What's the deal w/ all the unreal Ebay actions?

[Tim Greer]

I don't get it. I've used Ebay a ton of times and I still don't understand why people do this;

I saw a 1968 Camaro SS 396 with a "buy it now" for $7,700 (yeah, right!), with such minor things wrong, that it could be auctioned as nearly perfect. Within 2 hours of the listing, it and the Ebayer's other auction for a 71 fastback 'stang are no more. Something's obviously wrong with this picture--these have got to be scams, I thought..

I check out the user's history and they have like 20 or 30 feedbacks about crap they bought (dvds, cd's, video games and general $7 collector or misc junk--nothing serious). I just wanted to see what they allegedly dealt with, to see if they pulled that before. It would make sense to at least "fake sell" yourself a few cars under another ebay username for a great looking auction portfolio, I'd think, but anyone that would buy into this scam probably won't think to check anyway--and I never even considered it as a real item.

An hour later, I check again and there's an auction by another user that has a 1969 z28 w/ nothing wrong with it, and a real nice looking picture for a "buy it now" of $11,500. (yeah, right!). I check this user's other auction and it's a 1965 GTO tri-power convertible in awesome condition, according to the info and image, also for $11,500. (yeah, right!). I check the history and it's more small junk for their feedback.

So, I message the seller asking them why the hell they are wasting people's time, and two hours after it's listed, all their auctions are gone, too. Obviously these are scams or something, but what is the reason for people to bother and do that? The only things I can think of are;

1) They are deterring people from bidding on _real_ deals for nice muscle cars/collector cars by distracting them with what appears to be a better deal, either tying up people's time or money, so they or someone they know can more freely bid on a real auction without as much competition.

2) More likely, they are trying to get as many people to email them OFF eBay as possible, without any way to track the questions and answers, until they pull the auction, so they can scam people out of money that won't be protected by eBay or have any proof the transaction involved eBay.

Perhaps there's other more valid or accurate reasons, but these two came to mind first. Am I wrong, or what is the freaking deal with these fools? I'm not concerned, because it all seems too obvious to me to bother to bid on them or waste my time, but it's annoying to waste your time reading an auction only to notice it's some scam or a complete waste or time. So, does anyone know why this is done, or am I missing something?

[sYc]

As bogus as these seem to you, there are actually some folks who fall for them. Case in point. Not long ago, a self pro-claimed supercar broker sent several thousand dollars, in cash, through the USPS, to a person who he had never met. The car in question was A Yenko Deuce being sold at a much lower then market value. Turns out the seller did not own the car, and what is bad, if the buyer had checked the Deuce information listed on this site, and/or contacted us, would have known that the seller had much of the information in his ad wrong, including the color. As is usually the case, if it is too good to be true, it is simply that.

[Belair62]

[ QUOTE ]
in cash

[/ QUOTE ] http://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif http://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/no.gif

[Tim Greer]

[ QUOTE ]
As bogus as these seem to you, there are actually some folks who fall for them. Case in point. Not long ago, a self pro-claimed supercar broker sent several thousand dollars, in cash, through the USPS, to a person who he had never met. The car in question was A Yenko Deuce being sold at a much lower then market value. Turns out the seller did not own the car, and what is bad, if the buyer had checked the Deuce information listed on this site, and/or contacted us, would have known that the seller had much of the information in his ad wrong, including the color. As is usually the case, if it is too good to be true, it is simply that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, there's no doubt that this sort of thing exists out there, I was just mainly curious if anyone know of, heard of, had any experience with, or had any theories about why this is so frequent. Such as, I wasn't sure if either one of my assumptions were the true or likely reason.

I did notice, however, that most of these seemed to ask people to not use the ebay "ask seller a question" form and pointed them to off-ebay contact methods, such as posting a specific email address for people to contact instead, claiming ebay's mail system doesn't always send email. Ironically, they are asking people to email free, web based email accounts, which, in all likelihood are less likely to always receive email--not to mention make it more difficult to track fraud.

So, I don't mean to say that it's a matter of knowing better because of these strange tactics I saw, or that if it's too good to be true, but I was simply wondering the reason... if I was correct in my assumption, or if there was another reason for it, since I see it so much when I bother to check eBay (which isn't very often), so I only really just noticed when I saw some of the more obvious deceptive looking posts. Sorry for being so verbose in my post; I'm too tired to try and condense it. :-)