Recently I’ve noticed auctions for expensive high-definition televisions showing up in eBay book categories. The picture here shows the top results I found in eBay’s “Books” category on Friday by searching for “HDTV.” As you can see, these listings aren’t for books about HDTVs, they’re auctions starting at $1 for TVs that retail for over $1,000.
When these TV listings started turning up in book categories several months ago, I didn’t give it much thought — I figured it was someone trying to get extra exposure for their auction by posting in an unrelated category.
But someone who’s done a bit of digging into this, Ina Steiner at AuctionBytes, says it appears that scammers are using these listings to escape eBay’s fraud-detection measures. She recently turned up 31 listings for plasma TVs that all showed warning signs of being scams.
Among other things, the suspect listings usually ask buyers to “e-mail me” or “contact me for the Buy-It-Now price.” Then the unsuspecting buyer is offered a great deal if they pay immediately. Some of them do and — guess what? — they don’t get the TV and never hear from the scammer again.
Shoppers who pay for an item before the auction ends aren’t covered by eBay’s buyer-protection program.”
I’ve also seen these TV listings popping up recently in eBay’s wholesale books category. For some reason, eBay manages to quickly delete these bogus listings from its wholesale categories, but not others.
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4 Comments
Thank you for sharing this. About two weeks ago my 19 yr. old son was looking for a Dell laptop. He found one on eBay that was loaded. The ad instructed him to call and the man offered him a ridiculously low price. I felt very uneasy about it and expressed my concerns to my son. Thankfully he didn’t pursue it but it wasn’t because he didn’t want to. He agonized over a couple of days.
Jeff Jones http://www.NonFictionBlog.com
This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. Mt eBay store was hipjacked for just such an ad. I had to jumpr thru hoops to get it removed, kind of like losing your cc. Had to change almost every password I have! Banks, CC, email and. of course. eBay. What a mess.
One of the ways they are stealing our info to do this is new to me: If when you click on a listing to get more info and an eBay looking box pops up asking you to sign in, that’s it! You sign in and now they have you.
This is what the tekkie at eBay told me, and I know I have had that happen. I only found out it was there because someone emailed me about purchasing the item!
I will email every person I find that kind of ad on, not the information IN the Ad, but go to the eBay ID of the seller and email them.
Thanks for posting this, KAy
Thanks for the update, Kay. But what is “hipjacked”? How does it happen, and how can I avoid it? How do I know if it happens to me, and what do I do if it does?
I’ve been underbidder a couple of times in Ebay auctions of books illustrated by an illustrator I collect, books that sold for about $200.
Both times I have gotten emails offering me a second chance for the book. The first was obviously fishy, and with the second it sounded legit but didn’t come through as an Ebay message. I contacted the seller through the messaging service, and it wasn’t him offering.
I wonder if there are particular illustrators or authors that scammers are targetting?