Strange ebay Gaggia offers

all good advice

not exactly true:

Not just Gaggia stuff. How about an Innova grinder? See:

Jack

All five auctions for this seller end at the same time. harrym

Either the 'seller' has a sense of humour or they use a automated bot to steal the reviews for their listings. Just look at this one, sounds great doesn't it?

Greg

interesting WLL's web site would be copywrite "Word for word"

Snake"any imaginary silvia's?"Oil

As my daddy used to say: "If it looks too good to be true, it probably is."

Then again, they could have fallen off the back of a truck and sysboyl et al. just happened to be there to pick them up.

I tried to report to e-Bay, but I couldn't find a way to do it since I am neither the buyer nor the seller. Anyone know how to get through to them? Their "security" site just gives tips on doing business. harrym

I also noticed that several of the high bidders are new to e-Bay and have no previous feedback. Apparently they are feeding on Newbies. harrym

or they are bidding on their own stuff using different ids

no response to many emails to the seller and the seller of the item I won was suspended from ebay

what can ya do about it? Contact us link thing is busted says i dont have cookies turned on and i do. Oh well maybe contact all the high bidders and say beware or what ever.

Snake"burn the scum in "Oil

That's hilarious. I'm pretty sure the scammers don't have the time or inclination to engage in clever reverse-psychology sales tactics. More likely, they're grabbing photos and customer reviews willy-nilly and slapping them up on Ebay, and this one slipped by.

What kills me is people *still* are bidding on it.

Argh.

- Owen.

If you click "contact ebay" you can email them. They have various subcategories. They purposely make it hard to get thru...they must get tons of email as it is and don't want any more than is necessary so they bury the menus as much as possible. Amazon does the same thing --- Amazon's phone number is buried so deep in their website that you'd need mining machinery to dig it out.

be careful...I did that once and was reprimanded strongly by ebay itself

Yea, it wouldn't let me in yesterday for the same false reason. I tried today using a different browser (Opera) and did get thru. I'm sure they must get five zillion emails a day, so they don't put a high priority on fixing bugs so that they can receive even more. However, heartening that some (but not all) of the phony sellers are starting to be suspended.

These types of ebay offerings are showing up in many higher priced appliance categories this week. They are all suspiciously alike in odd name, no feedback & similar date of joining ebay.

Boron

I've been bidding on Gaggia's on Ebay for three months, waiting to win one at a decent price (which rarely happens). I have noticed that a number of them are posted by zero feedback sellers with the odd names you've mentioned. One by "hitarav" disappeared in the middle of the auction with "no item exists" meaning that eBay pulled the item, not the user. That indicates fraud.

Remember that you have no recourse if you are defrauded on Ebay, and expensive espresso machines make a prime lure by fraud artists.

Frankly, I'm amazed that with Ebay's popularity and mainstreamedness, they don't have better safeguards in place. For example, after bidding on just two machines, I started received many offers by email -- through Ebay's system, whereby you can email a bidder or seller by using your own id and password-- offering to sell me the same unit for less money through a wire or money order transaction. The emails come with a paragraph from Ebay about reporting such behavior to Ebay, so they can take action against the user (helping to get rid of these "hitarav" fraudsters), but they don't even give you a link to click on to report them! (Geez, even Yahoo lets you click on a "spam" button to let them know an email is spam! It can't be that hard to design!) I tried to report two of them, but I got so weighed down in Ebay's cumbersome and slow-loading system of menus whereby you report things to their customer service, that I gave up in both cases.

If Ebay were serious about cutting down on fraud, they'd have an easier system in place: namely, letting you click on a link in a suspicious off-auction email they're forwarding to you.

Buyer beware. Positive feedback is what it is all about on Ebay. No way around it. Period.

I was the winning bidder of the Innova grinder.

Yes I'm an idiot. I'm not brand new to e-bay, but I've never been scammed before. Now that I have stopped and evaluated this situation, I realize how suspicious it looks. I was almost too late - I paid a while ago by paypal, but fortunately the payment was unclaimed, so I canceled it. I have never had a payment go "unclaimed" - maybe it has to do with the recipient ( snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com) being unregistered with paypal. Is there something that I need to do (as one of the buyers) with respect to e-bay? Thanks very much to the person that e-mailed me and directed me to this posting.

Billy

Yes, start by leaving negative feedback on the seller. Contact ebay and notify them of the fraud. Contact paypal and do the same. Be sure to mention all the usernames listed in this thread and not just sibosyl.