I'm been buying and selling on Ebay since 1998, I thought I knew it all, but I was just a victim of a scam!  I was in the market for an Ipod video, I started looking around, mostly for the BUY IT NOW so I can get it fast, I found one, feedback was about 11 and 100% positive, and looked like a good auction, I didn't even think to look at the feedbacks or when the person joined, I just bid ($259) and right away paid via Paypal.  Usually I get an e-mail within 24 hours with information on the shipment, nothing arrived, then I thought I would start dialog with the seller, sent several messages from both EBAY and E-mail and nothing, then after 2 days the seller was marked as unregistered user with Ebay, I started to worry a little, but still had faith, then the feedbacks started to go from 11 to 6 in 15 days!  During this time I started to check the feedbacks, looked at how this person got so many good feedbacks, I noticed all 11 feedbacks were given in 1 days, all were penny auctions for receipes or lists, just very upsettinng, I didnt even know this was possible, I noticed one member has over 1300 feedbacks, with 99% penny auctions, I was amazed!   Anyhow, I managed to get $200 from paypal, I guess the maximum allowed by Paypal, hopefully will get the rest, but I just wanted to make more people aware of these penny auctions, I think its not fair and maybe EBAY should get involved to create a new policy for these types of autions.    Good Luck!