Though many people believe that folks who SELL on ebay are crooks, honest merchants can get ripped off too.
Here’s how to avoid ebay users who may be deadbeats.
HILLSDALE, N.J., Feb. 17 — eBay has 100 million registered users and while many auctions take place without a hitch, most people have no idea how easy it is to get ripped off.
In 2003, Steve Klink, a New Jersey police officer, won an auction for “new” set of speakers, but that’s not what he received. “They looked like they had been gnawed on by a wild animal,” Klink says. The seller refused to exchange the items or refund his money and eBay said the bad deal wasn’t their responsibility.
As a result Klink created an eBay watchdog website and discovered he wasn’t the only victim. Lurid stories of auction rip-offs poured in from hapless victims: a woman whose wedding was tainted by moth-ridden tuxedoes, a collector duped out of a $16,000 vintage Spiderman comic, and the family-man trucker who lost a whopping $27,000 buying a rig that didn’t exist. “EBay seems to dance around the ethics issues like a shoeless man in a rattlesnake pit,” lamented one victim after forking over $1,400 for a phony art vase. The
site grew in popularity and soon Klink found himself being interviewed everywhere from Court TV to newspapers as far away as South Africa.Along with his brother Edward, a business writer in New York, Klink wrote Dawn of the eBay Deadbeats to tell the stories of these victims. They spent over a year researching, compiling, and editing the outrageous stories that fill this book. In addition, many of the strange-but-true tales are punctuated with illustrations by the talented Clay Butler.
In addition, the book offers tips to help honest eBayers avoid getting ripped off:
— Be wary if the person requests only one form of payment
— Read carefully, some scams depend on a lengthy description that can be deceptive.
— Never be put off for two weeks on a deal or you risk being unable to stop the credit card transaction
— Don’t use Western Union or MoneyGram when paying for auction purchases
Related link: Find Ebay bargains by finding mis-spelled auctions with this search tool.
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