I’ve been on eBay for a bit lately, buying a Mac and selling a Mac. Both times I encountered scams.
On the Buy Side: Consumers Take the Risk Now
My first participation in an eBay auction was circa 1996 – very early in their story. The platform has changed a lot over the nearly 30 years since then, as you’d expect, going from infant at the dawn of the dot-com era to the modern ecommerce powerhouse. There have been a lot of experiments and missteps along the way (remember when they bought PayPal?)
Traditionally, you bid or bought and then paid online, and the seller sent your product to you. Most of the risk was on the seller side. The seller was protected a little by a tracking number and proof of delivery, but if the buyer was unhappy, the seller was required to take things back. And if anything went wrong, all the resolution firepower was on the buyer’s side. PayPal chargebacks, customers scamming sellers by saying they’d gotten empty boxes, buyers using products and returning them, etc. – this was all the cost of business.
The idea was that even though sellers might have some headaches, they’d more than make up for them by having legions of confident buyers. In other words, if you get one bad apple, you don’t complain if it’s one out of a thousand.
But times have changed.
Now eBay has “classified” ads. The seller pays a small listing fee, but that’s the only extent of eBay’s involvement. These are completely different than their normal listings, which come armored with all sorts of consumer and buyer protections.
If you buy on an eBay classified ad, you’re naked. It’s no different than seeing a classified ad in the back pages of a random newspaper, calling up the seller, sending him a money order, and hoping your product arrived. The only change here is that the listing is done through eBay.
The transaction is conducted outside of eBay. You talk to the seller and exchange name, phone, etc. and arrange payment. Normally, eBay won’t let you send an email or phone number through their messaging system to keep all communications on-site, but not here. You have no consumer protection whatsoever.
I was looking for a new Macbook Air for my wife. Since Apple products are so durably built, I always check what’s out there on the used market. And sure enough, I saw a bunch on eBay. I’d break them into two tiers.
The first were offers that were either Auction or Buy It Now, and they were what I expected: a pretty typical discount off the price of new, depending on age, AppleCare, and other factors. These laptops were all in the same price range, roughly, exactly as you’d expect a fair market to operate.
There were also Classified offers. All of these were significantly lower. Granted, eBay takes a slice of about 13% so I’d expect offers without eBay fees to be about that much lower, but these were 50% or more lower. You’re telling me someone is selling something for $500 when they could get $1000 just as easily?
Things that make you go hmmm…
These offers are intermixed with other offers, so it’s very easy to start looking at a system, decide it’s what you want, start the purchase process, etc. before you realize you’re going with something that has very little commercial protection. I’m sure a few of these classified ads are legit. A few.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with buying classified ads. I’ve bought things off Facebook Marketplace, for example. But in that case, I was meeting someone with cash in my hand and he was handing me physical merchandise I could check myself. I wasn’t sitting on the other side of the country (or globe) having sent money over a cash app, trusting that some dude I’ve never met is going to keep his word…and knowing that eBay is not going to lift a finger if he doesn’t.
On the Sell Side: I Bet This Works Sometimes
I also sold a Mac desktop recently. It was a fairly expensive systems, so I listed it as a Buy It Now. I was contacted not long after by a guy in Tennessee who had a number of (legitimate) questions, so we exchanged a half-dozen messages on the platform. Eventually he committed and did the Buy It Now.
About 5 minutes later, I got a message saying “Thanks! Looking forward to this. I forgot to mention that I’m staying at my sister’s until December. Please ship to the following address…again, thank you and I’ll leave positive feedback as soon as it arrives.”
The only problem was that it came from a completely different account.
Now imagine you’re either a very busy seller or maybe someone at the opposite end of the spectrum who is not wholly familiar with the eBay platform. I bet messages like this occasionally catch sellers who aren’t closely looking at who sent messages.
Had this worked, I would have been out the server, the payment for it, and fees to eBay for the listing, plus have to deal with an angry buyer. And the scammer would have had a nice piece of kit for free.
I reported the email and within an hour the scammer’s account was banned from eBay, which tells me that this is apparently common enough that eBay security recognized it and dealt with it as a standard process.
Be safe out there, folks!
I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.
I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308
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So in the second scam, if I understood correctly, the buyer and the scammer are the same person. That is, they make two accounts and use one to pay and the other to receive, so that they can complain from the first to get their money back. That’s a moderation / user verification problem.
Or is private communication intercepted? That’s a serious technology problem.
Or do they track items listed on Buy It Now, and if they are sold, they somehow guess the communication and try their luck? I’m not convinced this is feasible, but stranger scams have happened.