A new type of eBay Scam that could bankrupt your business!
A new type of eBay Scam that could bankrupt your business!
Hello everyone and welcome to this weeks newsletter. This week I will be continuing
with my eBay theme and to be more precise, the eBay scam theme! I`ll just give
you a bit of background information first, last week I managed to accumulate
over £1,000 in eBay fee’s. None of these fee’s were genuine and were all
related to a new type of eBay scam that I became a victim of. Read on to hear
the full story.
Last Thursday (3rd August) at around 5pm UK time I started receiving a large
amount of emails from eBay saying that one of my shop items had been sold. Great
I thought….but not so, the emails kept coming and coming so I quickly went
to the eBay item in question to take a closer look.
To my surprise around 50 of the items – priced at £44.99 each had all
been “bought” by the same bidder with 0 feedback. I quickly knew something
wasn’t as it should be so I blocked the bidder from bidding on any of my items.
That stopped the buying…..for now.
I logged off and then came back online the next morning, I loaded up my mail
client to find 375 unread mail messages from eBay, all saying that the shop
inventory item had been sold. The scammer had created another eBay account and
was doing the exact same thing, as this was going on I was in bed asleep so
I couldn’t block them from buying my listings.
/ / / / – – – / / / /
Auction SOS has now sold out of all but 1 of the bonuses at the time of writing.
Thanks to everyone that purchased, you helped to make the launch a huge success.
I am sure you liked your unadvertised bonus as well 😉
/ / / / – – – / / / /
I logged into my eBay and look what it showed:
This scam buyer had racked up over £20,000 in sale to my eBay account,
but obviously none of these items had been paid for BUT what happens about my
eBay fees? This is what happened to my eBay fees:
As you can see from the screen above, (or not as the case may be!) this scam buyer had managed to accumulate
over £1,200 in eBay fee’s to my account. I don’t have £1,200 in
my paypal account so I don’t know what would have happened if eBay decided to
charge me the fee’s. I guess I would have my eBay account suspended for avoiding
the fee’s, even though they were accumulated from fraudulent transactions?
The good news is that eBay have looked into the case and have banned all members
in question, they have also credited all fee’s to my account so no harm done
in the end. Plus it gave me something to write about in this weeks newsletter
😉
I should probably say these scammers should remain anonymous but screw them,
they deserve all they get. Take a look at the bidders list and I’m sure that
you will be able to see for yourself the damage this sort of scam can cause:
http://offer.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidsLogin&item=9520445880
If you have ever encountered a scam such as this, or any other scam involving
an eBayer that you would like me to cover then please leave a comment or get
in touch with me. I would be happy to cover your case. Remember that you can
also report all bad ebayers
and ebay scams on
one of my other websites – www.auction-arses.com
How would you go about combating this scam, to be honest I have no idea! I
can’t think of an obvious way to avoid this type of thing, if you have any suggestions
as always please feel free to leave a comment.
I’m now going to go slightly off topic but I know a lot of you are parents
so you will be interested in this information. Pat Graham, a keen newsletter
subscriber has put together some free reports on drug addiction in children.
These reports aim to give parents information about the problems and facts related
to drug addiction in children, it’s a serious problem that any of us may have
to deal with in the future so I’m sure these reports will give us some great
information. You can open the free reports in your browser by clicking on the
links, or to save to your PC right click on the link and select “Save target
as”:
Marijuana:
Some Facts Parents Need To Know
Salvia
Divinorum – Nature’s Legal Hallucinogen
I’m sure Pat would love to hear your comments so as always feel free to leave
your thoughts on this weeks newsletter and/or Pat’s free reports!
Auction SOS – Ebay Desktop Software is launched!
Finally, after almost 6 months of waiting Auction SOS! is available to the general public.
Today, on August 1st we launched Auction SOS!, don`t miss out on the Action grab your own copy of Auction SOS! today:
Getting your head around the new eBay UK store fees
Hello again everyone and welcome to my latest newsletter.
I`ve had a very busy week trying to get everything ready for the Auction
SOS! launch this coming Tuesday – August 1st 2006, I even managed to add
a neat little countdown timer to the page which I think looks very good!
Whilst I was beavering away with my Auction SOS! tasks I also received an email
that I`m sure a lot of you also received, it was about the new eBay store fee`s.
As some of you may already know, number crunching is a weak point of mine, so
these new fee structures may have well been written in Chinese for me! So I
have decided to work out – in simple terms this will do to our eBay fee`s. Here
we go –
The dreaded new eBay store fees 🙁
Last week I (like many of you) received a nice email from my good friends over
at the bay! This week my good friends informed me of some impending fee “restructuring”
that will effect eBay store/shop listings. If you didn`t get the email you can
read it here:
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/sell/importantinfo/
Looking through the new fee`s that will be implemented on August 21st you may
not think it looks all that bad, lets face it, 7p a month for a GTC (good til
cancelled) listing isn`t going to bankrupt any of us. HOWEVER what I feel is
most worrying is this section:
– – – – / / / – – – –
Auction SOS! is set to launch this Tuesday, I have opened up the free affiliate
program with a VERY special offer for my affiliates. Access the secret page
by clicking here,
but dont tell anyone!
You can also view a spy video by scrolling down the page, make sure you finish
reading the article first though 😉
– – – – / / / – – – –
As you may know I sell a couple of fairly high priced items from my eBay store
– these items sell for £44.99 and £39.99 respectivly. lets compare
the fee`s I will be paying before and after the changes: (Thanks to Paula Breet
for doing the maths!)
Old prices
@ £39.99
Insertion fee GTC – £0.03
total £0.03
FVF – 6.75% of first 29.99 = £2.02 plus 3.75%
of remaining (£10) = £0.37
total £2.39
New Prices from 21st Aug
@ £39.99
Insertion fee GTC – £0.07
FVF – 10% of first £4.99 = £0.49 plus
8% of initial £5.00 – £9.99 (£4.99) = £0.39
plus 6% of remaining (£30.00) = £1.80
total £2.75
Old prices
@ £49.99
Insertion fee GTC – £0.03
total £0.03
FVF – £2.02 plus £0.75
total £2.77
New Prices from 1st Aug
@ £49.99
Insertion fee GTC – £0.07
FVF – £0.49 plus £0.39
plus £2.40
total £3.28
Confused? I know I am! But hopefully those numbers will help you figure out
how these changes will effect your monthly eBay bill.
Why have eBay decided upon these changes??
For the reason eBay do most things, I decided to make an illustration to get
my point across 😉
Is there anything we can do about this? Probably not, there is a planned eBay
boycott on the official eBay discussion forums but I can`t see the big E changing
their minds, money talks!
http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?threadID=1200020686&tstart=0&mod=1153412518097
http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?threadID=1100015296&tstart=0&mod=1153412454231
Another alternative is to list on the american eBay.com, at the time of writing
the fee`s are not as high so you could list on ebay.com instead of ebay.co.uk,
no doubt the fee changes will be implemented there soon but for the time being
it may be worth trying that method.
Thanks for reading, I hope that I simplified the fee`s for you somewhat. If
you have any questions or comments then as always leave me a comment!
Keep an eye out for my email on Tuesday as Auction SOS! will finally be available
for you to purchase, and I have a few surprises in store for you early adopters
😉
Auction SOS! Preview Video
OK, I don`t want to do a big intro because I know you all want to see the video!
Click the link below to view the video:
Remember, this video is only showing off ONE of Auction SOS`s many features! More will be revealed in the coming days 🙂
Dealing with snotty eBay members
How to deal with snotty eBay customers
Greetings everyone, I hope you all survived the mini-UK heatwave. It looks like we are back to normal today so at least it gives me a chance to write this weeks newsletter for you! This weeks newsletter may turn into a “mini-rant” so please accept my apologies if it does!
This week I will be looking at how to deal with snotty eBay members. This all stems from an email I received earlier this week, I have dealt with snotty customers before but this one really got on my wick!
I`m sure you have all come across the problem with ebay/paypal and making payments to international sellers. When you try to pay using eBay`s checkout you will get a message saying:
“This transaction has been cancelled”
Usually eBay members are good enough to contact me about the problem, I then reply telling them the problem is with eBay and that you need to send payment manually to my paypal email address. This works fine for 99% of all cases but earlier this week I received this:
“Hi
You have a problem with your paypal account. I find this totally unsatisfactory and you should cancel the transaction immediately or I will report you too eBay and paypal.”
/ / / – – / / /
I have just released the first ever screenshot of Auction SOS. You can view it here:
https://elpassoblog.com/auction-sos-spy-screenshot-1
Remember if you aren`t on the Auction SOS launch list yet you will need to get your skates on! – www.auctionsos.com
/ / / – – / / /
I managed to bite my tongue with this eBay buyer and just sent the usual reply explaining what the problem was. They didn`t reply to the email and haven`t paid for the item, but that got me thinking why are people so snotty?
I don`t just sell on eBay, I am also a regular buyer. I often have problems with transactions so I email the buyer. NOT ONCE in my 5 years of trading on eBay have I ever sent a snotty email and I never will. Can somebody tell me what sending a snotty email achieves other than getting yourself added to my blocked buyers list?
I will be interested to hear how the rest of you handle snotty emails from eBay customers, do you find that a nice polite reply is the best way to go or do you let rip! I always use the polite reply technique but sometimes it`s very tempting to tell them exactly what you really think.
Likewise if you are one of those people that sends snotty emails please leave a comment and let us know what sort of results you get?
Personally I am much more likely to help a person if they send a nice polite email, if I receive a snotty email I will answer the question but I wouldn`t go out of my way to help the person, what do you think, should we make a stand against the snotty email senders? – feel free to leave a comment!
Thanks for reading, sorry it wasn`t as long as usual but I have just been recorded for Bold Business Talk radio so I haven`t had much free time on my hands!
Receive FREE Email Updates, according to one reader it's....
"Better Than A Poke In
The Eye With A Sharp Stick"
Currently Enjoy This Blog More Than Christmas.
Follow Me Via RSS!
Subscribe to this site's RSS feed.