TRAILER FRAUD ON EBAY

[Thesaurus]

As in the article written in Horse and Hound this week,I too regrettably was caught out by these scammers and would be very interested to hear from other people who have either been defrauded in this way or came close to it but backed out in time! I am now aware this has been going on for well over a year and is still continuing inspite of a great many complaints to ebay. I have written several letters to ebay and will continue to do so until I recieve some satisfaction from them,I feel some form of compensation should be paid as they seem to me to be profiting from these crimes,yet doing very little to protect their honest members.I would encourage anyone in my position to bring pressure to bear on ebay to do something about it.I have contacted BBC Watchdog too in the hope they will follow it up,if they were to recieve letters/emails from several people on this subject maybe something could be done.It would be interesting to hear which banks are being involved as these people are setting up accounts with fake id and adresses, thus the police have so far been unable to trace them.I read in one thread a mention of a russian sounding name on an account the same being so in my case but hyphenated with the british name of the ebay id they had stolen!

 

[perfect11s]

Its been going on for years not just trailers all sorts of things, lots of 0 feedback ones and ones without a town or district just say london, surely this makes most people suspisious and why would anyone buy a trailer of ebay without going to collect it and checking out the seller and the S/N of the trailer??? you could end up with anything or nothing, most genuine sellers will be happy for a winning bidder to email saying is it ok to come at weekend and bring cash or other arangement and you would surely atleast speak to the seller and sound them out before sending a deposit even.... sorry but these scams work because folk are gullible or greedy if its too good to be true it usealy is !!!

 

[Boxers]

What is the scam exactly? I have a trailer to sell and would most likely buy another one thro ebay.

I bought mine in 2008 thro ebay, but got the serial no, went to collect it and paid cash.

 

[Thesaurus]

Seller had 100% feedback,gave serial number of trailer,lots of photos and I was sent an ebay invoice so seemed much more kosher than you seem to think!

 

[Izzyella]

A couple of months ago there was this thread http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=549513 which explained how the fraud works. I was looking for a trailer and was contacted by a fraudster who had hacked a genuine advert and added his own contact details which the seller couldn't see when looking at his own advert on his account. The fraudster put something like 'for more details and better photos e.mail xx' in huge font in the middle of the description, I e.mailed for more details and he then began privately messaging me in convincing language eg. he was keen that everything go through e.bay and paypal so we would both have protection (except I would have lost this protection as soon as he immediately forwarded the funds to another account). Clever, and I can see how people are taken in.