I found an Eight Ball Deluxe pinball machine on eBay recently, and inquired about it to the seller. It was sitting at $600, and the seller had positve feedback, and recent activity. The seller offered it to me for $1000 shipped from the UK. He/she preferred to us TNT Shipping, and after looking over TNT and the machine pics, it seemed like a good, safe deal. I agreed to buy it, and promptly received an e-mail that I thought was from TNT UK Express. The way it works is the seller takes the item to TNT, the buyer wires the money to TNT after TNT confirms the package, and TNT pays the seller his money AFTER the buyer receives and approves the package. Only problem was, this email (which was very convincing) was not from TNT. The links went to a bogus site with a similar address, and after attempting to track the package before I sent any money, I found that if I went directly to the TNT website, the number was invalid. If I went to the TNT site through via links from my e-mail, it came up fine. I called TNT and they confirmed that this number was not one of theirs, and it was fraud. Apparently, there has been a rash of these using TNT UK Express, usually with electronics. Fortunately I caught on before sending any money, but the next person may not be so lucky.
One of the more disturbing parts of this is that I have contacted eBay three times in two weeks about this and received NO RESPONSE. The seller is still an active member, so I'm guessing NOTHING has been done.
I love using eBay, and am convinced that 99% of the users are good, honest people. But because of this lack of concern from eBay, I am very hesitant to ever use it again.
wantvws
UPDATE: 7/07. I almost forgot that I had written this guide....apparently what had happened is that someone had hijacked this user's ID, and was using it to fish for suckers. Although it did take several months for eBay to let me know what had happened, they did investigate it apparently. Still, their attitude (from my end) was very upsetting. I had to practically beat what little information I got out of them.
wantvws