Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who writes:
There’s been a new flurry of these posts on eBay, always the WJ 8711A. These items have prohibited listing practices, and should be ignored — definitely not something to bid on. I have reported these on numerous occasions to Ebay, which has expressed appreciation, but they keep coming back. Location is often listed as Pennsylvania, and other states.
Example of item title
And they can’t even get the spelling right!
Thank you for the heads-up and warning, Dan!
It’s frustrating and I assume it’s a scammer who has hijacked valid eBay seller accounts. The seller above, for example, has 16,000+ feedbacks 99.7% positive. TIn every way, the top of the listing appears to be valid.
But if you scroll down the page, you’ll find this message:
Let’s be clear: If you ever see the message above, you are viewing a fraudulent eBay listing!
The scammer actually embeds the convoluted BuyItNow message above as a graphic in the eBay listing. This makes it difficult for eBay to automatically find the scammers and delete the postings.
Many thanks, Dan, for apprising us of the situation.
I avoid any auction on Ebay that the seller doesn’t want you to email them through ebay but directly through another email address. That means they don’t want Ebay to have a paper trail to use against them. Don’t walk, but run away from those listings.
Spot on! If they’re trying to redirect you around eBay’s message system, they’re up to no good.
All of this is very useful to Ebay and I hav e directed them to this article
Right now it seems eBay have clobbered the listing in the post – but I’ve just reported 3 other near-identical ones.
Yeah, it’s hacked accounts. They seem to target sellers with big stores, high turnover, & high feedback; presumably they figure the real seller won’t notice a few fraudulent listings amongst 1000 real ones. The same scam has been going on for months, but the product varies – a few months ago it was McIntosh amplifiers, Sony & Krix speakers, basically anything high-end. And looky looky, those same 3 sellers also have the same fraudulent listings for McIntosh amps. Guess I’ll go and report them too…
(Actually, on closer examination it looks like the scammer is posting more fake listings to one of the stores at this very moment now – lots of cameras, projectors, etc. I’ll try and explain to eBay via chat right now…)
There has been another pattern that I have seen where ebay accounts of reputed sellers are hacked or new account are created.
Then items are put on sale at very lucrative/ridiculous prices. The items are carefully selected to be sought after/collector items. I have seen/purchased film camersa/ films/ lenses and in this case communications receiver. The buyers are quick to pay for the items in case of lucrative deals.
I suspect the hackers are doing these to harvest PayPal email addresses, preferably with high paying power /funds. Then they may try to somehow hack these accounts. This is purely my theory. I may be completely wrong here,. (Alternately they may be trying to cheat PayPal for the funds they receive.)
Sooner or later of course eBay notices and shut it down but hackers have what they needed by then.
P.S.. Take all this with a pinch of salt though.
EBAY CONCIERGE RESPONDED AS FOLLOWS: “…we have noticed the pattern and know what is going on. It is definitely not the right way to sell on eBay and we will make sure it is reported and fixed as soon as possible….I want to thank you….for reporting this to us…This is not something we catch too often because it is a sly way to avoid being caught but it is definitely not allowed on eBay.”