E Bay Scammers

[narked bubbleblower]

Hello folks, I hope I am not teaching you all to suck eggs etc but I have noticed an increase in the amount of fake rebreathers for sale on ebay. The adverts are normally from china and have been blatently cut and pasted from genuine adverts. The ads are so blatent that a genuine diver with a smattering of knowledge will spot but I thought I'd better flag this up with everyone. The ads are similar in the following ways:
1/ Seller has combination of letters and numbers in name and zero feedback
2/ Sellers are from China
3/ Items have a unrealistically low 'buy it now price'
4/ The real ads are normally still on at the same time.
I hope this is of help and if you have some spare time sent the fraudsters some 'interesting' questions about what they have for sale (I think you get my drift!)
Keep Safe
Jonno

[PeteM]

Hello folks, I hope I am not teaching you all to suck eggs etc but I have noticed an increase in the amount of fake rebreathers for sale on ebay. The adverts are normally from china and have been blatently cut and pasted from genuine adverts. The ads are so blatent that a genuine diver with a smattering of knowledge will spot but I thought I'd better flag this up with everyone. The ads are similar in the following ways:
1/ Seller has combination of letters and numbers in name and zero feedback
2/ Sellers are from China
3/ Items have a unrealistically low 'buy it now price'
4/ The real ads are normally still on at the same time.
I hope this is of help and if you have some spare time sent the fraudsters some 'interesting' questions about what they have for sale (I think you get my drift!)
Keep Safe
Jonno

This is not just rebreathers and not just China, saw some recently for a TomTom Rider (motorbike sat nav) and one was based in Ireland.

Another thing to look out for is the reputation - make sure it looks real. The ones I came across recently all had reputations of 10, with the reputations all added on the same day at roughly the same time from buyers with random generated account names (asdf, lskdjfg, etc.) and buying dummy goods

[Jon H]

This is not just rebreathers and not just China, saw some recently for a TomTom Rider (motorbike sat nav) and one was based in Ireland.

Another thing to look out for is the reputation - make sure it looks real. The ones I came across recently all had reputations of 10, with the reputations all added on the same day at roughly the same time from buyers with random generated account names (asdf, lskdjfg, etc.) and buying dummy goods

There is alot of things like that on ebay and you have just got to watch it. i never buy anything off people with low rep. and there is a few from Thailand who sell fake products. usally a fake watch or ipod lookalike

[Matt-75]

I only ever buy stuff from people in the uk on ebay, and they need to provide an address for me. Most payments are done via paypal using a credit card, but on occasion i have used postal order or cheque for those people who dislike paypal.

Couple that with some computer intelligence (most people leave traceable clues eg email accounts, family websites) and i can usually verify them very quickly.

Only one guy has struck me as some sort of scammer in the UK, and he was flogging tons of Mares gear, and nothing else, based out of southern wales. Most of his stuff seemed to go back on ebay after the people who bought it received it. Which felt a lot like one of those ratings/bid scams, when a person and friend up the bid and if they win by accident just inflate the sellers stats. His ebay name was 'Happy' something or other. No idea if he just ordered a container full of gear from Mares, but it didnt look at all kosher from my side.