Want to get cheated on eBay in an attempted purchase of an Apple Mac PowerBook 17 or 15 or 12/13 -- or hundreds and hundreds of other expensive notebooks and other expensive electronics!

It's very very easy on eBay, there are hundreds and hundreds of such fraudulent listing every day, perhaps thousands, thank to eBay's misfeasance and non-feasance in NOT policing listings, 

[CFA 3/16/08.  I must give credit where credit is finally and belatedly do, after literally hundreds of eMails to the Safety and Security Center -- seldom adequately acknowledged -- requiring extreme dedication and dozens and dozens of completely unnecessary clicking and typing -- eBay, after a dozen or more incompetent and failed attempts finally has made

Why this very moment if you inter in the search text 'PowerBook 17' or dozens other listings you can easily find, when you first look for the above, then immediate check that supposed person's other acution items, you will find 15 to 30 or more other expensive fraudulent items.

How do you find these fraudulent listing?  After searching for 'PowerBook 17'  (or 15 or what ever):  1) Look for a listing with the 'rising sun' icon in the upper lift of the listing, which indicates its a new listing; then

2) look for the time remaining to be less than 24 hours -- indicating the listing is for less than 24 yours -- [eBay says it might take them 48 hours to rrespons]! 

3) Almost always the price will be rediculously low -- (except for a few who have come to realize that's a dead giveaway).

4) Often there will be no given shipping charge. 

5) go immediately to that listing. 

6) usually there is a large print email address to email to, often twice on the listing, at the beginning and at the end, which is different from the "authorized" eBay email address.

7) and quite often this email address may be flashing.

8) Most often there is also a phone number with a VERY STRONG request, amounting to a demand, to call them for further detail.

  This is a fraudulant listing!

Copy the eBay auction number so you can past into an eBay field when the 'Fraud Center' will ask you fir the fraudulent listing auction number.

8) now immediately go to the "lister's Other items."  Most often there will be main, 10 to 30 or more items also mostly 1-day listings with less than 24 hours left.    9) count the obviously fraudulant listing, then 10) perhaps select the powerbook 17 again, although any fraudulant listing will do..  (Often they are othe expensive notebooks and large and very large Apply screen ad Boze entertainment system and other large LCD TV screens or other expensive electronics.

11) which ever item you select, do copy the listing number, -- (although you are starting from a specific eBay auction number to report fraud, eBay seems to employ its best programmers to "make money" and hires the retarded to code fraud detection software.

12)  Now, immediately to the the extereme bottom of the listing and click once on [Security Center] and begin counting your clicks -- should it take that many?)  You will be given -- as of today, 08/08/06, You will be given a 'Have a Problem?' question that default to the last of 4 problems, with (@) Report Another Problem, preselected. 

13) Click the [ Report Problem ] button. It will take you to a large [ Help ] screen now with 8 choices, none preselected.

14)  Click on the first choice: 'Listing violations', the cursor down to the [ Continue ] button at the bottom of the page -- (most probably of your screen)!  [Continue] will take you to one of my favorite pages, containing 3 steps.

15)  Step 1, Select a subtopic, will give you 7 choices.  Two or three are perhaps equally as good, but my favorite -- for very good reasons liste below -- is: 'Fraudulent listings (Illegal seller demands, you didn't receive item, etc).  Steps 2 and 3 are blank, until you choose an item in Step 1.

16) my favorite, then give you in Step 2 four choices, my favorite is the first: 'You suspect that a listing is fraudulant you didn't bid'  both you and I can honestly say that, because "we" haven't  YET!! (But we will!  Won't we?)

17)  Step 3 will now be filled in with: 'Pease click the continue button'

17) The next 'Help" screen is the enigmatic "Contact Us" screen.  Don't try to figure it out or click on the hyperlink 'About Payment Methods'  -- its probably code left over from some other project. Instead, just click on the hyperlink"  Email Us  

Now this is my absolute favorite Web form!  And I have seen many!

18)  The first field calls for: 'Enter Item number(s):  Up to 10 items separated by commas (example: 135609580 , 1748176843)!!!

Huh!!  We have probably seen 10 to 30 fraudulent items; but how can we remember ANY of them?  You mean we can and should make a pencil and paper list, not to exceed 10?  (Now you know why I recommend that you copy one item, such as the PowerBook 17, and paste it here. On should be enough!  The bottom large text entry area says:  Enter your question/concern"

19) Here is where I tell them about the obvious fraudulent characteristics of this listing that even a beginning computer programmer could scan and detect -- like the flashing  AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Verizon email address, but especially how many other fraudulent listing by this same eBayer.

20) Now I immediately go back to the fraudulent ad and make a rediculously low bid on the item!  Why in the world would I recommend that "we" do that?

Because one you bid on this item, eBay has an "autoresponder" that will notify, when they finally get around to investigating this item and kill the item, you will get a notification, which may thank you for your notification, but invite you not to pay for such an item outside eBay, which is a no-no.  Otherwise you would never hear from them, and eBay will berry -- like brain surgeons -- their mistakes, no question asked.  (Actually, I will bid on as many as I can, so I will get lots of notifications from eBay -- hundreds of them!!!

Ebay can't -- or really won't -- fix this problem!  It has been going on for months.  Years.  But like the Emporer with no close, no one is saying anything or pointing out the obvious.

Actually, you may find as I occassionally do, that between the first time I find the fraudulent listing the copying into the last screen in step 20, eBay may have canciled the auction and the number I am submitting is not accepted -- because it is no longer a valid existing auction number!  In fact, in never even happened!  there is no tract of the fraudulent listing again!  eBay is clean as a whistle!

Except if you get the Email Us letter in time and bid on the item, you will get the autoresponder notification!! It did happen.  you are not hallusinating it!  There are millions and millions of dollars of fraudulant listing on eBay and many get through, and may people are loosing mony.  But who's counting?

Nobody.  At least nobody known.  Magnitude unknown and purposely hidden?

How is this hapenning?  Most of these fraudulant listing on or eBay accounts with extremely poor passwords, that thieves are able to guess, and thereby steel.  Almost all have "perfect" records, but they are only buyers, almost never sellers -- yet all of a sudden they are selling expensive electronics equipment, usually computer notebooks, with often half a dozen excellent pictures and excellent equip descriptions.  But soon you will notice that they are almost all the same fraudulant items, some more and some less.  China seems to specialize in powerbooks, other countries can be almost anything -- and any where.  German, UK, America, Spain, Australia.  I like the German fraudulant listings perhaps the best; I like trying to fathem the coments and the German eBay autoresponder alf Deutsch.