Post #21820 by fatuhiva on Mon, Feb 3, 2003 11:25 PM

this is the scam:

basically you have some little old lady with a crane bowl up on ebay. She thinks she might get a couple bucks for it, yet we all know it'll break $100 easy.

Somebody sees it early on and emails her, saying "hey I'll give ya $40 for that silly old thing, but you have to close it now"

so maybe there's 15 people waiting to bid on that thing- maybe even a couple already have.. doesn't matter.. if she goes to close it, she can cancel all the bids, etc.

This is actually AGAINST ebay's rules, but people are doing it anyway. I've done it myself before, I'll admit it, but its a pain- they seldom want to close the auction unless you offer some real high amount, and then I've often seen an item i offered $50 for and got turned down close for $28 anyway, so i realized its stupid.

But its still happening out there- the problem is, its annoying to those of us playing fair, 50% of the time it backfires on you anyway, and if you do score, you basically knowingly scammed the seller (little old lady)

thank you
over and out

[ Edited by: fatuhiva on 2003-02-03 23:26 ]