The Australian On-Line Auctions Watch Dogs
|
The Australian On-Line Auctions Watch Dogs |
|
Safe
buying and selling on, online auction sites.
Most of the comments below are common sense but fraud is rampant on online auction sites and usually one or more of the following rules are broken. This article will mainly use ebay a examples as ebay is currently the main on line auction site.
Buying.
1. Know the Retail price for your item. Eg. If a dvd set is $95 to $115 at your local shopping center . You “WILL NOT” buy the same item for $50 or less on ebay including post as the seller will net some $35 after post and fees. You are getting a pirate copy if you get anything at all. Same applies to cars, electronics or anything, honest sellers can not sell at a loss, you will be the one that losses. 2. Do not trust feedback, many honest ebayers have their account passwords stolen ( see hi-jacks later). You are thus not dealing with that honest person but a scammer. Once you have won an item and it is over $400AU ask about escrow or pickup. An honest seller will have no problems with either payment method. 3. Do not trust Paypal , paypal claims only work if a seller has not cleaned out the paypal account you paid into. For overseas transactions the account will be empty before you can receive your item. Only use a credit card to fund paypal purchases, as you can always do a charge back against your paypal purchase. 4. Always check that bank details, paypal details and seller details match. Do not “EVER ” accept excuses for different names or addresses. You are buying from the person your money is going to. You have a legal right to be given an honest name, address and contact details for that person or company. Ebay will not help you if you do not buy. Every one buying on ebay will run into crooks, it is just a matter of time. So you will need to keep creating new buying accounts as any more than 2 non paying strikes will get you barred from ebay. Just park old Ids and buy with new one till it too has two stikes. 5. Do not buy from “dropshipers” with research the deal they have if it is honest you can get better yourself as no ebay fees or sellers commission. Most dropshiping ends in buyer tears as many goods are shoddy or never sent. To see if dropshipper ask about pickup or escrow or if “seller” is in Melbourne but goods from Hong Kong run away. 6. Treat unknown sellers like a shady asian flea market , inspect , question and expect lies and inspect again. There are mostly good sellers on all online auction sites. It is the few rotten apples that spoil the barrel. Also be very vigilant when spending $500 but do not worry over $5. 7. Do not buy internationally till you are very familiar with the system, as phone contact now expensive and no legal fall back position available Anything to do with Indonesia , Africa, Eastern Europe, Russia, China and Taiwan run away do NOT walk RUN. 8. All items over $250AU from other countries are subject to Australian customs charges and GST on arrival here. So the $450Au camera from Singapore looks good compared to $700 at local shops. However traceable insured transport will be $50, GST will be $50 and customs $100 and no local warranty and no guarantee that parts will even be available in a year or two let alone service knowledge. Total is now a bad deal. 9. You will not buy cheap “REAL” Tiffiny Addidas or other brand names on ebay you will get good or terrible copies . You have been warned. NO exceptions. 10, If you have just one tiny misgiving question before paying, WAIT till you are 100% happy. Once you’ve paid you are 100% reliant on sellers honesty.
Selling and account safety.
A. NEVER EVER click on links in emails about any site. The email is an account stealer either stealing your password or loading spyware to steal as many accounts names and passwords as it can including Bank accounts. These are hi-jack emails and some are very believable and thousands YES thousands of people get caught every week. B. Never Surf the internet without virus protection, there are free virus protections such as AGV . Or any software you like. With out protection using windows operating system, you WILL get scammed. Not maybe, you are an accident waiting to happen. C. Never accept any escrow site except online auction site recommended. Do not discuss with scammers just report scammer to auction site and block scammer emails. D. Do not deal “OFF SITE”, on site deal, or no deal. E. Most second chance offers are real just go to site and see if listed on site when you sign in. If it is not listed on site, do not touch.!! F. Never EVER post item till money is CLEARED funds in your account. G. Paypal will believe buyer if non traceable ONLINE, transport used and you will one day, lose item and money. If buyer is overseas and amount over say $100 and wishes Paypal only charge on line traceable transport. No discussion or change payment to bank transfer or other non chargeable backable method. H. Birthday present or other fairy story to anywhere especially earlier mentioned problem countries NO NO NO. FULLY Cleared payment first ,and believe nothing, 99% YES 99% are scams. Relist item immediately you can always cancel auction for 1% that do pay. And is not stolen credit card et. I. Always quote post and or handling charge in any sale. Some people do expect the harbour bridge for free. Always list truthfully and define terms such as good or average. J. Feedback is the last thing in any transaction, feedback can not be altered, and there are feedback extortion bandits out there. Do not be petrified of bad feedback, there are nutters out there and some bad feedback shows a fair person. Your response to a nutter says more about your sanity and honesty, than any lie told. If you want examples of serial bad offenders on ebay look in bad sellers area here, at IDs " i_martstore " and multiple ids, also view " jonesco " and " lenycik" to see people who have scammed for years. For straight theft look at " fastsource "while not a hi-jack but a planned theft , scam displayed all the warning signs. Fastsource stole some $300,000 from about 120 people, some were experienced ebayers. I_martstore , lenycik and jonesco have stolen similar amounts but from some thousands of people over 5 years or more.
|
||
