Sony SCD-1 on ebay - too good to be true?

Was having a mooch around Ebay and saw an interesting ad for a Sony SCD-1, starting bids at £700.... so I am wondering if this player + Audiocom mods may be what I'm looking for.

Not much info in the advert but low prices, seller has no feedback.

So I email....
Question from eBay Member: SONY SCD-1 SACD Player (brand new) (3820797041)

Will it be possible to pick this item up in person and pay cash? If not how much will postage to Edinburgh be? Will it be possible to pay by Escrow? Do you have any photos of the actual unit?

And the response i get back is: (his capitals)
HELLO,

SIR,I'M LOOKING TO GET 1000£ FOR IT.
I DO NOT HAVE ESCROW ACCOUNT,BUT THAT IS NOT NECESARY.
ALL I NEED IF YOU TO PROF ME YOU HAVE THE MONEY 1000£ AVAILABLE AND I WILL SHIP THE SONY TO YOU FIRST.

LET ME KNOW!!!

Anyone feel comfortable with this?

 

nope

First thing i noticed is he says "1000£", now i may be wrong but most people i have seen who are British would write it like this -£1000, and yet 'alledgedly' he is in London. Im sure putting the money simbol after the amount is from other countries.
Besides all that, a zero feedback seller trying to sell a high value item rings alarm bells for me

 

sorry,i would stay well clear

if he wont discuss cod then you HAVE to presume its dodgy

it smells very fishy inho

 

No - I am not going to touch this one with a bargepole - in fact I was wondering how to go about reporting a suspected fraud on ebay!

Anyway, there are 2 others on ebay that seem genuine, one looks equally dodgy in the advert but I've been in touch with the seller and it turns out he lives 5 mins from me and he's happy for me to have a look/hear at it in his home before the end of auction.

 

It's remarkably hard work - I've done it with a few where an Audiogon advert was ripped off for details and pictures etc., and all you seem to get is an endless stream of automated responses. All the auctions were pulled eventually though, so it did work out.

 

Alanbeeb!!!!

Right listen close....

If the seller has 0 feedback and a starting price that is ridiculously low, then don't even bother contacting them. They can't talk English, love Western Union and will do anything to get your money including saying cash on delivery from UPS and sending you bricks! Yes report them for fraud but I doubt their ad will last over a day anyway.

NEVER NEVER deal with these people they are fraudsters and that's the simple fact of it.

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Slightly unrelated stuff....

Ebay are bizzare, they allow you to list if you can find an email address that is not registered in their blocked list, it took ages for them to shut down free Yahoo accounts. What I don't understand and I still don't is you must pay to list goods (unless I'm being rather stupid), how are they paying for the listing!??? If they are paying through the banks then they are tracable and ebay has no excuse for not cracking down on this..... Anyone know?

 

Don't worry - there was no chance I was ever going to take this one seriously.

I have reported this one to ebay through some links that allowed me to report "didn't bid but suspect a fraudulent listing" but no-one has got back in touch and I think the ad is still going. It only has about a day left to run.

What worries me is that there are two people bidding on this item - both of them relative newbies. Should I contact them to warn them of a potential fraud? If I did this might I be open to defamation action by the seller in the extremely unlikely event they are legitimate?

 

contacted them would be very charitable imo,as Tim says,this looks as dodgy as dodgy gets

 

The listing has been withdrawn.... I sent notes to the bidders but looks like ebay took some action.

 

is it me or are there more and more of these nowadays?

this one is the same

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3280&item=5704374550&rd=1

like someone will "wire transfer" (whatever that is) to Tiga,wherever that is

Ebay are going to need to ask for membership soon,via checkable emails

 

Every other thing I see on ebay seems to be like this. its completely spoiling it especially for genuine newbies - everybody's got to start somewhere and if you are a newbie with nice kit you are trying to sell its almost impossible on ebay because no-one will trust you.

I have just been to see another SCD-1 that is on ebay, the chap has never listed on ebay before but he's completely genuine - but his listing is somewhat naive. I doubt anyone will bid on his item, unless I make up my mind to do so. And then he'll never use ebay again, and if more people do that there will not be any decent bargains to be had there.

 

Tim F, as an EBay seller the way the fees system works is that you pay them at the end of the month. You do register a bank account with EBay for paying the fews, but you can also pay through your debit/credit card so I suppose they could be scamming those details as well. Which is more than likley as my mother recently had a fake email purporting to be from Ebay asking for confirmation of all her details i.e password/bank account/credit card no.s, basically they were 'phishing' EBay members hoping one would be stupid enough to give them details allowing them to rip off their bank account or abuse their EBay account. As for checking for fraud, there must be thousands of items listed on a daily if not an hourly basis with EBaY so catching every fraudulent ad is nigh on impossible, unless it is clearly a blatant fraud. Hence they rely on people like alanbeeb to alert them to such ads.

Alanbeeb, I agree about the difficulty in starting on Ebay but if you present the item in the right way i.e clear photos, accurate description, proper spelling and grammar then people will be more willing to take a punt. Before I started selling on EBay I looked at all the similar items and got an idea of how to sell my items. I also bought a few items before attempting to sell so I had some feedback to indicate that I was honest enough to honour transactions with other EBay members (plus I did want the stuff I won/bought ).

BL21DE3

P.S Sorry for the length.

 

Thanks for the reply. Makes lots of sense. However, in the real world there is a solution to just about every problem going and this could be solved. Someone should be paid by Ebay to come up with a method of ensuring that listings are legit, it's so lazy not to do this.... I'd think of something myself if they were paying.

But who is Ebay? Just a faceless company I think. (reminds me of DABS!).

Tim

 

some of them could be genuine, but these 'dodgy' sellers are not too bright, the way to spot them a mile off is they use broken pidgeon english, always say you will collect if you suspect dodgy...cod, ask for a phone no., and they usually say I ship free, tax free, something like that.its always invarialby 'desibable' high value items, too. again obviously check feedback. never be taken in, always do research first, don't rush in, no matter how much you want one. there will always be another.

 

Just as a follow-up. I also come across quite a few of these scammers. To my mind - rule 1. apply common sense - high value item, low feedback, pidgeon english, will not allow you to pay cash on collection = avoid. rule 2. bother to report them to eBay and bother to contact other people who have bid on such items.

At the end of the day eBay have limited liability. I wouldn't moan to the Exchange and Mart if I got ripped off by someone advertising something in it? eBay relies on the generally positive and helpful member community looking out for each other, yep its convenient for eBay, but then if I ran eBay its likely I would follow a similar balance of duties versus provisions.

 

The giveaway is Western Union,don't these African scammers realise we don't actually use this service in the UK? Mind you,if they ever ask for luncheon vouchers they might start having some success,

 

Just as an aside my investigations threw up that lots of these scams seem to originate from Romania and Italy.

 

yep,they are on every page now,like this guy,who wants a collection,but wont let the buyer pay cash