more comfortable sticking with one seller. But be careful not to get carried away and bid more than you intended in an auction in which a bidder is involved who had bid primarily on prior auctions of the seller. Another red flag is a seller making his feedback private. Though eBay suggests that sellers do this if eBay is investigating unwarranted feedback (obscene, disclosures of identity or private information, etc.), a seller who makes his feedback private may be trying to hide something. It's also usually good policy to refuse to participate in private auctions, where the seller keeps the bidders' IDs private, unless you know the seller. Being contacted by other eBay users is one way to avoid getting cheated, even though eBay discourages this by referring to it as "auction interference" and Yahoo Auctions makes it impossible for people to do this. Still, people do contact bidders on eBay, and it's often the only way that bidders are protected against cheats. Cheaters, knowing that some people will try to contact bidders this way, set up a private auction to prevent this. On the other hand, not all private auctions are scams. Some legitimate sellers keep bidders' IDs private to avoid losing them as customers to lower-priced sellers or because they feel that their customers want their privacy protected. Unless you know the seller or know he's legitimate, however, you're on safer ground assuming that a private auction is a scam auction. You should think carefully about buying a big-ticket item from a seller with few feedbacks. It's too easy for a scammer to create new eBay IDs. But buying a more expensive item from a seller with many feedbacks can also be risky, depending. One trick that scammers use is to sell a number of low-cost coins or other items to build up positive feedback, then auction off a big-ticket coin and skip town, virtually or otherwise, without sending it. It's always best when buying an expensive coin to make sure that the seller has sold similarly priced coins in the past by clicking on past auctions through the seller's feedback. Unfortunately, eBay saves auction pages only for a limited time, about three months. If a seller sells items only infrequently, eBay provides no way for you to see what those items are. (eBay's search feature is even more limited. It only permits you to search for past auctions that ended within the previous two weeks.) Hijacked Accounts One eBay scam involves a bad guy hijacking the eBay account of a seller with a good feedback record by deceitfully obtaining his password. One possible tip-off during the auction is that the seller is auctioning a pricey item or items completely unlike those he's auctioned before. Another is that the seller previously only bought on eBay, never sold. A possible tip-off upon completion of the auction is that you're asked to send payment to a location completely different from the location listed in the auction. If you have questions about the auction, send a message to the seller through eBay. If his answer continues to arouse suspicion, don't send your money. eBay has recently tightened up its security features to try to prevent this type of fraud. Now, if an automated password-cracking program fails to guess a password on the twentieth try, eBay flashes a code on screen that you have to type in manually. Despite this safety feature, it's still best to use a password that's difficult to crack -- a combination of letters and numbers and one that's not the same password you use elsewhere. Sellers can still be tricked into revealing their passwords to scammers by clicking on a link in an official looking e-mail message that appears to come from eBay, a practice known as "phishing." They're directed to a "spoof" site that looks just like eBay but is solely designed to obtain people's passwords. To prevent yourself from falling victim like this and ruining your good feedback, always go to eBay and related sites such as PayPal through your own bookmark or favorite or by manually typing in the site's address. If you have any suspicions for any reason about a coin being auctioned during the course of the auction, send a message to the seller asking for clarification. If the seller doesn't respond or if you have doubts after getting a response, refuse to bid. If you've bid on an item in an on-going auction or if you've won an auction just completed, eBay lets you request the seller's phone and address. With more expensive items, it can sometimes make sense to initiate telephone contact before the auction's completion. When you request a seller's contact information, eBay informs the seller of this and automatically sends the seller your contact information. You can also ask in one of the online discussion groups if anyone has had dealings with a particular seller or sees anything suspicious about a particular auction. There are many such discussion groups on the Internet. The most popular group about coins in general is the Usenet group rec.collecting.coins. You can access it through a newsreader such as Forte Agent, e-mail program with newsreading capabilities such as Microsoft Outlook Express, or the Web through Google Groups at http://groups.google.com. The most popular online discussion group about ancient coins is the Moneta-L e-mail group, available through Yahoo Groups. You can subscribe, for free, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Moneta-L. New online discussion groups are popping up all the time. One interesting new one about coins is Coin Talk at http://cointalk.org. Photos With lower-priced items, one question to ask the seller is if the coin pictured in the auction is the coin you would receive, if it's not already indicated. Some sellers put up a generic picture of the coin type, which isn't necessarily deceptive, but this should be disclosed. Some scammers deliberately send a lower-quality coin of the same type and year from the one pictured, sometimes stealing photos from other eBay sellers. You should save the online image of any coin you buy. Sellers frequently delete these images after the sale to free up disk space wherever they're storing these images, and there's nothing wrong with this, but having the picture later can be beneficial if there's a problem. It can also be a good idea to save the auction description as well as the auction terms, whether or not those terms are included in the auction description or provided through e-mail. Photography can be used to illustrate what a coin looks like or to deceive. Online images of coins that are too dark or too small or too fuzzy may indicate the seller lacks imaging skills or is deliberately trying to hide something. Sharp, bright photos of coins in which the fields seem overly smooth may have been manipulated in an image editing program. One way you can sometimes spot this is by saving the image to your hard disk, loading it into an image editing program, and looking at individual pixels to see if they've been blurred together. But don't confuse blurring with JPEG artifacting, which is a result of image compression. With the latter, you see squares and rectangles (artifacts) of different sizes when you zoom in. Some sellers punch up the color of their coins by using software to boost contrast and saturation. Some of the major auction houses, in fact, have been sharply criticized for this. Even good coin images, created without manipulation, are no match for seeing a coin in person. A photo or scan of a coin can sometimes make a coin look nicer than it is, sometimes less nice. It can hide scratches, flatness, and wear. It can impart artificial color, luster, and relief. On the other hand, it can accentuate scratches and minor defects if they catch the light at a certain angle, making them look major. For all these reasons, it's best not to buy a coin, even one illustrated with a picture, if the seller doesn't offer return privileges. Guarantees It's usually good policy to refuse to buy any higher end coins through online auctions in which the seller doesn't offer the option of returning it if you're not happy with it. If the seller doesn't specify a return policy, email him and ask. Sellers who claim they're liquidating estates and that therefore all sales are final may be hiding something unpleasant behind their no-returns policy. With ancient coins, it's best to buy from a seller who offers a lifetime guarantee of authenticity, particularly with pricier specimens. There are many fakes of ancient coins out there, and even experts occasionally get fooled. If you buy an ancient coin, and it's later condemned by an authentication service or by several dealers you show it to informally, you should be able to return it and get your money back. One protection with more expensive coins is to ask, before the auction closes, if the seller will agree to use an escrow service, such as Escrow.com at http://www.escrow.com. The way it works is that upon the completion of the auction, the buyer sends payment to the escrow service. When this payment clears, the escrow service notifies the seller to ship the coin. When the buyer receives the coin and notifies the escrow service that it is as it was described, the escrow service forwards the buyer's payment to the seller. Typically, the buyer pays the escrow service to use it. At Escrow.com, the amount of payment depends on the price of the item and whether a credit card or other payment method is used, with a minimum fee of $15. Very few coin auctions involve escrow, however, and because a seller doesn't agree to use it doesn't necessarily mean that the deal is a bad one. If you do use an escrow service, you need to be careful about scams involving fake escrow sites, such as Golden-Escrow.com (meant to be confused with the legitimate escrow service GoldenEscrow.com) and Escrow-is.com. You think you're sending your money to an independent third party, but you're actually sending it right to the crook. The above two sites have been shut down, though new fake escrow sites open up. For a list of fake escrow sites and other auction fraud information, check out SOS for Auctions at http://sos4auctions.com. If you do use an escrow site, as a buyer, it's best to suggest the escrow service yourself and to make sure it's a legitimate one. Counterfeits Still another common tactic among scammers is selling a counterfeit, altered, or doctored coin, indicating that they inherited it from their grandfather or other relative, contending that they know nothing about coins, and saying that what you see is what you get. Sometimes, though, people not knowledgeable about coins do inherit authentic coins and try to sell them on eBay. eBay recently began prohibiting the sale of coins and other items when the seller disclaims knowledge of or responsibility for their authenticity. But eBay's rules are enforced only when people complain about their being broken, and even here only sporadically. An auction with unusually low bidding for an authentic or undamaged coin of its type, date, mint mark, and grade may indicate that bidders are staying away from it for good reason. The old saw, "If it's too good to be true, it probably is," very much applies to online auctions. Deals can be had, but you need to be careful. eBay is fertile ground for counterfeit operations because of its hands-off policies. Currently, two large counterfeit operations involving ancient coins are running on eBay, one out of Toronto, one out of Lebanon. Scams involving the fraudulent sale of counterfeit U.S. coins as authentic coins are frequent as well. When in doubt, ask around. Shipping Scams Be careful about sending payment to sellers from abroad, particularly sellers who ask you to wire money through Western Union. One common scam, popular among scammers in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia, is for the seller to tell a skeptical buyer to make out the funds in the name of the buyer's wife or sister, a name not known to the seller. The seller says that this way he'll be able to check with Western Union to find out that the funds were sent to him, so he'll ship the coin, but he won't be able to collect the funds without Western Union getting an OK from the buyer after he receives the coin. A related scam is for the seller to ask the buyer to email him when he has sent the funds through Western Union but without revealing Western Union's money transfer control number until he receives the coin. What happens in the above cases is the scammer claims the funds but doesn't ship. Western Union doesn't require any information for a recipient to claim funds except the amount of money expected and the origination city, state, and country. Another scam involving shipping is the creation of fake shipping sites, such as KLM Express and Prompt Express. Scammers have used these sites to "prove" that they sent the item and that you can send them payment for it. After they receive your payment, the sites disappear along with your money. Miscellaneous Another trick sometimes used with lower-priced items is for the seller to charge artificially high shipping and handling fees. Be sure you know what the charges will be before bidding -- if the charges aren't specified, ask. Sellers aren't allowed to change the terms of the transaction after the auction closes. If they ask for more money for shipping or otherwise makes changes, email them and politely indicate that this is a violation of eBay policy. Sellers in the U.S. cannot charge you extra for using a credit card, alone or through an online payment service such as PayPal. This is a violation of Ebay's, Paypal's and the credit card companies' rules. If a seller tries this, email him and politely point out that he can lose his accounts with these services for such actions. Another common tactic among cheaters is running three-day auctions, long enough to snag someone but, in the minds of sellers, not too long so as to attract undue attention. In Conclusion The above are all possible warning signs. But not all private-feedback or private or low-feedback or bad-photo or no-returns or no-escrow or inherited-coin or low-bid or transatlantic or three-day auctions are scams. Try to keep things in perspective. Thousands of coins are bought and sold every day on eBay without a problem. Some people overreact in fear and refuse to participate at all in online auctions, depriving themselves of an enjoyable way to build their collections. Ultimately, with online auctions, knowledge is power. Arm yourself with information like this, and you'll greatly lessen your chances of getting duped. You can find more at the following Web sites: SOS for Auctions http://sos4auctions.com Auction Watch's Tips and Tactics http://www.auctionwatch.com/awdaily/...cs/index2.html Internet Fraud Complaint Center's Fraud Tips http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/strategy/fraudtips.asp The Federal Trade Commission's "Internet Auctions: A Guide for Buyers and Sellers." http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menu-internet.htm -- Email: (delete "remove this") Coin Collecting: Consumer Protection Guide: http://rg.ancients.info/guide Glomming: Coin Connoisseurship: http://rg.ancients.info/glom Bogos: Counterfeit Coins: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos |
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Reid Goldsborough wrote:
What follows is a distillation of many people's opinions and observations, including my own. Additions and corrections are welcomed. A different version of this document has previously been published in a coin magazine, and posting this here, now and in the future, is an attempt to provide useful information to collectors to help them avoid becoming victim of online auction fraud. This document is copyrighted -- please don't republish elsewhere. HMTL version available he http://rg.ancients.info/guide. How to avoid getting cheated on eBay -- periodic post - - - IN A NUTSHELL: Fraud on eBay is common. Because eBay provides minimal protection against fraud, you're largely on your own. Avoid eBay auctions from sellers you don't know in which the seller keeps his own feedback private, in which he prevents you from contacting other bidders, or in which he has suddenly begun to sell expensive items when by looking at his feedback you see he has previously only bought items or sold inexpensive or unrelated items. - - - Online auctions can be a great way to buy coins. You can shop conveniently from your home or office any time day or night. There's a huge selection, and though the selection is skewed toward the bargain priced and aimed at bargain hunters, many big-ticket coins are auctioned as well. The big three online auction houses are eBay at http://www.ebay.com, Yahoo Auctions at http://auctions.yahoo.com, and Amazon.com Auctions at http://auctions.amazon.com. eBay is far larger than Yahoo Auctions and Amazon.com Auctions combined, with an estimated 85 percent of the market. Unlike most in-person auctions, online auctions typically stretch out over days and end at a specific time. The highest bidder when the clock strikes, wins. There are tricks to placing winning bids, and other tricks in maximizing the bids placed on items you're selling. The strategizing, ticking clock, and winning and losing impart a game quality to online auctions. Online auctions, in short, are fun. Fraud Online auctions can also be risky. Fraud is common. eBay contends that the rate of auction fraud on its service is very low. It says that only one "confirmed" fraud occurs per 40,000 eBay listings. That is indeed a low rate -- 0.0025 percent. The FBI, on the other hand, contends that the figure is much higher. As a part of its "Operation Cyber Loss" project, it determined that the rate of online auction fraud is about one in a hundred, or 1 percent. This is a very high rate of fraud, a whopping 400 times higher than what eBay contends. The FBI's figure is the one to believe. eBay, whose earnings continue to soar, is very reluctant to intervene in individual auctions, describing its service as merely a venue that brings buyers and sellers together. Its policy is that it won't interfere, for instance, with the auction of a blatantly counterfeit coin that's auctioned as an authentic coin unless it's contacted first by law enforcement authorities. eBay is very much skewed toward promoting the interests of sellers -- they're the ones who pay fees and earn eBay its profits. Though the vast majority of coin dealers are and have always been honest and reputable, questionable business practices and outright fraud have long been a part of numismatics, among mail-order dealers and flea-market sellers as well as dealers who sell on bourse floors, in-person auctions, and coin stores. The continued popularization of the Internet is just exposing more people to fraud. Common problems with online coin auctions include overgrading, inaccurate or misleading descriptions, deceptive photography, counterfeits being sold as authentic coins (with or without the seller's knowledge), and outright nondelivery of coins purchased. All the online auction services provide buyers and sellers with some protection against fraud. eBay provides fraud insurance, but it's limited. It offers only up to $200 of insurance per item, with a $25 deductible. If you buy from a seller on eBay who is a SquareTrade participant (the SquareTrade seal appears in their auction listing), you're eligible for slightly more protection, typically $250, though this can range up to $1,000, also with a $25 deductible. Very few sellers, however, participate in eBay's SquareTrade program. Feedback One important protection against fraud is "feedback" -- a way for participants in a transaction to rate one another and for others to see those ratings. A large percentage of negative feedbacks is a clear signal to stay away from a particular seller. But feedback is far from foolproof. The ratings are always skewed positively, since leaving someone with negative feedback opens you up to receiving retaliatory negative feedback in return, and many people are reluctant to risk tarnishing their feedback record this way. One trick to avoid getting retaliatory feedback is to wait to leave feedback until the seller has done so first. Some sellers, however, don't give buyers feedback until they receive it first. At the latest, sellers should give feedback when the buyer receives the coin and indicates he's satisfied with it. For sellers, doing this is actually good protection, helping to prevent angry buyers from leaving negative feedback without first trying to work out a problem that may not be the seller's fault. What's more, a high number of feedbacks (PowerSeller status, for example) in itself doesn't always indicate that the seller doesn't sometimes engage in questionable business tactics. An eBay PowerSeller can have up to 2 percent negative feedbacks, which is a high percentage of deals gone bad to such an extent that negative feedback was given. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence that eBay is particularly lenient about responding to fraud perpetuated by PowerSellers, who through their heavy selling pay more in fees to eBay than other sellers. Still, feedback can be of some help. Read both positive and negative feedbacks. You can discount negatives when they appear to be retaliatory -- left in exchange for a negative feedback given to them -- or when the feedback is negative yet the comment is positive -- this indicates the person probably clicked the negative box when he meant to check the positive box. You can glean useful information from positives when the information in them is negative. The person in this case is sending a message that he was dissatisfied with the transaction but doesn't want to get set up for a retaliatory neg. Another good feedback technique is reading the feedback of those bidding on a coin. If they have a lot of feedbacks, and if the feedbacks are for buying similar coins, this can indicate they're knowledgeable about the coin or the dealer, which is reassuring. But you need to be careful about "shill" bidders, typically friends or business partners of the seller who bid on an auction to artificially drive up its price. Shill bidders often have a low number of feedbacks and a high percentage of feedbacks for buying from one or two sellers. Click on Search, then By Bidder, choose Yes for "Include completed items" and "Even if not high bidder?", and type in the bidder's ID. This won't be conclusive, however. Newcomers to eBay may feel more comfortable sticking with one seller. But be careful not to get carried away and bid more than you intended in an auction in which a bidder is involved who had bid primarily on prior auctions of the seller. Another red flag is a seller making his feedback private. Though eBay suggests that sellers do this if eBay is investigating unwarranted feedback (obscene, disclosures of identity or private information, etc.), a seller who makes his feedback private may be trying to hide something. It's also usually good policy to refuse to participate in private auctions, where the seller keeps the bidders' IDs private, unless you know the seller. Being contacted by other eBay users is one way to avoid getting cheated, even though eBay discourages this by referring to it as "auction interference" and Yahoo Auctions makes it impossible for people to do this. Still, people do contact bidders on eBay, and it's often the only way that bidders are protected against cheats. Cheaters, knowing that some people will try to contact bidders this way, set up a private auction to prevent this. On the other hand, not all private auctions are scams. Some legitimate sellers keep bidders' IDs private to avoid losing them as customers to lower-priced sellers or because they feel that their customers want their privacy protected. Unless you know the seller or know he's legitimate, however, you're on safer ground assuming that a private auction is a scam auction. You should think carefully about buying a big-ticket item from a seller with few feedbacks. It's too easy for a scammer to create new eBay IDs. But buying a more expensive item from a seller with many feedbacks can also be risky, depending. One trick that scammers use is to sell a number of low-cost coins or other items to build up positive feedback, then auction off a big-ticket coin and skip town, virtually or otherwise, without sending it. It's always best when buying an expensive coin to make sure that the seller has sold similarly priced coins in the past by clicking on past auctions through the seller's feedback. Unfortunately, eBay saves auction pages only for a limited time, about three months. If a seller sells items only infrequently, eBay provides no way for you to see what those items are. (eBay's search feature is even more limited. It only permits you to search for past auctions that ended within the previous two weeks.) Hijacked Accounts One eBay scam involves a bad guy hijacking the eBay account of a seller with a good feedback record by deceitfully obtaining his password. One possible tip-off during the auction is that the seller is auctioning a pricey item or items completely unlike those he's auctioned before. Another is that the seller previously only bought on eBay, never sold. A possible tip-off upon completion of the auction is that you're asked to send payment to a location completely different from the location listed in the auction. If you have questions about the auction, send a message to the seller through eBay. If his answer continues to arouse suspicion, don't send your money. eBay has recently tightened up its security features to try to prevent this type of fraud. Now, if an automated password-cracking program fails to guess a password on the twentieth try, eBay flashes a code on screen that you have to type in manually. Despite this safety feature, it's still best to use a password that's difficult to crack -- a combination of letters and numbers and one that's not the same password you use elsewhere. Sellers can still be tricked into revealing their passwords to scammers by clicking on a link in an official looking e-mail message that appears to come from eBay, a practice known as "phishing." They're directed to a "spoof" site that looks just like eBay but is solely designed to obtain people's passwords. To prevent yourself from falling victim like this and ruining your good feedback, always go to eBay and related sites such as PayPal through your own bookmark or favorite or by manually typing in the site's address. If you have any suspicions for any reason about a coin being auctioned during the course of the auction, send a message to the seller asking for clarification. If the seller doesn't respond or if you have doubts after getting a response, refuse to bid. If you've bid on an item in an on-going auction or if you've won an auction just completed, eBay lets you request the seller's phone and address. With more expensive items, it can sometimes make sense to initiate telephone contact before the auction's completion. When you request a seller's contact information, eBay informs the seller of this and automatically sends the seller your contact information. You can also ask in one of the online discussion groups if anyone has had dealings with a particular seller or sees anything suspicious about a particular auction. There are many such discussion groups on the Internet. The most popular group about coins in general is the Usenet group rec.collecting.coins. You can access it through a newsreader such as Forte Agent, e-mail program with newsreading capabilities such as Microsoft Outlook Express, or the Web through Google Groups at http://groups.google.com. The most popular online discussion group about ancient coins is the Moneta-L e-mail group, available through Yahoo Groups. You can subscribe, for free, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Moneta-L. New online discussion groups are popping up all the time. One interesting new one about coins is Coin Talk at http://cointalk.org. Photos With lower-priced items, one question to ask the seller is if the coin pictured in the auction is the coin you would receive, if it's not already indicated. Some sellers put up a generic picture of the coin type, which isn't necessarily deceptive, but this should be disclosed. Some scammers deliberately send a lower-quality coin of the same type and year from the one pictured, sometimes stealing photos from other eBay sellers. You should save the online image of any coin you buy. Sellers frequently delete these images after the sale to free up disk space wherever they're storing these images, and there's nothing wrong with this, but having the picture later can be beneficial if there's a problem. It can also be a good idea to save the auction description as well as the auction terms, whether or not those terms are included in the auction description or provided through e-mail. Photography can be used to illustrate what a coin looks like or to deceive. Online images of coins that are too dark or too small or too fuzzy may indicate the seller lacks imaging skills or is deliberately trying to hide something. Sharp, bright photos of coins in which the fields seem overly smooth may have been manipulated in an image editing program. One way you can sometimes spot this is by saving the image to your hard disk, loading it into an image editing program, and looking at individual pixels to see if they've been blurred together. But don't confuse blurring with JPEG artifacting, which is a result of image compression. With the latter, you see squares and rectangles (artifacts) of different sizes when you zoom in. Some sellers punch up the color of their coins by using software to boost contrast and saturation. Some of the major auction houses, in fact, have been sharply criticized for this. Even good coin images, created without manipulation, are no match for seeing a coin in person. A photo or scan of a coin can sometimes make a coin look nicer than it is, sometimes less nice. It can hide scratches, flatness, and wear. It can impart artificial color, luster, and relief. On the other hand, it can accentuate scratches and minor defects if they catch the light at a certain angle, making them look major. For all these reasons, it's best not to buy a coin, even one illustrated with a picture, if the seller doesn't offer return privileges. Guarantees It's usually good policy to refuse to buy any higher end coins through online auctions in which the seller doesn't offer the option of returning it if you're not happy with it. If the seller doesn't specify a return policy, email him and ask. Sellers who claim they're liquidating estates and that therefore all sales are final may be hiding something unpleasant behind their no-returns policy. With ancient coins, it's best to buy from a seller who offers a lifetime guarantee of authenticity, particularly with pricier specimens. There are many fakes of ancient coins out there, and even experts occasionally get fooled. If you buy an ancient coin, and it's later condemned by an authentication service or by several dealers you show it to informally, you should be able to return it and get your money back. One protection with more expensive coins is to ask, before the auction closes, if the seller will agree to use an escrow service, such as Escrow.com at http://www.escrow.com. The way it works is that upon the completion of the auction, the buyer sends payment to the escrow service. When this payment clears, the escrow service notifies the seller to ship the coin. When the buyer receives the coin and notifies the escrow service that it is as it was described, the escrow service forwards the buyer's payment to the seller. Typically, the buyer pays the escrow service to use it. At Escrow.com, the amount of payment depends on the price of the item and whether a credit card or other payment method is used, with a minimum fee of $15. Very few coin auctions involve escrow, however, and because a seller doesn't agree to use it doesn't necessarily mean that the deal is a bad one. If you do use an escrow service, you need to be careful about scams involving fake escrow sites, such as Golden-Escrow.com (meant to be confused with the legitimate escrow service GoldenEscrow.com) and Escrow-is.com. You think you're sending your money to an independent third party, but you're actually sending it right to the crook. The above two sites have been shut down, though new fake escrow sites open up. For a list of fake escrow sites and other auction fraud information, check out SOS for Auctions at http://sos4auctions.com. If you do use an escrow site, as a buyer, it's best to suggest the escrow service yourself and to make sure it's a legitimate one. Counterfeits Still another common tactic among scammers is selling a counterfeit, altered, or doctored coin, indicating that they inherited it from their grandfather or other relative, contending that they know nothing about coins, and saying that what you see is what you get. Sometimes, though, people not knowledgeable about coins do inherit authentic coins and try to sell them on eBay. eBay recently began prohibiting the sale of coins and other items when the seller disclaims knowledge of or responsibility for their authenticity. But eBay's rules are enforced only when people complain about their being broken, and even here only sporadically. An auction with unusually low bidding for an authentic or undamaged coin of its type, date, mint mark, and grade may indicate that bidders are staying away from it for good reason. The old saw, "If it's too good to be true, it probably is," very much applies to online auctions. Deals can be had, but you need to be careful. eBay is fertile ground for counterfeit operations because of its hands-off policies. Currently, two large counterfeit operations involving ancient coins are running on eBay, one out of Toronto, one out of Lebanon. Scams involving the fraudulent sale of counterfeit U.S. coins as authentic coins are frequent as well. When in doubt, ask around. Shipping Scams Be careful about sending payment to sellers from abroad, particularly sellers who ask you to wire money through Western Union. One common scam, popular among scammers in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia, is for the seller to tell a skeptical buyer to make out the funds in the name of the buyer's wife or sister, a name not known to the seller. The seller says that this way he'll be able to check with Western Union to find out that the funds were sent to him, so he'll ship the coin, but he won't be able to collect the funds without Western Union getting an OK from the buyer after he receives the coin. A related scam is for the seller to ask the buyer to email him when he has sent the funds through Western Union but without revealing Western Union's money transfer control number until he receives the coin. What happens in the above cases is the scammer claims the funds but doesn't ship. Western Union doesn't require any information for a recipient to claim funds except the amount of money expected and the origination city, state, and country. Another scam involving shipping is the creation of fake shipping sites, such as KLM Express and Prompt Express. Scammers have used these sites to "prove" that they sent the item and that you can send them payment for it. After they receive your payment, the sites disappear along with your money. Miscellaneous Another trick sometimes used with lower-priced items is for the seller to charge artificially high shipping and handling fees. Be sure you know what the charges will be before bidding -- if the charges aren't specified, ask. Sellers aren't allowed to change the terms of the transaction after the auction closes. If they ask for more money for shipping or otherwise makes changes, email them and politely indicate that this is a violation of eBay policy. Sellers in the U.S. cannot charge you extra for using a credit card, alone or through an online payment service such as PayPal. This is a violation of Ebay's, Paypal's and the credit card companies' rules. If a seller tries this, email him and politely point out that he can lose his accounts with these services for such actions. Another common tactic among cheaters is running three-day auctions, long enough to snag someone but, in the minds of sellers, not too long so as to attract undue attention. In Conclusion The above are all possible warning signs. But not all private-feedback or private or low-feedback or bad-photo or no-returns or no-escrow or inherited-coin or low-bid or transatlantic or three-day auctions are scams. Try to keep things in perspective. Thousands of coins are bought and sold every day on eBay without a problem. Some people overreact in fear and refuse to participate at all in online auctions, depriving themselves of an enjoyable way to build their collections. Ultimately, with online auctions, knowledge is power. Arm yourself with information like this, and you'll greatly lessen your chances of getting duped. You can find more at the following Web sites: SOS for Auctions http://sos4auctions.com Auction Watch's Tips and Tactics http://www.auctionwatch.com/awdaily/...cs/index2.html Internet Fraud Complaint Center's Fraud Tips http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/strategy/fraudtips.asp The Federal Trade Commission's "Internet Auctions: A Guide for Buyers and Sellers." http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menu-internet.htm This is all *such* good information, I figured I'd quote it in its entirety without the x-no-archive flag, so that it can be saved by Google Groups forever. You can thank me later. -- Bob |
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So useful it should be quoted in full, exactly as the OP wrote it:
"Reid Goldsborough" wrote in message ... What follows is a distillation of many people's opinions and observations, including my own. Additions and corrections are welcomed. A different version of this document has previously been published in a coin magazine, and posting this here, now and in the future, is an attempt to provide useful information to collectors to help them avoid becoming victim of online auction fraud. This document is copyrighted -- please don't republish elsewhere. HMTL version available he http://rg.ancients.info/guide. How to avoid getting cheated on eBay -- periodic post - - - IN A NUTSHELL: Fraud on eBay is common. Because eBay provides minimal protection against fraud, you're largely on your own. Avoid eBay auctions from sellers you don't know in which the seller keeps his own feedback private, in which he prevents you from contacting other bidders, or in which he has suddenly begun to sell expensive items when by looking at his feedback you see he has previously only bought items or sold inexpensive or unrelated items. - - - Online auctions can be a great way to buy coins. You can shop conveniently from your home or office any time day or night. There's a huge selection, and though the selection is skewed toward the bargain priced and aimed at bargain hunters, many big-ticket coins are auctioned as well. The big three online auction houses are eBay at http://www.ebay.com, Yahoo Auctions at http://auctions.yahoo.com, and Amazon.com Auctions at http://auctions.amazon.com. eBay is far larger than Yahoo Auctions and Amazon.com Auctions combined, with an estimated 85 percent of the market. Unlike most in-person auctions, online auctions typically stretch out over days and end at a specific time. The highest bidder when the clock strikes, wins. There are tricks to placing winning bids, and other tricks in maximizing the bids placed on items you're selling. The strategizing, ticking clock, and winning and losing impart a game quality to online auctions. Online auctions, in short, are fun. Fraud Online auctions can also be risky. Fraud is common. eBay contends that the rate of auction fraud on its service is very low. It says that only one "confirmed" fraud occurs per 40,000 eBay listings. That is indeed a low rate -- 0.0025 percent. The FBI, on the other hand, contends that the figure is much higher. As a part of its "Operation Cyber Loss" project, it determined that the rate of online auction fraud is about one in a hundred, or 1 percent. This is a very high rate of fraud, a whopping 400 times higher than what eBay contends. The FBI's figure is the one to believe. eBay, whose earnings continue to soar, is very reluctant to intervene in individual auctions, describing its service as merely a venue that brings buyers and sellers together. Its policy is that it won't interfere, for instance, with the auction of a blatantly counterfeit coin that's auctioned as an authentic coin unless it's contacted first by law enforcement authorities. eBay is very much skewed toward promoting the interests of sellers -- they're the ones who pay fees and earn eBay its profits. Though the vast majority of coin dealers are and have always been honest and reputable, questionable business practices and outright fraud have long been a part of numismatics, among mail-order dealers and flea-market sellers as well as dealers who sell on bourse floors, in-person auctions, and coin stores. The continued popularization of the Internet is just exposing more people to fraud. Common problems with online coin auctions include overgrading, inaccurate or misleading descriptions, deceptive photography, counterfeits being sold as authentic coins (with or without the seller's knowledge), and outright nondelivery of coins purchased. All the online auction services provide buyers and sellers with some protection against fraud. eBay provides fraud insurance, but it's limited. It offers only up to $200 of insurance per item, with a $25 deductible. If you buy from a seller on eBay who is a SquareTrade participant (the SquareTrade seal appears in their auction listing), you're eligible for slightly more protection, typically $250, though this can range up to $1,000, also with a $25 deductible. Very few sellers, however, participate in eBay's SquareTrade program. Feedback One important protection against fraud is "feedback" -- a way for participants in a transaction to rate one another and for others to see those ratings. A large percentage of negative feedbacks is a clear signal to stay away from a particular seller. But feedback is far from foolproof. The ratings are always skewed positively, since leaving someone with negative feedback opens you up to receiving retaliatory negative feedback in return, and many people are reluctant to risk tarnishing their feedback record this way. One trick to avoid getting retaliatory feedback is to wait to leave feedback until the seller has done so first. Some sellers, however, don't give buyers feedback until they receive it first. At the latest, sellers should give feedback when the buyer receives the coin and indicates he's satisfied with it. For sellers, doing this is actually good protection, helping to prevent angry buyers from leaving negative feedback without first trying to work out a problem that may not be the seller's fault. What's more, a high number of feedbacks (PowerSeller status, for example) in itself doesn't always indicate that the seller doesn't sometimes engage in questionable business tactics. An eBay PowerSeller can have up to 2 percent negative feedbacks, which is a high percentage of deals gone bad to such an extent that negative feedback was given. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence that eBay is particularly lenient about responding to fraud perpetuated by PowerSellers, who through their heavy selling pay more in fees to eBay than other sellers. Still, feedback can be of some help. Read both positive and negative feedbacks. You can discount negatives when they appear to be retaliatory -- left in exchange for a negative feedback given to them -- or when the feedback is negative yet the comment is positive -- this indicates the person probably clicked the negative box when he meant to check the positive box. You can glean useful information from positives when the information in them is negative. The person in this case is sending a message that he was dissatisfied with the transaction but doesn't want to get set up for a retaliatory neg. Another good feedback technique is reading the feedback of those bidding on a coin. If they have a lot of feedbacks, and if the feedbacks are for buying similar coins, this can indicate they're knowledgeable about the coin or the dealer, which is reassuring. But you need to be careful about "shill" bidders, typically friends or business partners of the seller who bid on an auction to artificially drive up its price. Shill bidders often have a low number of feedbacks and a high percentage of feedbacks for buying from one or two sellers. Click on Search, then By Bidder, choose Yes for "Include completed items" and "Even if not high bidder?", and type in the bidder's ID. This won't be conclusive, however. Newcomers to eBay may feel more comfortable sticking with one seller. But be careful not to get carried away and bid more than you intended in an auction in which a bidder is involved who had bid primarily on prior auctions of the seller. Another red flag is a seller making his feedback private. Though eBay suggests that sellers do this if eBay is investigating unwarranted feedback (obscene, disclosures of identity or private information, etc.), a seller who makes his feedback private may be trying to hide something. It's also usually good policy to refuse to participate in private auctions, where the seller keeps the bidders' IDs private, unless you know the seller. Being contacted by other eBay users is one way to avoid getting cheated, even though eBay discourages this by referring to it as "auction interference" and Yahoo Auctions makes it impossible for people to do this. Still, people do contact bidders on eBay, and it's often the only way that bidders are protected against cheats. Cheaters, knowing that some people will try to contact bidders this way, set up a private auction to prevent this. On the other hand, not all private auctions are scams. Some legitimate sellers keep bidders' IDs private to avoid losing them as customers to lower-priced sellers or because they feel that their customers want their privacy protected. Unless you know the seller or know he's legitimate, however, you're on safer ground assuming that a private auction is a scam auction. You should think carefully about buying a big-ticket item from a seller with few feedbacks. It's too easy for a scammer to create new eBay IDs. But buying a more expensive item from a seller with many feedbacks can also be risky, depending. One trick that scammers use is to sell a number of low-cost coins or other items to build up positive feedback, then auction off a big-ticket coin and skip town, virtually or otherwise, without sending it. It's always best when buying an expensive coin to make sure that the seller has sold similarly priced coins in the past by clicking on past auctions through the seller's feedback. Unfortunately, eBay saves auction pages only for a limited time, about three months. If a seller sells items only infrequently, eBay provides no way for you to see what those items are. (eBay's search feature is even more limited. It only permits you to search for past auctions that ended within the previous two weeks.) Hijacked Accounts One eBay scam involves a bad guy hijacking the eBay account of a seller with a good feedback record by deceitfully obtaining his password. One possible tip-off during the auction is that the seller is auctioning a pricey item or items completely unlike those he's auctioned before. Another is that the seller previously only bought on eBay, never sold. A possible tip-off upon completion of the auction is that you're asked to send payment to a location completely different from the location listed in the auction. If you have questions about the auction, send a message to the seller through eBay. If his answer continues to arouse suspicion, don't send your money. eBay has recently tightened up its security features to try to prevent this type of fraud. Now, if an automated password-cracking program fails to guess a password on the twentieth try, eBay flashes a code on screen that you have to type in manually. Despite this safety feature, it's still best to use a password that's difficult to crack -- a combination of letters and numbers and one that's not the same password you use elsewhere. Sellers can still be tricked into revealing their passwords to scammers by clicking on a link in an official looking e-mail message that appears to come from eBay, a practice known as "phishing." They're directed to a "spoof" site that looks just like eBay but is solely designed to obtain people's passwords. To prevent yourself from falling victim like this and ruining your good feedback, always go to eBay and related sites such as PayPal through your own bookmark or favorite or by manually typing in the site's address. If you have any suspicions for any reason about a coin being auctioned during the course of the auction, send a message to the seller asking for clarification. If the seller doesn't respond or if you have doubts after getting a response, refuse to bid. If you've bid on an item in an on-going auction or if you've won an auction just completed, eBay lets you request the seller's phone and address. With more expensive items, it can sometimes make sense to initiate telephone contact before the auction's completion. When you request a seller's contact information, eBay informs the seller of this and automatically sends the seller your contact information. You can also ask in one of the online discussion groups if anyone has had dealings with a particular seller or sees anything suspicious about a particular auction. There are many such discussion groups on the Internet. The most popular group about coins in general is the Usenet group rec.collecting.coins. You can access it through a newsreader such as Forte Agent, e-mail program with newsreading capabilities such as Microsoft Outlook Express, or the Web through Google Groups at http://groups.google.com. The most popular online discussion group about ancient coins is the Moneta-L e-mail group, available through Yahoo Groups. You can subscribe, for free, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Moneta-L. New online discussion groups are popping up all the time. One interesting new one about coins is Coin Talk at http://cointalk.org. Photos With lower-priced items, one question to ask the seller is if the coin pictured in the auction is the coin you would receive, if it's not already indicated. Some sellers put up a generic picture of the coin type, which isn't necessarily deceptive, but this should be disclosed. Some scammers deliberately send a lower-quality coin of the same type and year from the one pictured, sometimes stealing photos from other eBay sellers. You should save the online image of any coin you buy. Sellers frequently delete these images after the sale to free up disk space wherever they're storing these images, and there's nothing wrong with this, but having the picture later can be beneficial if there's a problem. It can also be a good idea to save the auction description as well as the auction terms, whether or not those terms are included in the auction description or provided through e-mail. Photography can be used to illustrate what a coin looks like or to deceive. Online images of coins that are too dark or too small or too fuzzy may indicate the seller lacks imaging skills or is deliberately trying to hide something. Sharp, bright photos of coins in which the fields seem overly smooth may have been manipulated in an image editing program. One way you can sometimes spot this is by saving the image to your hard disk, loading it into an image editing program, and looking at individual pixels to see if they've been blurred together. But don't confuse blurring with JPEG artifacting, which is a result of image compression. With the latter, you see squares and rectangles (artifacts) of different sizes when you zoom in. Some sellers punch up the color of their coins by using software to boost contrast and saturation. Some of the major auction houses, in fact, have been sharply criticized for this. Even good coin images, created without manipulation, are no match for seeing a coin in person. A photo or scan of a coin can sometimes make a coin look nicer than it is, sometimes less nice. It can hide scratches, flatness, and wear. It can impart artificial color, luster, and relief. On the other hand, it can accentuate scratches and minor defects if they catch the light at a certain angle, making them look major. For all these reasons, it's best not to buy a coin, even one illustrated with a picture, if the seller doesn't offer return privileges. Guarantees It's usually good policy to refuse to buy any higher end coins through online auctions in which the seller doesn't offer the option of returning it if you're not happy with it. If the seller doesn't specify a return policy, email him and ask. Sellers who claim they're liquidating estates and that therefore all sales are final may be hiding something unpleasant behind their no-returns policy. With ancient coins, it's best to buy from a seller who offers a lifetime guarantee of authenticity, particularly with pricier specimens. There are many fakes of ancient coins out there, and even experts occasionally get fooled. If you buy an ancient coin, and it's later condemned by an authentication service or by several dealers you show it to informally, you should be able to return it and get your money back. One protection with more expensive coins is to ask, before the auction closes, if the seller will agree to use an escrow service, such as Escrow.com at http://www.escrow.com. The way it works is that upon the completion of the auction, the buyer sends payment to the escrow service. When this payment clears, the escrow service notifies the seller to ship the coin. When the buyer receives the coin and notifies the escrow service that it is as it was described, the escrow service forwards the buyer's payment to the seller. Typically, the buyer pays the escrow service to use it. At Escrow.com, the amount of payment depends on the price of the item and whether a credit card or other payment method is used, with a minimum fee of $15. Very few coin auctions involve escrow, however, and because a seller doesn't agree to use it doesn't necessarily mean that the deal is a bad one. If you do use an escrow service, you need to be careful about scams involving fake escrow sites, such as Golden-Escrow.com (meant to be confused with the legitimate escrow service GoldenEscrow.com) and Escrow-is.com. You think you're sending your money to an independent third party, but you're actually sending it right to the crook. The above two sites have been shut down, though new fake escrow sites open up. For a list of fake escrow sites and other auction fraud information, check out SOS for Auctions at http://sos4auctions.com. If you do use an escrow site, as a buyer, it's best to suggest the escrow service yourself and to make sure it's a legitimate one. Counterfeits Still another common tactic among scammers is selling a counterfeit, altered, or doctored coin, indicating that they inherited it from their grandfather or other relative, contending that they know nothing about coins, and saying that what you see is what you get. Sometimes, though, people not knowledgeable about coins do inherit authentic coins and try to sell them on eBay. eBay recently began prohibiting the sale of coins and other items when the seller disclaims knowledge of or responsibility for their authenticity. But eBay's rules are enforced only when people complain about their being broken, and even here only sporadically. An auction with unusually low bidding for an authentic or undamaged coin of its type, date, mint mark, and grade may indicate that bidders are staying away from it for good reason. The old saw, "If it's too good to be true, it probably is," very much applies to online auctions. Deals can be had, but you need to be careful. eBay is fertile ground for counterfeit operations because of its hands-off policies. Currently, two large counterfeit operations involving ancient coins are running on eBay, one out of Toronto, one out of Lebanon. Scams involving the fraudulent sale of counterfeit U.S. coins as authentic coins are frequent as well. When in doubt, ask around. Shipping Scams Be careful about sending payment to sellers from abroad, particularly sellers who ask you to wire money through Western Union. One common scam, popular among scammers in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia, is for the seller to tell a skeptical buyer to make out the funds in the name of the buyer's wife or sister, a name not known to the seller. The seller says that this way he'll be able to check with Western Union to find out that the funds were sent to him, so he'll ship the coin, but he won't be able to collect the funds without Western Union getting an OK from the buyer after he receives the coin. A related scam is for the seller to ask the buyer to email him when he has sent the funds through Western Union but without revealing Western Union's money transfer control number until he receives the coin. What happens in the above cases is the scammer claims the funds but doesn't ship. Western Union doesn't require any information for a recipient to claim funds except the amount of money expected and the origination city, state, and country. Another scam involving shipping is the creation of fake shipping sites, such as KLM Express and Prompt Express. Scammers have used these sites to "prove" that they sent the item and that you can send them payment for it. After they receive your payment, the sites disappear along with your money. Miscellaneous Another trick sometimes used with lower-priced items is for the seller to charge artificially high shipping and handling fees. Be sure you know what the charges will be before bidding -- if the charges aren't specified, ask. Sellers aren't allowed to change the terms of the transaction after the auction closes. If they ask for more money for shipping or otherwise makes changes, email them and politely indicate that this is a violation of eBay policy. Sellers in the U.S. cannot charge you extra for using a credit card, alone or through an online payment service such as PayPal. This is a violation of Ebay's, Paypal's and the credit card companies' rules. If a seller tries this, email him and politely point out that he can lose his accounts with these services for such actions. Another common tactic among cheaters is running three-day auctions, long enough to snag someone but, in the minds of sellers, not too long so as to attract undue attention. In Conclusion The above are all possible warning signs. But not all private-feedback or private or low-feedback or bad-photo or no-returns or no-escrow or inherited-coin or low-bid or transatlantic or three-day auctions are scams. Try to keep things in perspective. Thousands of coins are bought and sold every day on eBay without a problem. Some people overreact in fear and refuse to participate at all in online auctions, depriving themselves of an enjoyable way to build their collections. Ultimately, with online auctions, knowledge is power. Arm yourself with information like this, and you'll greatly lessen your chances of getting duped. You can find more at the following Web sites: SOS for Auctions http://sos4auctions.com Auction Watch's Tips and Tactics http://www.auctionwatch.com/awdaily/...cs/index2.html Internet Fraud Complaint Center's Fraud Tips http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/strategy/fraudtips.asp The Federal Trade Commission's "Internet Auctions: A Guide for Buyers and Sellers." http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menu-internet.htm |
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"Bob Flaminio" wrote in message ... Reid Goldsborough wrote: What follows is a distillation of many people's opinions and Dang! Once again, I am pipped at the post. (This time, by four minutes) -- Jeff R. |
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A.Gent wrote:
"Bob Flaminio" wrote in message ... Reid Goldsborough wrote: What follows is a distillation of many people's opinions and Dang! Once again, I am pipped at the post. (This time, by four minutes) Zing! Gotcha! -- Bob |
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Reid Goldsborough wrote: What follows is a distillation of many people's opinions and observations, including my own. Additions and corrections are welcomed. A different version of this document has previously been published in a coin magazine, and posting this here, now and in the future, is an attempt to provide useful information to collectors to help them avoid becoming victim of online auction fraud. This document is copyrighted -- please don't republish elsewhere. HMTL version available he http://rg.ancients.info/guide. How to avoid getting cheated on eBay -- periodic post - - - My method works better: haven't bought or sold anything on EBay. Haven't succumbed to it yet, maybe never will. |
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CoinKollector wrote:
My method works better: haven't bought or sold anything on EBay. Haven't succumbed to it yet, maybe never will. Well, I've been buying and selling on eBay for nearly five years, and haven't gotten cheated yet. But perhaps soon... I'm currently in the midst of a transaction going awry. I've gotten both the "wife of 25 years just left me" and "been in the hospital for a week" excuses. Two months now, still no coin. If anyone wants to check out the auction, here it is: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=3901915650 The only good thing about this -- he already left me positive FB. I'm working up a big honkin' neg for him if I don't see my coin or my money soon... -- Bob |
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"Bob Flaminio" wrote in message ... CoinKollector wrote: My method works better: haven't bought or sold anything on EBay. Haven't succumbed to it yet, maybe never will. Well, I've been buying and selling on eBay for nearly five years, and haven't gotten cheated yet. But perhaps soon... I'm currently in the midst of a transaction going awry. I've gotten both the "wife of 25 years just left me" and "been in the hospital for a week" excuses. Two months now, still no coin. If anyone wants to check out the auction, here it is: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=3901915650 The only good thing about this -- he already left me positive FB. I'm working up a big honkin' neg for him if I don't see my coin or my money soon... -- Bob I notice that three fbs have been left from buyers who have received their winnings, and all three auctions ended several weeks after the auction ended that you won. The seller has been an eBay member since 1998, with 323 pos fb and one neg, the neg from a seller in a dispute over methodology of a coin return. Funny, Bob, the most recent fb your seller has left is a neg on another seller who has not delivered merchandise that is paid for. I am perplexed that you have not received your coin or a refund because the seller looks too solid for you to have this situation. No way to know if your seller is related to AH, is there? Bill |
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Bill Krummel wrote:
Well, I've been buying and selling on eBay for nearly five years, and haven't gotten cheated yet. But perhaps soon... I'm currently in the midst of a transaction going awry. I've gotten both the "wife of 25 years just left me" and "been in the hospital for a week" excuses. Two months now, still no coin. If anyone wants to check out the auction, here it is: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=3901915650 The only good thing about this -- he already left me positive FB. I'm working up a big honkin' neg for him if I don't see my coin or my money soon... I notice that three fbs have been left from buyers who have received their winnings, and all three auctions ended several weeks after the auction ended that you won. The seller has been an eBay member since 1998, with 323 pos fb and one neg, the neg from a seller in a dispute over methodology of a coin return. Funny, Bob, the most recent fb your seller has left is a neg on another seller who has not delivered merchandise that is paid for. I am perplexed that you have not received your coin or a refund because the seller looks too solid for you to have this situation. No way to know if your seller is related to AH, is there? It's a mystery to me as well. I don't think he's related to AH -- otherwise, he wouldn't've already left me a positive FB. His record is pretty much spotless, as is his past history -- certainly I checked all this out before even bidding. Yet his emails to me have been sporadic and cryptic. Maybe I found the one eBay seller whose wife really *did* leave him, and who really *did* go into the hospital when he was supposed to be processing my order. -- Bob |
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On Fri, 14 May 2004 02:51:09 GMT, CoinKollector
wrote: My method works better: haven't bought or sold anything on EBay. Haven't succumbed to it yet, maybe never will. Interesting and understandable perspective. My view though is that as long as you're informed and careful, you can drastically reduce the chances of becoming victim to online auction fraud. Same with getting stuck with a counterfeit. eBay can be fun, a lot of fun, despite the risk (maybe because of it g). Here's one idea: Start small. Try bidding on a few lower-cost items. And to reduce the risk to near zero, find out first by asking around here for some names of active sellers on eBay in the areas you collect who have stellar reputations. |
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