Ever wonder where all those great tool bargains you get on ebay come from?

[Wade Lippman]

Police in Rochester NY shut down two pawn shops and charged them with $15m in stolen tool sales. They would give addicts lists of what they wanted. When caught they claimed they were doing it to cut down on home invasions. The police figure there are additional shops like these around.

I have seen them post on CL unopened boxes for years, but figured they had to be legitimate or they would have just been shut down. I mean, how hard is it to demand to see receipts? Rochester is a pretty small town. Since it took years, I guess harder than I thought.

[Frederick Skelly]

New, first quality, unopened box power tools always looked odd to me - especially when it's current models rather than discontinued stuff. Figured that more often than not, it was "hot".

[Jim Koepke]

During my employment at a public transit agency one of the problems was counterfeit tickets.

The transit police were having difficulty in preventing the revenue losses from this.

It surprised them quite a bit when they were shown ebay auctions listing the tickets.

Some used to refer to ebay as a thieves market. Seems that may still be the case for many of the folks listing there.

Especially this time of year there are a lot of thieves following delivery vehicles and stealing packages left on porches.

jtk

[Mike Henderson]

I haven't seen tools being sold cheap on eBay. I don't know why someone would sell cheap, even if they were a crook. They could do a three day auction and the bids would get to whatever the auction price would be for the product, legal or not. The buyers wouldn't know if the tools were stolen or not.

Are they offering the tools as "Buy it Now" or auction? I don't need any tools so I haven't been looking on eBay for them.

Mike

[Aaron Rosenthal]

Craigslist is another popular place, as is almost all on-line sales sites.

[Mark Hennebury]

eBay always was a thieves market, i don't know what it is like these days as i haven't used it for years. Much of the stuff listed was stolen or simply photos lifted from somewhere else, many of the accounts were fake, many were real but, being hacked and used by crooks. Much of the emails "from" ebay were actually from hackers. And there was no-one to follow up or chase the crooks . eBay would just pretend to "look into it" and i can guarantee that lots of people where getting robbed every day, without any recourse. The police don't have the power , resources, juristriction or inclination to pursue interstate or international thieves. Many of the crooks were international crime gangs. And eBay was like the wild west, but without the sheriff; plunder as much as you can , no one is going to come after you, no one is going to chase you or shoot at you.

And Western Union is the money laundering organization for all the crooks.
They will continually transport money to known thieves and protect their identity, fully supported by the law.
And the police will do nothing.

Ask me how i know.

It may have changed since i was using ebay, but i doubt that the thieves have stopped....just adapted.

[Mike Henderson]

eBay always was a thieves market, i don't know what it is like these days as i haven't used it for years. Much of the stuff listed was stolen or simply photos lifted from somewhere else, many of the accounts were fake, many were real but, being hacked and used by crooks. Much of the emails "from" ebay were actually from hackers. And there was no-one to follow up or chase the crooks . eBay would just pretend to "look into it" and i can guarantee that lots of people where getting robbed every day, without any recourse. The police don't have the power , resources, jurisdiction or inclination to pursue interstate or international thieves. Many of the crooks were international crime gangs. And eBay was like the wild west, but without the sheriff; plunder as much as you can , no one is going to come after you, no one is going to chase you or shoot at you.

And Western Union is the money laundering organization for all the crooks.
They will continually transport money to known thieves and protect their identity, fully supported by the law.
And the police will do nothing.

Ask me how i know.

It may have changed since i was using ebay, but i doubt that the thieves have stopped....just adapted.

eBay guarantees that you will receive your merchandise or they will reimburse you. I had a situation where I ordered and paid for something and the seller didn't ship. eBay reimbursed me pretty quickly. However, they had already detected that the seller was fraudulent and had closed his account so there wasn't much question about the fraud.

Mike

[It costs a lot to sell on eBay but there's not many other places where you can get a national (even international) market of buyers.]

[Wade Lippman]

eBay guarantees that you will receive your merchandise or they will reimburse you. I had a situation where I ordered and paid for something and the seller didn't ship. eBay reimbursed me pretty quickly. However, they had already detected that the seller was fraudulent and had closed his account so there wasn't much question about the fraud.

Mike

[It costs a lot to sell on eBay but there's not many other places where you can get a national (even international) market of buyers.]

I've had two shipments reported as defective by the buyer. No point to having it returned, as I would have had to pay postage and received a brick. I've stopped selling on ebay; more economical to just throw the thing out.

[Mike Henderson]

I've had two shipments reported as defective by the buyer. No point to having it returned, as I would have had to pay postage and received a brick. I've stopped selling on ebay; more economical to just throw the thing out.

I occasionally sell something on eBay - just things I have in excess or just want to get rid of. I've never had a problem with buyers.

I've also occasionally purchased things on eBay and never had a problem with the merchandise that was sent to me.

The feedback rating of buyers and sellers helps, but isn't a guarantee, I suppose.

The advantage eBay offers is that the market is nation wide and can even include international. I would think that eBay would want both buyers and sellers to have a good experience - otherwise people would shun their site and that would affect their profits.

Mike

[Wade Lippman]

I would think that eBay would want both buyers and sellers to have a good experience - otherwise people would shun their site and that would affect their profits.

Mike

My sense is that there are many many sellers and not enough buyers. Accordingly, they are glad to let the buyers screw the sellers occasionally.

[Mark Hennebury]

My experiences are somewhat old, so things have possibly improved; but a few things will be constant in the universe;

Where there is money exchanging hands there are thieves trying to divert it.
No matter what holes they plug the thieves will find new ones.
The internet will remain the wild west; a lawless land for a long time to come, because it is without boundaries, and the the policing systems of the world are constrained by strict boundaries and budgets.

Drive 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, and the police may chase you down and shoot you.but you go to your local police station and tell them you just got scammed on ebay, give them the name, street address , state and photos id, drivers licence of the person that took your money,.... and they will tell you to go pound sand.

Specific to eBay;

The feedback ratings are an excellent idea to evaluate the integrity of the owner of the account; The problem comes on whether you can be sure that you are dealing with the owner of the account and not a crook that has hacked the account.

I agree with you that eBay would want their customers to have a good experience; but failing that would prefer the public not know about bad experiences. I have never heard of eBay reporting any data on losses of buyers and sellers.
People might well shun their site if the true situation where revealed. Perception is all that counts in business. We will never know how many people have lost money through eBay transactions, because eBay will never tell us.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Two observations. Had a friend who ran a pawn shop (He was killed in a robbery.) Here everyday, pawn shop owner must report to local policing jurisdiction a list of items bought, pawned and seller's name. After 48 hours, pawn shop owner is free to sell items. Tom (pawn shop owner) was offered several new tools in boxes, a few of which he bought. Reported them as required. Couple days later, seller shows up with more new tools in the box, which he refused to buy. All tools were from Home Depot. Tom figured it out. Thieves were using stolen CC and going thru self service check out to purchase tools. Contact HD and explains what is happening. About a week later, HD security shows up and wants their tools back. Tom explains the law to them, and they start to hassle him. He reminds them they should be giving him a reward for pointing out that HD self service check outs were the problem. Another time went into pawn shop, and there were several tools that I wanted. All had the same name and phone # on them, so I figured most likely they were stolen. That night called number and talked to the guy listed on them. He said the answer was simple, no they weren't stolen. Instead local (very colorful) judge had told him if had $500 towards his back child support by 5:00 PM a couple days earlier, he didn't need to bring his tooth brush with him to court. So I bought the desired tools.

[Mike Henderson]

My sense is that there are many many sellers and not enough buyers. Accordingly, they are glad to let the buyers screw the sellers occasionally.

You must deal with things that are different from the things I have bought and sold. In the auctions that I am involved in, either from a seller or buyer point of view, there are many buyers based on the number of bids for each item.

Additionally, for many items, there seems to be a price that the item will sell for. For example, I was tracking one item recently and every used version of the item sold for a very similar price (within a few dollars of each other). My sense is that there are plenty of buyers, as long as the price is right. And for "standard" items, the selling price is about the same for the same condition. By "standard" item, I mean a product that can be described by a manufacturer, model, age, and condition. An example might be a certain model of an SSD made by a certain manufacturer.

If there weren't enough buyers, there would be items that closed with no bids. With the things I'm interested in, there are certainly plenty of buyers.

Mike

[Mike Henderson]

We will never know how many people have lost money through eBay transactions, because eBay will never tell us.

We don't need eBay to tell us how many people lost money in a transaction. With all the social media sites, that information would get disseminated pretty quickly. Unhappy people are much more likely to complain to the world than happy people are to tell their experience. Once one person starts the story, say on Twitter, others will quickly chime in with their stories.

If there was some real meat there, some journalist would do a story about all the unhappy people on eBay.

Someone with a good lawyer could even bring suit and force eBay to disclose that information.

Mike

[Dave Zellers]

For me, eBay would never be my choice for buying a regular retail tool.

But it excels at matching up buyers and sellers of old tools and tool parts. I just had an old trusted power screw driver die on me. Been reaching for it for 25 years and It had never failed me. I was able to find a clean, lightly used one on eBay and grabbed it right away. With shipping I paid slightly more than I paid new 25 years or so ago but didn't care. It arrived today and works perfectly. I'm ecstatic to find it and have one back on my shelf. This tool has been out of production for at least 15 years.

Then I also spotted just the switch from the same driver and bought it as well. Maybe when it arrives, I'll be able to bring my original back to life. For ten bucks, it's worth a shot.

eBay is awesome for the right situations.

[Bill Dufour]

I thought pawn shops can not sell items in the original box?
Bill D.

[Mark Hennebury]

Mike.

Ebay stats; https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/ebay-stats/

That's a lot of cash and a lot of transactions moving between people; not sophisticated finance companies, just between the general public.

Maybe I have it all wrong with regards to human nature, but i think that would be prime hunting ground for the predators among us. But maybe that is just me.

In regards social media; a quick search on google with the terms eBay "scammed on eBay " brings up 12,600,000 results. "eBay scams" brings up 48,500,000 results

Search "Stories about ebay scams" returns 1,380,000 results.
Search " News stories about ebay scams" returns 1,840,000 results

Search "Lawsuits against ebay" returns 1,760,000 results

I assume that ebay have worked at increasing security and warning the public, but the threat of scammers will always be there, the opportunities are just too great for them to ignore, and the difficulties of tracking down the scammers, arresting and prosecuting them far to complex to be a deterrent on the world wild web.

You rob a bank, there is a good chance that you will get shot; But you can rob people on-line from thousands of miles away sat on a beach in Hawaii with your laptop while sipping a Pina colada.

Keep your guard up and don't think that just because the company is huge that they have everything under control and your well-being is their top concern..Or that the "justice" system will jump up to right all wrongs.
It has been my experience that when things go wrong and you seek to get it put right..... everyone slams the door in your face.



We don't need eBay to tell us how many people lost money in a transaction. With all the social media sites, that information would get disseminated pretty quickly. Unhappy people are much more likely to complain to the world than happy people are to tell their experience. Once one person starts the story, say on Twitter, others will quickly chime in with their stories.

If there was some real meat there, some journalist would do a story about all the unhappy people on eBay.

Someone with a good lawyer could even bring suit and force eBay to disclose that information.

Mike

[Wade Lippman]

The feedback ratings are an excellent idea to evaluate the integrity of the owner of the account;

Rating are useless. I twice tried to leave bad ratings, only to have ebay tell me they weren't allowed. I guess they were valuable vendors.

[Zachary Hoyt]

I have bought and sold hundreds of things on eBay over the years, I don't sell much now but that is because I am selling new instruments I have made, when I have old instruments to sell eBay is still my place of choice. I sold an old archtop guitar for a friend last spring, the soundboard had collapsed, but some guy in France won the bid on it for over $200. He was happy to get it and my friend was happy to sell it for that much, he said that was more than he had originally paid for it, back when it was still playable. I've had a few bad experiences as a seller, but less than 1% of my total sales over the years and I never lost a significant amount of money. eBay is my first place to check pricing when I need to buy something, though sometimes I find I can get it cheaper elsewhere.
Zach

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Around here stolen items are hauled 40 or 50 miles away and sold at weekly auction houses. They are purchased cheap at auction then sold on CL. I have seen tools and tool boxes at a nearby auction show up the following day on CL. An acquaintance who owns one of these auctions will not accept items for sale without getting a photocopy of the ID of the consignor, even then once or twice a yea somebody claims stuff consigned to him is stolen. Recently it is wives bringing in the husband's tools and guns as soon as they are separated.

[Jim Koepke]

I have bought and sold hundreds of things on eBay over the years,

Same here with minimal problems and only a couple of dishonest sellers. Mostly it was hidden or undisclosed damage.

Some sellers do not like the buyer being able to get their money back without recourse. My suspicion is if a buy keeps claiming items do not show up they may have problems with making claims. Many sellers use USPS priority packaging which includes insurance. If a buyer claims an item wasn't received the seller can put in a claim. If the buyer is dishonest they may get some free room and board via mail fraud.

Most of my buying and selling on ebay is over. Every once in a while something will appear that is wanted for my shop.

ebay wants the people on both sides of a transaction to be happy. Their business model would fall apart if too many people were dissatisfied.

As far as leaving negative feedback, ebay wants the buyer to first contact the seller with an attempt to rectify the situation before posting negative feedback. There may be a wait before one is allowed to post negative feedback. My recollection is sellers no longer are allowed to post feedback. It has been awhile since my last purchase on ebay.

jtk

[Mark Hennebury]

I think that you can understand that a couple of hundred dollar trades are not as attractive to thieves as items that cost thousands of dollars. I buy and sell machinery, and have seen many scams on ebay, when i purchased a couple of fine woodworking magazines, no one bothered with scamming those. It takes just as much effort to scam $100 as it does to scam $10,000.

[Mike Henderson]

Rating are useless. I twice tried to leave bad ratings, only to have ebay tell me they weren't allowed. I guess they were valuable vendors.

You may know this, but eBay changed their policy on ratings some years ago. The problem was that the seller would not leave feedback until the buyer did and let it be known that if the buyer left negative feedback, the seller would leave negative feedback for the buyer. It was really blackmail.

So what eBay did was institute a policy that if the buyer paid for the item in a reasonable time, the seller could not leave negative feedback for the buyer. The comment was that the primary obligation of the buyer was to pay for the item.

If there was a dispute between the buyer and seller, it was to be referred to the eBay dispute resolution process.

Of course, some buyers could exploit this new policy - and I expect some did. But it was better than the blackmail system that existed earlier.

Mike

[I don't know of any restriction on buyers leaving negative feedback except that you have to contact the seller and give them a chance to respond before leaving negative feedback.]

[Steve Demuth]

I'm not sure what bargains you're talking about - eBay seems like a pretty efficient pricing mechanism, with most similar items settling for a similar, market price.

As for scams - I don't use eBay very often, but I have never encountered any serious problems with verifiable dishonesty, either when buying or selling. A couple of times I've received used items with missing parts or flaws that could have been disclosed, but in those cases I'm reasonably satisfied that the seller didn't understand what they were selling well enough to even know what was missing or damaged. One case, e.g., was a Swedish tapestry loom, shipped disassembled by the sister of a deceased owner. It was missing a couple of components that are important for some uses of the tool, utterly irrelevant for others. No doubt the original owner set them aside, and they didn't get reconnected by the selling sister.

The eBay scams I have seen have originated on Craigslist. People selling high end stuff (tractors, industrial quality tools) with a sob story, need for quick turnaround, and inexplicable desire to use eBay to pay for something they'll ship you upon payment. I actually had an extended email exchange with one such scammer a couple years ago when looking for a tractor. Had one of my guys in cyber security at work track his location down. He was "selling" a John Deere tractor for about 1/3 its market value, ostensibly from a suburban lot in Council Bluffs, IA, but actually from somewhere in Nigeria. Insisted that we use eBay Auto to pay for it, and had a very nicely faked form for the payment. I kinda admired the way he talked my location out of me before disclosing the supposed location of the tractor (it had to be far enough away from me to make a drive out to see it not make sense, but close enough for the CL posting to have made sense), and the professionalism of the fake documentation.

[Kev Williams]

Someone on page 1 mentioned hackers. I ran into one once, found out inadvertently; I found something I wanted to buy (I think it was a laser engraver), price was great, but it wasn't cheap. So I asked the seller a question... I got an email back, looked pretty official, 'seller' answered my questions, including options on how to pay. In the email was a link 'back to the item listing'. The status bar 'confirmed' it was an ebay link. But since I don't like clicking links in emails, I looked for the item listing number in the email, there wasn't one. Because it wasn't cheap and I intended to buy, I took some screen shots of the ad pages and pictures.. After finding the item number in one of the pics, I searched it on ebay. Turns out it didn't exist. The search page screenshot showed the ad sandwiched between 2 similar items, a new search found the same actual items but not the hacker's item between them, or anywhere else. Don't know how he/they managed to insert a bogus ad right on their website, but they obviously were good at it. Still glad I didn't click that link...

And, about 3 months ago I bought what was supposed to be a decent graphics card for one of my computers. Price was very good, but what I got was a Chinese knockoff.

I've bought a few off-the-wall tools off ebay, like last summer I got a gimbal bearing remover/installer tool set, made by a machinist, worked fantastic, but if buying new in the box name-brand tools, I'll usually just hit the store...

[Edwin Santos]

Mike.



In regards social media; a quick search on google with the terms eBay "scammed on eBay " brings up 12,600,000 results. "eBay scams" brings up 48,500,000 results

Search "Stories about ebay scams" returns 1,380,000 results.
Search " News stories about ebay scams" returns 1,840,000 results

Search "Lawsuits against ebay" returns 1,760,000 results



If you put into Google "Ebay is great" it returns 451,000,000 results.

[Mark Hennebury]

That's funny.

You know maybe there are a 100,000,000 trades per day on eBay and only say 10,000 people scammed per day. i don't know , neither do you. Its a great place if you are not one of the ones getting scammed.


If you put into Google "Ebay is great" it returns 451,000,000 results.

[Edwin Santos]

That's funny.

You know maybe there are a 100,000,000 trades per day on eBay and only say 10,000 people scammed per day. i don't know , neither do you. Its a great place if you are not one of the ones getting scammed.

So far I've been pretty lucky. Once I sold a hand plane to someone who claimed they didn't get it. The dispute ended up in the hands of FedEx to investigate which they did. It looked like the superintendent of the apartment building signed for it and from there things got murky so FedEx and I were off the hook and the buyer and his superintendent were left to duke it out.
As far as bad sellers, I'm sure they are out there but like I say, so far I've been lucky, knock on wood. I think it is important to look at both the rating and the number of ratings.

[Mark Hennebury]

Hi Edwin,

There are legitimate buyers and sellers that can be problematic. Misrepresenting stuff, not sending it, missing parts, stuff gets lost, lots of chance for arguments and angry situations that lead to disputes for sure, but that is not what i was referring to; what i was referring to was a totally different issue; The issue of scammers and hackers. Hackers get into legitimate accounts and use without the owners knowledge. they get customers contact info and send phony emails "from" ebay and "sellers" or post photos of equipment they don't have, on the hacked accounts, redirect your emails and funds and disappear. Ebay and the sellers are unaware of whats going on. These are, (a lot of the time) professional organised crime gangs operating from various parts of the world, and they go after big ticket items, Ducati motorcycles, sports cars, machinery etc anything where there is a large amount of money. They don't waste time on $100 items. It's not a dispute situation at all, as when they have your money they disappear, there is no one to argue with. So looking at someones ratings or numbers means you will only be easier to con if the account has been hacked, because you have lowered your guard and have a false sense of security due to the ratings. Like i said this is from my experience many years ago, and hopefully they have tightened things up a lot, and hopefully that kind of stuff doesn't happen any more.


So far I've been pretty lucky. Once I sold a hand plane to someone who claimed they didn't get it. The dispute ended up in the hands of FedEx to investigate which they did. It looked like the superintendent of the apartment building signed for it and from there things got murky so FedEx and I were off the hook and the buyer and his superintendent were left to duke it out.
As far as bad sellers, I'm sure they are out there but like I say, so far I've been lucky, knock on wood. I think it is important to look at both the rating and the number of ratings.

[Edwin Santos]

Hi Edwin,

There are legitimate buyers and sellers that can be problematic. Misrepresenting stuff, not sending it, missing parts, stuff gets lost, lots of chance for arguments and angry situations that lead to disputes for sure, but that is not what i was referring to; what i was referring to was a totally different issue; The issue of scammers and hackers. Hackers get into legitimate accounts and use without the owners knowledge. they get customers contact info and send phony emails "from" ebay and "sellers" or post photos of equipment they don't have, on the hacked accounts, redirect your emails and funds and disappear. Ebay and the sellers are unaware of whats going on. These are, (a lot of the time) professional organised crime gangs operating from various parts of the world, and they go after big ticket items, Ducati motorcycles, sports cars, machinery etc anything where there is a large amount of money. They don't waste time on $100 items. It's not a dispute situation at all, as when they have your money they disappear, there is no one to argue with. So looking at someones ratings or numbers means you will only be easier to con if the account has been hacked, because you have lowered your guard and have a false sense of security due to the ratings. Like i said this is from my experience many years ago, and hopefully they have tightened things up a lot, and hopefully that kind of stuff doesn't happen any more.

Mark,
Thanks for clarifying, I now see the point you were making. Generally speaking, I think I'm a little more optimistic about society than you are, but in support of your point I must confess that someone tried to hack my eBay account once. Luckily I had turned on two factor authentication which required a code sent to my phone by text message. They hacker did not have it so the most they could do was load up my cart with merchandise but not check out. My recommendation to everyone is to use two factor authentication. When doing so, it is still possible to be hacked, but it is exponentially more difficult for the hacker. Yes it's a pain because you have to have your phone handy, but it's worth the protection.

So yes, what you say is correct, it is very possible for a seller's account to be hacked. If it is an active, high volume seller, I would think the situation would not go on very long because they would know very quickly and report to eBay who would freeze the account or something. But in the meanwhile buyers could get taken.

Anyway my message - use two factor authentication!
And make sure the password you use for eBay is unique so that if your account were hacked and the hacker now has your email and password, they cannot use these credentials to get into other accounts.