eBay CDJ 2000 scam; my personal experience.

[loverocket]

have you never heard the saying, if its too good to be true, it probably isnt?

nope, actually never heard that one before.

[sss18734]

Man... props to eBay for refunding you your money in a timely fashion. That's just awesome. You learned your lesson and didn't have to pay a dime for it.

[KarbonNY]

Hi all,

I was recently the victim of a rather stressful, eBay scam that attempted to suck me out of £1700 of my year's CDJ savings. I thought I'd document my experience here as it may be useful to others unsure about buying from eBay and how the process actually works should anything go wrong when doing so.

Essentially, I had been watching the eBay market for a while for a pair of CDJ 2000 Nexuses as I wanted to buy second hand and I knew eBay provided cover, so it seemed wiser than buying through Gumtree/Craigslist like I normally do. The average 'bargain-price' I saw coming up was just under £2000 so I thought that would be a good region to look in when I had finished saving.

Low and behold when I reached the £1700 savings mark, a pair of CDJ 2000s came up for £1700. The ad checked out, decent photos and description and the guy had 100% positive feedback from many buyers. I noticed that the seller wanted to use standard delivery, so I contacted them requesting that if I committed to the auction they send the item tracked and insured. The seller quickly responded, explaining that he would send them insured and tracked, any any damage/loss during transit would be his responsibility to sort out with the courier and that I could expect the item in 3 days if I bought them. I was so overjoyed that I could finally have the CDJs that I'd been longing for for so long that I committed to the auction without being as thorough as I would usually be (I've also been using eBay for 8 years without a hitch so had grown to trust the site).

Around 5-6 hours after phoning all my friends telling them how I excited I was to finally have some CDJs on the way, I suddenly had a thought 'I wonder if this guy is selling any other gear so cheap', this led me to look at his previous sales history. It was when I checked this that I really started to panic, every single one of the seller's previous sales were of amounts of less than £1, generally sim cards. I figured that it was highly suspicious so tried to contact the seller to no avail. Shortly following this I noticed that 2 other almost identical ads to the one that I had 'paid for' came up from similarly-named sellers with a similar selling-history.

At this point I was 90% sure I was being scammed, so I contacted eBay with my concerns pleading with them to cancel the deal, however they explained that once purchased, unless you work something out with the seller before they send the item, you must wait until after the last expected date of delivery. Even though I had contacted the seller earlier and had confirmation from him that the item would be arriving within 3 days, the ad still claimed they would be sent standard delivery which in my case was 8-10 working days (this worked out as 2 and a half weeks), and this is the value which eBay use. So on their advice, I pleaded strongly to the seller to cancel the sale, again to no avail.

Essentially from here on, all I could do was wait patiently until either something arrived or if nothing arrived, until the last expected delivery date. It was an extremely stressful time for me as that money represented a lot of hard graft (I'm a full time student that works part time in a supermarket to pay for my accommodation and DJing). In this time I spent a lot of time talking to eBay on the phone, trying to work out what I would do in every eventuality, trying to calm my nerves. It's worth nothing that every single eBay representative I spoke with answered all of my questions, was extremely pleasant and paid (or at least convinced me that they were paying) genuine personal interest in my story. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't do anything music related for being so stressed, I felt totally helpless and upset.

eBay disclosed to me on the phone that if something arrived that wasn't what I ordered, I would need to contact them immediately (something like within 48 hours) with evidence of what it was compared to the ad. Because of this information, I became unbearably stressed when not at home, so took the decision to become a recluse at every opportunity until the case was sorted out.

Anyway, after about 2 and a half weeks of agonising waiting, nothing had showed up and I was finally able to open a case against this guy. I filed a case online detailing what had happened and sent it off. Incase you don't know how an eBay buyer protection case works, it's goes like this:

1. Buyer has a problem, files a case against the seller
2. Seller has 8 days to completely satisfy the buyer (buy providing a refund, replacing the product etc)
3. If the seller is not satisfied after the 8 day period, eBay step in and sort out matters themselves

In line with the rest of the seller's behaviour, he did not respond to this case at all, which meant I had another 8 agonising days of waiting before, as eBay put it, eBay would 'make a decision about what to do'. At the end of these 8 days, I received a letter from eBay saying my case was taking 'longer for them to sort out than usual'. This lead to another 2 days of waiting to hear what was going to happen to my money.

FINALLY, after almost a month after my first complaint about the ad, eBay sent me a refund themselves. I was told that eBay would be taking action against the seller, though I feel like this will amount to nothing more than banning his eBay account, which is no where near enough for the successful robbery of £1700, however I have my money back and can't be bothered with the entire predicament any more.

I feel like I was extremely lucky to get this money back, as eBays decision was in my favour this time however next time I might not be so lucky.

TLDR;
Don't go food shopping whilst hungry, it's dangerous

Send is a link of a user!!! Thankfully you got your money back I had something like this happen to me where I ordered a nav unit for my car and it was broken when it arrived so long story short after a month of having my eBay case open the seller not responding to any messages eBay said I would have to return the item after we agreed for a full refund with no return needed, and then two weeks after that I had to finally call the resolution center to get the case reversed bc they favored in me returning the item after I invested money to fix it.. People are such scum, I hope this doesn't make you not use eBay anymore

[JJDShrimpton]

Hey all, thanks for your responses.

Man... props to eBay for refunding you your money in a timely fashion. That's just awesome. You learned your lesson and didn't have to pay a dime for it.

Yeah I learned a lot from this experience, it was absolute torture waiting for it to clear but it all worked out in the end. I'm not trying to convince anybody not to use eBay, just trying to give a real story of how things felt at the time and how the system works for those that are unsure as at the time of purchasing the 'item' myself I was totally naive as to the eBay buyer protection protocols.

Just be wise and know what you are getting yourself into before you do.

[Balmain]

I've done something related.

I used a mail-proxy in the USA to ship me an order to EU (because the company did not send anything outside the USA) ... and to be honest, when i paid through paypal (yes everything was through paypal I know it's safe) ... but I was so scared, the website looks like scamlikewebsite, and a lot of ppl were saying bad thing about this company on internet (even on Google Maps I couldn't find it, it was in the middle of nowhere in Illinois (but just because the company was too young and the last update too old).

And finally everything found its way hom to daddy, but until then I was soo scared, ok it wasn't £1700, it was "only" £500 but still.

Hopefully you got your money back, and now learn from your mistakes young padawan.

[Quenepas]

Yup. eBay do have some scammers. I tried getting a Shure SM53 and finally found a pretty good deal from a vendor in China. I usually dont buy stuff from China since 99.9% of the time it will be a knock off but for $15 I bit.

After 3 weeks the package arrives. When I opened it, it was a pirated copy of Microsoft Office 2003 with a (badly) printed hologram with the serial key. I was like WTF?! so when I get to check the buyer feedback (all positive to that date) all the other buyers feedback went like "SELLER IS A SCAMMER! I BOUGHT an XXX GOT AN OFFICE CD?!". Paypal rapidly returner the money but I got really weary of overseas deals.

Another word of caution, eBay protects the buyer WAY more that it protects the sellers. If you sell something and you do not provide a tracking number the buyer can say "didnt got it" and they will get the money back to buyer and you will be without money and item. I have sold stuff internationally since oversea buyers would usually pay more (maybe since no one is willing to ship there?) and (knock on wood) have had no issues. Just be aware of countries that dont have proper tracking for shipments.

[DJSigma]

Buyers are well protected on eBay as long as they pay with PayPal and pay attention to the time limit for making a claim.

It's much easier to get scammed if you're a seller that isn't clued up to eBay's rules. What I do is this: -

With regular first class mail in the UK, you're covered for up to 100 times the value of a first class stamp if mail goes missing. So for cheap items, I just send them first class and get a proof of posting (which doesn't cost any extra), then if it goes missing I can put in a claim with the Royal Mail.

For items that don't fit into the above category, but sell for less than £150, you need to use tracked mail. A tracking number is enough to prove that an item is delivered in the case of a PayPal claim.

For items over £150, you need to use a signed-for delivery method that allows you to see the signature, because a tracking number is not enough for PayPal to side with you if the buyer says "I didn't get the goods!".

The are still ways to get scammed even if you're careful. For instance, if you offer a return policy and the buyer takes advantage of that, they have to ship the goods back to you using a tracked method. The vast majority of people don't check the contents of packages before signing for them, so some scammers will ship you back a box that doesn't have the goods in it, but once you've signed for it you've said "yep, I received the goods back" as far as PayPal are concerned. If you stick to shipping only to confirmed addresses (which you should be doing really!) then it's highly unlikely to happen to you.