There are many guides as to what to do and what not to do, but as I have been on eBay a lot recently, I have noticed a great number of either new or relatively updated kinds of malicious practices among eBay members. I would like to share my experience with you now.

**IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR SELLERS**
February 2009 - It is a common thing, but be especially aware of 0 feedback bidders. I have been selling some more expensive stuff recently and trusted in people's integrity when it came down to the acceptance of 0 feedback bidders. For instance I tried to sell my car recently and as fate would have it, it sold to a 0 feedback bidder for an even $1000. The second highest bid was by a 300+ feedback bidder at $950. I decided to check on the 0 bidder by contacting him via eBay message - and he responded. As soon as the auction ended, I never hear a word from him again. Now let's do the math: $29.95 for insertion fees and promotion, $125 fixed final value (applies to all eBay car auctions). That is $155 total, plus hours spent on monitoring and responding to the auction. The second chance I sent to the second highest bidder was no successful. It got me so frustrated (the car had to go immediately), that I finally sold the car for $500 to virtually a random passerby on the street. What is to take away from this? If you are selling a higher price item, do not let the 0 bidders bid or you are taking a risk of not completing the transaction and wasting all of your time, plus money. Request that the 0 bidders CALL you, not just email you. You can tell a voice of a ten year old on the phone, not on the screen.

December 2008 - Do not sell expensive items to buyers overseas without delivery confirmation or tracking number. Do NOT declare value in accordance to your customers wants. If you declare incorrect - low value, you will not be able to insure the item. And then the customs officers overseas will likely check the contents and will discover that this is an attempt to dodge taxation. In some cases, they will simply confiscate the item. In some cases they will steal it and in some cases they will pass it on to the buyer.
Anyway, without tracking number and or delivery confirmation, if the buyer does not receive the item or does receive the item, claiming that he did not receive it, you will have formidable problems when the buyer will file a paypal claim.
My example: I sent a iPhone to Brazil. Buyer requested that I ship the cheapest way - USPS parcel - no tracking, and declare a value of $25. Now, after two months he files a paypal claim of over $500 declaring he never received the item. I explained it all to paypal, but since I had no tracking number and the post office insurance is only up to declared value, paypal ended up charging me $500. Now I am a powerseller with a pure feedback and clear history, why does paypal believe some bum from Brazil with almost no history? in the last two years I payed them thousands in fees and this is how they treat me? And the lesson again, do not do what you can possibly later regret - don't take unnecessary chances.
Thus, SELLERS, BEWARE of paypal. They are bad people with no morals.

**IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR BUYERS**
Well, not much of an update, in fact. Oh so many FAKE items on eBay, so many! What category can you find most fake items? Mostly in clothing, electronics, jewelery. But the list is endless. Go try to search for Versace. There will be countless number of sellers offering 'Versace' products. How surprising, most of them ship out of China or Turkey. Versace is exclusively made in Italy. Versace items shipped from anywhere else (except for exceptions, such as if someone bought the item in a respective country from a retailer) are FAKE. Not just Versace, do not get me wrong. Prada, Gucci, D&G, and this list goes on and on. It is the old golden rule: If it looks too good to be true, it is not. And on eBay, if it looks too good to be true, it is fake. We are talking about: Clothes, glasses, hand bags (oh my dear! they are everywhere!), watches, you name it.
But not all fake items are bad. Most electronics in the modern times are manufactured in China (even the super duper iPhone, yes). What happens is that items manufactured in the factory either get stolen, disappear or are ignored as overproduction. These things, sometimes, are as good as the ones you would buy at BestBuy (I was gonna say CircuitCity, R.I.P.). 
From a legal standpoint, strikingly, by buying these items, you are committing a crime. The sellers barely ever declare the correct value (what is the correct value is questionable), and many times mark the item as a "gift" to keep you from paying taxes. Why would they do that? Because if you pay taxes, you will not be happy, and among the sheer volume of trade that Chinese person does, it will reflect on his feedback, leading to diminished sales. It is a vicious circle and we can talk about this for a long time.
Surprisingly, as I have already insinuated, some of the products, especially some of the electronics, are very good (identical to BestBuy) quality. The same cannot be said about personal items such as clothing. But for the pocket change you pay for it, you might as well wear a Versace instead of a Wall Mart $.15 shirt. But please, do not take this as an incentive to buy obviously fake item. Even though eBay must know about it, they ignore it, because they have enormous gains from it. It is the screwed up world we are living in.

Next is a traditional, now less effective, way to trick people:

I know people these days don't have much time, so I will create a short analysis. Take a good look at the picture:


1.One of the MOST DANGEROUS scams: I have recently looked for a BMW M5. The prices will run well above $15,000, at least. There was this guy with a relatively appealing feedback having a very legitimate auction with a reserve. HOWEVER, he had a note right in the text informing the interested buyers to contact him at his email address (it is always something weird and with numbers such as britanny777@yahoo.co.uk). The guys was asking $8,500 for a car that had a real retail value of a good 20K on the spot. Now to elaborate on this to get a better analysis:
A) Some people actually prefer to be contacted on their email addresses. Because they use programs like MS Outlook and do not want to log in eBay every so often. So do not consider everyone asking you to contact him or her on his or her email a crook. However, in this point I would like to point out the format of the email address. Scammers routinely use unusual names with combination with numbers, to make it harder for internet police to track them. So your first question should be aimed at the email address. But again, do not condemn it for good, i.e. my address is andcorp2006@yahoo.com. PLEASE REFER TO THE IMAGE
-B) This point deals with not just eBay, not just the Internet, but the entire reason beyond trade. You simply can not buy a car that retails at 20K for well under 10K. Why not? Because no one would sell it to you at that price. Why not? Because when I have a car that has a real market value of 20K, I can simply go to any dealership and they will pay me at least 60% of it, and that is the bottom price any one would offer to you. There are countless places where you can sell your stuff right now for hardcore cash, like pawnshops or dealerships, of course with some loss. But be real, especially with easily estimated items such as cars, electronics and a lot of other items, everyone will be seeking for the most money at the lowest level of endeavor. So why the heck would they not walk into the local dealership and get the cash and forget about anyone making any sorts of claim and instead pay for listings on eBay and then face PayPal fees, just in order to sell the car well under the price easily acquirable at the local dealership? AGAIN, LOOK AT THE PICTURE. The car pictured has a real value well over $10,000. Selling for $5,000? On vacation? Bad scam, avoid!
-C) Do not become confident by simply reading the feedback. Even though eBay system has improved recently, so you can actually see how the person earned his feedback, you still must not entirely rely on the feedback itself. Scammers have come up with new ways of gouging and deceiving people. They will gain a feedback of 10, 20, or even 50 by buying numerous priceless stuff and therefore get a clear 100%. THEN they post a serious auction, which will usually involve at least hundreds, or thousands of dollars. They sometimes put no reserve on their items, and that by itself might be suspicious, because there are some items, which a no reserve auction is simply too risky to undertake, such as selling a $20,000 car. Who would take such a risk? Maybe a experienced car dealership which has capital and wants reputation. But an individual... very unlikely. Or they will try to deceive you in a way I have mentioned in the beginning, they will make everything look all right and legitimate and then they will ask you to contact them, sometimes even through eBay, about buying this item now. Most of the times their auction description is abundant with 'evanescence' or that the car will not last and this is your last chance, because they need money now and so that is why the car is so cheap. So you will, under all the feedback and luring price, contact the seller. Now, if you are a inexperienced eBayer, and if you have not read this or some other eBay guides, you are on the right way to losing all your 'super low price money' and maybe in a couple of months the police will send you a notification that the drug addict was found, but obviously he
 has no money. I will describe the last part of this system in the next point.
-D) Do NEVER EVER SEND MONEY. You can only send a reasonable deposit over PAYPAL AFTER you have talked PERSONALLY to the seller and gained reasonable confidence. If you decide to send money over any sort of transfer, as it is requested by your seller, you are about to lose it and never see it again. Please, send it instead to Red Cross. When you buy a pricey item on eBay (several thousand dollars), it is HIGHLY ADVISABLE that you do not pay until you personally come to pick it up and pay with preferably cash (that is the best way to pay). Not only that this is a business established custom, but it is also logical and you are only protecting yourself. Just think about the last time anyone sent you money without you giving him or her anything in exchange? Do you get paid in the beginning of the month or at the end? So if the seller requests that you send him a outrageous 'deposit', likely over wire transfer and what not, ask him whether he or she would like to be reported to police. At that time you can be sure you will not be contacted by the person again.

2. People sell defective stuff with great feedback. This new point relates to letter C. Feedback is by far not relevant. Some honest and literally one of the best sellers on eBay get negative feedbacks from new eBay users, who just do not understand the system and so leave a well undeserved negative feedback. You then might say: Hey, this guy has some terrible feedbacks... well, look at the people, who left the feedback. People with 5 feedback? You can feel free to forget about that negative feedback with confidence. I even have experience with new eBay users leaving a negative by mistake and praising the seller to heaven.
On the other hand, there are fraudulent sellers, who sell defective stuff, stuff that they declare as new and is not new, stuff that they declare "no scratches, flawless" and has more dents than a 1980 mustang. Worse yet, most buyers choose NOT to leave a negative, because they would also get a negative. So in many cases, the crook has better feedback than the honest guy. We live in a unfair world for sure.
Unfortunately, there is not much you can do about this. It might be wise to go over the entire feedback and maybe you will see some comments indicating that this might be the case, even though they left a positive or neutral feedback.

3.DO NOT BUY eLISTS eLists are SCAM SCAM SCAM. Do not ever waste your money on it. No matter what the seller's feedback says. Sure, you will definitely get a link to a website where they sell a 24" LCD for $100. In the good case you will pay $400 for shipping from Taiwan and receive a piece of scrap. In the worse case, you will pay $200 for your LCD and you can wave to your money bye bye. There are countless electronics lists and handbooks and how to get rich and crap like that. DO AVOID THIS AT ALL COST. Do not get lured. You are wasting your money, and, for the sake of getting benefits from your 10 or more dollars you spent on it, you then waste degradable amounts of time when ultimately you realize that really spamming or using other bothersome ways will not earn you anything. Only a very bad reputation and bad consciousness.

4.HIJACKED ACCOUNTS. Hackers are everywhere. These people break in other people's accounts and use it to sell items they do not own, get payed to paypal, or better yet, with wire transfer, take the money as soon as they receive and take off, of course not sending the item they were supposedly selling.

5.EBAY MEMBER EMAIL MESSAGES These messages normally end up in your spam folder - hopefully. This is probably the most common scenario of identity theft. The email will request you that you respond to a claim on eBay, but by clicking on the link, it will take you to a site that looks like eBay, but it really is a hackers site to obtain your password and user name. As soon as you log in on this fake site, they will have your data and will use it to their benefit and might cause you huge trouble, even resulting in legal persecution. These messages normally look like this:
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Payment was made trough paypal. Let me know how much will be the shipping
Please reply ASAP!
To respond this item, go to : ebay.com/viewitem151686456
Thank you!
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Do not ever respond or clink on the links in your emails. If your email message requires that you log in and update your information or resolve a claim or whatever else, go to the official website (ebay.com or paypla.com) and log in from there - then you will see in most cases that there is nothing wrong with your account. Again, DO NOT click on those links. Even though it says ebay.com on the screen, it will take you to a site such as 123.ebay.ws.ru which is a constructed site to steal peoples identities. This applies to all email messages, not only ebay, but also paypal, bank accounts and any other accounts of interest to the hackers.