August 16, 2006 - There is an unauthorized third party (scam operator) who is stealing legitimate Seller IDs and golf club listings in order to entice you to use Buy It Now and e-mail the funds through PayPal.  The ads look legitimate because they were stolen from actual Ebay sellers.  You may even recognize the listing as one you have seen recently, and when you see that the Seller ID has positive feedback you may conclude that the Seller is legitimate and has merely reduced his price to sell his item more easily. But somehow the scam operator has stolen the Seller ID and paired it with a recent ad listing.  He has done this with 3 sets of Titleist 695 CBs within the past week and I am sure he will be trying it with other golf clubs or related items. The seller IDs in these two instances were Ebay sellers in good standing, but with less than weekly listings so they may not have known that their IDs were stolen. Also, once you PayPal your money, the scammer transfers the money to other accounts, closes out his PayPal account an moves on to another mark.  Neither PayPal nor your bank will be able to recover your funds and you will only be able to get $200 less a $25 fee from PayPal because this type of fraud protection is not totally covered by PayPal. The best thing I can advise you is to pay attention to the listing and Seller ID and if you see two identical ads with two different Seller IDs and one has a Buy It Now with a price that is one-third to one-half lower than the average price of similar items being sold, that listing is most likely a fraud.  You should report it to Ebay Security immediately.

Update: August 18 - I saw a 3rd set of 695 CBs yesterday that were a fraud listing and notified the buyer and Ebay security. The listing was removed and fortunately the buyer did not yet pay. Unfortunately, the fraud listings have become a little more sophisticated so that the listing pages are not exact duplicates of legitimate listings. He is now taking the pics from one listing and either copying the description from another listing or creating his own description.  You can tell he is copying the pics because when you click on a specific picture to enlarge it, the picture does not change. However, Buy It Now at a low price is still part of his scam. He is also now doing the same thing with Callaway irons as well.  Please be careful.