I put a silly bid on a crossflow on ebay (and lost)

then I recieved this email, of course, having only been born yesterday I shall immediately send a cheque off:

"Hello,

I saw that you are intersted in the Ford Crossflow xflow engine Westfield
Escort.
I have the same item in perfect condition.
The price for this item is 360GBP (shipping and handeling included).
I am from EUROPE.
I just opend a bussines and I urgently need the money, and an auction takes
at least 3 days.
You will receive the item as describt as I will shipp via UPS.
If you are interested in my offer please contact me as soon as possible.
Thank you for understanding.

Best regards and have a nice day."

Some hope - would anyone fall for this

sounds like the african scam

i had a similar thing when i bid on a goldwing, some american dude offered me one. report it to ebay, they investigate things like that.

the most annoying thing is that they are taking you for a fool.

Somebody was saying today that a bright spark robbed Superdrug and got a load of gift vouchers, then tried to sell them on ebay. Good plan eh!

yours, Pete.

The other scam is to lose the auction, and a couple of days later get a "second chance offer" from the seller, who usually explains that the original winner has withdrawn or died or something.

Most likely the winning bidder is a friend of the seller, or even the seller himself under a different "name" who ups the bidding against you and when he/she unfortunately "wins", he doesn't of course go through with the sale, but the buyer is able through the ebay system to offer a second chance to the losing bidder.

Not quite the scam as above but a way of inflating the price in a flat market.

I've also had a few experiences of sellers with no history offering expensive tools, plasma cutters etc but point blank refusing to allow the winner to pay cash on pick-up, only accepting bank transfer or cheque, much the same as the crossflow experience above.

Simple rule, if you can't afford to lose the money, and the seller has no long term history - go and pick it up and pay when you have it.

John

i bidded for a laptop a while back and won he agreed to let me pick it up, but insisted on me paying for all of it first via paypal
like he'd give me his real address. w$%*er

anything goes on ebay,some geezer is trying get rid of his bird

item number 2456738970

i wonder which word in the title you were searching for there bob?!?

second chance offers are GENUINE!!!

The aby system allows you to make them.

say you sell an item for 30 quid, and the loser bid 25 quid and you have a second to sell, then you can make a second chance offer to the other buyer.

I have done it and it works well.

atb

steve

quote:

---

Originally posted by JohnN
The other scam is to lose the auction, and a couple of days later get a "second chance offer" from the seller, who usually explains that the original winner has withdrawn or died or something.

Most likely the winning bidder is a friend of the seller, or even the seller himself under a different "name" who ups the bidding against you and when he/she unfortunately "wins", he doesn't of course go through with the sale, but the buyer is able through the ebay system to offer a second chance to the losing bidder.

Not quite the scam as above but a way of inflating the price in a flat market.

I've also had a few experiences of sellers with no history offering expensive tools, plasma cutters etc but point blank refusing to allow the winner to pay cash on pick-up, only accepting bank transfer or cheque, much the same as the crossflow experience above.

Simple rule, if you can't afford to lose the money, and the seller has no long term history - go and pick it up and pay when you have it.

John

---

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2456738970

No bids? Got to have been worth a quid surely???

Ok, looked at history, some sad git bid £10,000,000.00, not worth that much, maybe a fiver!

might be worth going into a cold garage to work on that

atb

steve

I was selling a cossie turbo through ebay, it was bought by a guy from Australia who contacted me direct after reading the ad.

He paid the asking price no trouble.

I would still be a little hesitant, but these people really do exist, just check as much as you can.

regards Tomboys

I had one bad experience on eBay - a guy named Matt Fuller, from Kansas. MDFMister2 is his ebay name (watch out for him). I bought a 4AGE intake manifold off him 2 years ago, it never arrived. He led me on with "lost in the mail, I'm checking for you" for 90 days, till it was too late to complain using ebay feedback. Then he changed his email id and went underground.

Just today found out he sold it to someone else in November (after a year of hiding, the coward), item number 2443090457. I tried to write him and of course he's changed his email again since that transaction. What a slime ball - for $39 bucks, why bother? I don't know how people like that sleep at night.

More or less happy ending - I got a better one with the throttle body included properly cleaned and properly shipped for about the same price a few months later.

ebay used to be a bargain, electronics seems to be a rip off now a day's. Was looking for a wireless laptop card and thought ebay should have them cheap, found them and they were going for £40 plus p+p, you can get them for £35 from dabs.com. What a rip off, and people fall for it cause they think "its on ebay so it must be a bargain". My advise alway shop around before commiting to something on ebay.

yup, saw a book go for 10.50 when its only 6 in the shops, or on amazon.

From the sellers point of view Ebay can be great. I sell packs of Kama Sutra playing cards in my shop for £4.50. Yesterday on Ebay I sold 1 pack for £11.07,and another for £10.57. As Valentines day looms..................
Ian

If im ever buying anything thats worth something from ebay from someone who has a low rating, i always email them to see if i can pick it up, even if i have no intention of picking it up. If they say i cant pick it up, i wont bother, as there is either something wrong with it, or it doesnt exist. If they do say i can pick it up but its far away, i will make some excuse and ask for it to be delivered instead.

Ebay used to have bargains, but know its so widely used, that it is only really good for selling things, and buying hard to find items.

its perfect for books and stuff, and as you say rare items. its things that are common in shops that are overpriced - people dont realise how cheap an angle grinder really is!

I recently got a new fuel pump for less than half list price, but conversely there's a guy selling the Hardcastle V8 book for a few quid more than amazon charge on buy it now.

A few of my wifes' friends have been getting emails of an ebay type from someone supposedly selling mobile phone signal boosters and asking for more money for shipping. The user name and email does not check out in ebay, invalid user name and i.d. comes up so I told them to forward them with the full headers to ebay and let them sort it

yours, Pete.