Buckeye1
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Upload & Sell: On
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TeamSpeed wrote:
Definitely raises suspicions... It does appear he had the equipment in the past, because he has sold and delivered a 14L and a 24L, neither low ticket items. He also had Nikon and Canon equipment in the past based on his pictures over the past 3 months. Most likely just a kid with access to a trust or family money, and wasn't raised with good online and market morals...
With his ID being banned everywhere due to the public raising flags, and paypal restricting his account due to disputes, if he needs the money and wants to sell his equipment legitimately, the community has made it nearly impossible to do so now. Looks like he tried to create a new ID in a couple boards and use other payment options, like an escrow service, because he doesn't have paypal as an option currently.
Tis' a shame, because a vast majority of transactions on this board and others are great, with all parties being winners. It just shows how a little due diligence on the part of the person that is about to send out money can go a long way, even if it means calling the person to talk to them. Email and PMs are the simplest and least secure form of any interpersonal communication, especially if you are trying to "get to know the person" before you ship off hundreds or thousands of hard-earned money.
In my local training, and on another board, I posted this sticky to help others. It is by no means complete and bullet-proof, but in 15 years of buying online, I have been the victim of scam-like transactions twice, once I got resolution immediately, and in the other, I ended up selling the items for enough to make up most my loss, and the seller eventually reimbursed the remainder.
These steps were developed over time, and have helped me identify some interesting scams before falling victim. In some cases, I have had the seller's personal info (personal interests, family member names, their address, etc) all ready for them as we discussed the transaction, and it helped identify holes in their stories. I only needed their payment ID, name and some idea of location, and the internet provided the rest. If no online presence exists, then I don't buy.
If people think this is of value here on FM, I could create a new post with this, and others can add their thoughts too. The old cliche holds so true in this matter, "the best offense is a good defense", and you cannot rely (nor should have to) on board owners to protect you from others, even though some boards add tools that are quite helpful, and are the envy of other boards. This hopefully provides some useful tips to help folks be a bit more self-protective.
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Since it comes up quite a bit, here is a compilation of steps you can take to check before you buy from a place that has prices that "seem to good to be true", as well as questioning an Ebay feedback result. If there is any use for this long-term, maybe the mods can find it in their hearts to sticky it. I am happy to keep it updated as time allows.
Ebay Sellers
1) Create separate buy accounts and sell accounts (you need two separate email accounts). This protects your negative feedback from retaliatory feedback hurting your sell account, and frees you up to leave honest to goodness feedback for a seller. <EDIT: no longer valid since Ebay changed the policy where a seller cannot leave negative feedback>
2) Check the seller's withdrawn feedback count on their feedback page. If more than a few, question that seller's integrity, there is almost no reason for large numbers of withdrawn feedback, you can count on those to be negative, nobody withdraws positive feedback.
3) Use www.toolhaus.org and put in the seller's id, check the negative feedback and also check how much positive they leave, and the content of both types of feedback to get a feel for the character of the seller. You can also filter feedback with the Ebay user profile screen, under the feedback grid for 30 days, 6 months, 1 year, etc for positive, neutral and negative, you can click the counts to get the details.
4) Check the seller's historical offerings by clicking any of the item links that are still active, get a feel for whether the seller has sold big items or many small items. If all small, and now they are selling a large item, beware.
5) If no activity for a long period of time, then there is a rash of large items for sale, beware, it might be a hijacked account.
6) Contact the seller for the item you are interested in, build a dialog to see how you feel about that person, ask some very technical questions about the item to see if they know anything about it.
7) Google the seller ID and add "scam" and "ebay" to the search, for instance, barclaysphoto scam ebay, and check out the results. Do the same for "bait" and "switch", for instance barclaysphoto bait switch ebay.
Forum Sellers or Buyers
1) Look at the seller/buyer posting count, also their registration date under their public profile page. Look at their prior posts to get a feel for what the person seems like as an individual. Are their posts helpful, or nothing but "nice shot", "great capture", etc, and then blam, they start posting sale items once their probationary period is over? If they are not a well-established member, you might want to follow up with one or more of the following pointers.
2) Look to see if the forum offers some sort of positive feedback thread
3) Ask the seller/buyer for other forum references, like Ebay, from FredMiranda.com, etc, then repeat steps 1 and 2 there to follow up. If an ebay reference is given, try using the "ask member a question" feature in ebay by entering their ebay id on this page (http://hub.ebay.com/community) and following through to get to the question area. See if they respond and can verify they are the same person as on the forum. Also read through their feedback, and reference some of the bulleted items above under the Ebay Sellers section.
4) Before sending or accepting (ie. sending the goods) paypal payments, take their email address they give for the payment and google it. Make sure nothing really negative shows up. Google their forum ID as well, many folks use the same community name across forums. See what others have to say elsewhere.
5) Keep in mind that many forums have policies where they will not act as the police in your transactions. It is up to you to do the research and if you do get scammed, there is little to nothing that forum leadership can do to help you recoup your money back. It is your responsibility to do the necessary research and use proper protective techniques like credit cards with protection plans, etc to help you should something terrible happen in your dealings online.
6) It is very wise to ask for photos of the items in question if you are the buyer, this is handy for detecting hijacked accounts. Sure the person at the other end can find images on the web and pawn them off as their own, but then you can maybe check the EXIF to see the date of the photo, etc.
7) Certainly ask for a phone number to call the person if you are still unsure, sometimes you can get a really good feeling (or bad) from how they respond to this question, and then again if you actually are able to talk them on the phone. Sometimes there is no substitute for person to person contact, especially in our electronic "text it and forget it" world.
Online Vendors
1) Check the boards for a particular reseller, some boards have stickies of vendors/sites to NOT do business with.
2) Check www.resellerratings.com for the online website for a community view on that seller
3) Google the website and add "scam" or "bait" and "switch" to the search, for instance, priceritephoto.com scam or priceritephoto.com bait switch and check out the results.
4) In mid-2009, there has been some legal ramifications to these shops, read about it here.
Metaphor of how your purchase will proceed with these bait and switch shops[/size]
You buy the hamburger at the convenient and legitimate looking drive-through.
They call you out of your car into the fast food joint to confirm your .99 hamburger purchase. This should be your first clue...
While they have you at the counter, they conveniently remind you that in order to eat the hamburger, you need the bun and condiments.
You say, "What!? Those are included in a hamburger purchase, it is the way they are made".
They say "who knows better what is included, us or you? Do you want the buns for $2.99, the condiments for $1.99? And right now there is a special on the pickle for $.49".
You say "no, you will just take the hamburger and buy your own buns and condiments".
They say, "oops, somebody just sold that hamburger, it is no longer available, would you like one of the other available specials?".
You say "no" and stand at the counter for 3 hours to get your .99 refund back and disgustedly leave.
Payment-Related Suggestions
1) Remember that you hold all personal responsibility for how you send payment to the recipient. Nobody else outside that transaction is to blame if you lose your money on a bad deal.
2) There are many forms of payment, but the most popular to pop up is Paypal personal payments (otherwise known as Gift, money owed, etc). Think of this as no different than sending straight unadulterated cash to a recipient via uninsured, unregistered first class mail. Would you do this if you trusted the person at the other end? Sure. Would you do this if you don't know the other person but really want in on a good deal? Your call, but also your responsibility.
3) Look at all the alternatives when you make a payment: Paypal, Paypal Personal/Gift, Paypal Masspay, Money Orders, Checks, Google Checkout, Chase Quickpay, and many other options.
4) Many will suggest to make sure your payment through paypal is done via a credit card in order to garner other protections. A good idea, but be sure you know your credit card account terms, and the Paypal terms.
5) If you send money via Paypal personal gift payment, Paypal will almost never help you, and you certainly cannot pin blame on the forums or others outside the transaction for having sent that to an unknown party. Always double-check the seller's reputation first and foremost, then decide whether you would send cash to the person with no traceability for the item, and if the answer is yes, then using Paypal personal payments is really no different.
6) If the seller and buyer both don't want to budge on the paypal gift idea, perhaps the two could compromise and split the fees down the middle. I personally have used paypal personal payments with no issues at all, but I have also split fees with buyers in the past, as well with sellers. This leaves the normal Paypal protections in place, for what they are worth.
Motto to Live By
GREED or LUST for new equipment or a spectacular deal makes people do crazy things! Take some time and think about what you are about to do especially if it is a high-dollar item! Also ask yourself whether you could continue to make ends meet, if for some reason that money were to disappear and you received nothing. In the end remember that you, and you alone, were the one to send the money out the door, and that is a decision you ultimately have to live by.  ...Show more →
Thanks for taking your time to write this up, TeamSpeed. As a human being, we all look for things to justify our own view of things especially when we feel that we have been wronged. Unfortunately, we "assume" many things as well to make us feel justified in our anger. I have done it, and likely do it agian...not saying it is right though. It is just a hard place to be when you know someone scammed you and may get away with it.
I do see your point regarding Ryan's situation with Paypal as that has happened to me before. Paypal will hold the money until the buyer receives the goods. If I recall, in some cases, the buyer needs to submit a good feedback (eBay) before the money is released. If the buyer files a dispute because it does not meet their expectations, then the seller is now without money nor his own gears. In my case, I decided not to ship and refunded immediately.
Perhaps Ryan's mistake was that he did not refund immediately, and he did not help himself by not responding, among many things, like prank call or even threaten one buyer that he will not get his money back because he was complaining too much.
He may very well be a victim of Paypal policy, but he also made many feel that they are the victims by his actions or non-action. Some of you may attack me now that I associated him being the victim, please don't do that  I am just pointing out possibilities with him and Paypal. I totally understand your frustration and anger. Hope everyone get their money back.
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Archive 2013 · Warning: DanAnda - Scammer!
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Glad to hear you got your money back.