Fake ebay ads

[oscar100]

there seems to be a lot of concern in various ebay ads about people selling gtrs they dont own and disappearing with teh money from ebay

anyone heard these stories?

any suggestion about guarding against it?

:rolleyes:

[dpeterson]

I've heard of stuff like that but thank god have never had it done to me. I usually just check feedback ratings, and try to strike up conversation via email with the person before i buy something big.

So far so good for me, i've only had one guitar i bought be mis-represented, I guess his idea of condition was different from mine, because it was beat. Same with a preamp i bought off of there too.. it looked like it was drug behind a truck down a dirt road. Both times, the deals were taken care of, one way or another.

Dave

[mwoeppel]

I spend FAR too much time on eBay. I've found this twice! Thankfully, I've never sent my money.

Red flags are low feedback and cash or money order as the only payment method.

I both cases, I won the auction, and when I contacted the seller, he gave conflicting information from the contact info that eBay has.

One time, an account got hijacked. I called the owner of the account, and he had no idea! That was easy.

The other time, the guy told me to send the money to new york, he didn't have a phone number - and the number he did give me was in Wisconsin! Oh - and the guitar was in Florida - I bailed, and the guy gave me negative feedback!

mark

My other new baby:

http://www.mfgexcellence.com/mark/droptopT.JPG

[mwoeppel]

sorry about the size of that! I'm still working on the download thing.

mark

[Tom Gross]

I saw my cobra in an ad on ebay once (the Tiger's eye from the Flame thread). Kinda freaked me for a second.
I wrote the guy and he edited the ad to say that the photo was not the actual guitar, just representative of it.

[MikeHil]

I too spend way too much time on eBay.

In the short amount of time I've been bidding, I found one questionable posting.

Unexperienced and bidding, I found an Anderson I liked, placed a bid but lost the auction. The seller contacted me shortly thereafter stating the original winner could not pay and was I interested.

Uncharacteristically (I'm a total impulse buyer), I asked for the serial #. The guitar I found on the Anderson webite was COMPLETELY different than the guitar I was bidding on. After confronting the seller, her final response was "well would you like to buy this one?". Obviously, I declined.

My unprofessional advice is:
Ask for serial #s, dates of purchase, condition of the item, review ratings carefully, etc. And not via e-mail / internet alone. Any seller with $1000+ worth of equipment should be more than willing to strike a dialogue.

[-CM-]

I haven't bought a lot off individuals from eBay, but when I do, I ask for additional pictures of the item from specific angles, and will ask for something common be put in the picture with the item, like a can of soda. I guess you can be really dramatic and ask for the current edition if the New York Times or something, but then they'd have to track one down.