I think most of the internet user hear and know what eBay is, eBay is an online auction website with the most items listed on their side. Basically you can find anything you want at eBay from the smaller items until the biggest items. If you plan to start buying at eBay and never used eBay before, you may not know that it is relatively easy to fall victim to an eBay scam. While eBay is considered a safe place to shop online, there are still a number of eBay scams that you should be on the lookout for. Knowing what these scams are, before you start shopping on eBay, will help to reduce or completely eliminate your chances of becoming a victim.
What is scam? Scam is defined as a ploy by a shyster to raise money. Those who scam we call them as scammer. Scammer are everywhere in this world, email scam, pyramid scam and including eBay scam. Why eBay got scammers? This is because almost everyone that have internet connection and eBay account can start selling in eBay, this make it is possible for scammers to setup a trap or scam and wait for innocent shopper to fall in. Here are few types of common eBay scams:
Selling Item That They Don’t Even Have
This type of scam involves selling a product that the seller doesn’t even have. This type of scam sometime difficult to spot, but there are sign that you should look for. When selling or start an auction on eBay, that seller should have the picture of the item or items that they are selling plus at least accurate descriptions. Most of the items should have a genuine photo, taken by the seller (why most not all? Because some of the digital products can’t take the picture of it in real world), If not, you may need to think twice before making decision to purchase, as it may mean that the seller isn’t even in possession of the item or items that they trying to sell to you.
Lying on the Item That They Try To Sell
Besides selling item that doesn’t even have, another common eBay scam involves lying on the items that they do have. For instance, they are small number of eBay sellers who claim that they have an item, example PS3, which in brand new condition, but isn’t always. It is not uncommon for some eBay seller to strength the truth little bit. Unless you are very experience on purchase in eBay, you may not found it out until it is too late. It is recommended that not only purchase item from eBay sellers that have genuine pictures but at the same time have to examine those pictures carefully.
Scam for Your Personal Information
Some of the seller might tell you that they need your credit card information in order to complete the purchase; you SHOULDN’T give out any personal information to any eBay sellers as there is not sure rule to provide personal information in order to complete the process in eBay, whether you pay by PayPal, personal check or money order.
Another common eBay scam that involves is trying to get your personal information is phishing. With phishing scam, the scammer will send out an email that looks like from eBay or PayPal. The email is often accompanied with a message stating that there is something wrong with your account either eBay or PayPal that you need to click on the provided link to sign in and fix it. This is a scam. What they trying to do is to get your eBay or PayPal account information. Once that has been done, they may have the ability to log into your account and get your personnel information that stored in the account, or transfer your PayPal account money to their own. There is one way to detect whether this email is genuine or not by checking on whether your registered real name got stated in the email or not. Usually genuine eBay will stated Dear XXX(your registered name) and phishing email only will stated Dear eBay member. If still not sure, please log into your account directly not through any link provided in the scam email.
The above mentioned eBay scam just only few type of the common eBay scam that you may run across. Although there are scammer that trying to scam you, but the chances of failing victim to a scam on eBay are actually quite low as long as you purchase with caution.
Tags: buyer, buyers, ebay, email scam, phishing, scam, scammer
