I know that most of you are aware of the scams which have been used by fraudulent Ebay sellers registered in Indonesia and the far East. Beware. There has been an epidemic in Europe over the last few weeks. There have been several 'FreeListing' days and they try to come in when there's a lot going on.
Sorry if I'm teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, but if you are not already conversant with this scam, it goes like this:
A newly registered user (or a user with a very low 'manufactured' feedback rating) will offer a relatively high value item - bike, guitar, camera etc. He will either specify payment only by Western Union or else he will quote 'I will be in touch over payment'. Auctions tend to be short (3/5 Days max) and in Euros. Once the bidding is over he can ask for money and then if you send it, needless to say he disappears from the planet.
In one case I found an Italian seller claiming he had bikes which were available in London, whose descriptions and pictures had been lifted straight off a bona-fide collector's website in the US! So don't get your mouth watering over that unique Cinelli or Colnago until you've checked it out. If in doubt, do what I did and put the description into Google - It turned up with the exact match on the other site. Check your sellers out - if they have the bike, then they should be able to give you serial nos etc. Ask for a picture of another angle. If the seller says he's in the UK, get a phone number and ask one of us Brits to check it out. DON'T THINK YOU ARE SMARTER THAN THEY ARE. These sellers can be very plausible, especially when they think that you might just wire them a few thousand dollars.
Ebay is slow to get off the mark in these cases - I reported a dozen or so of these sellers (probably the same guy) and by the time they checked it out, the sellers had gone. Recently one seller has been caught for fraud as he put too much information on his Ebay registration, but on the whole its anonymous.
Sorry to take up time on CR, but it seems a lot of CR members are Ebayers and this is a growing problem.
David Blight
Exeter UK