You may remember from a previous post of mine that I was considering selling my laptop (Toshiba X205-SLi) on eBay. Well, I tried doing just that except it turned out to be one of the worst experiences I’d had in a long time.
Let me fill you in:
I set up an account with PayPal first to allow for payment if the laptop should sell. I was being optimistic I suppose seeing as the times we’re in at the moment are taxing (no pun intended) our finances almost to the hilt depending on income.
After the PayPal account was set up I then set up an account at eBay. Talk about a confusing website. Never the less, I got the thing listed and set it for a 7 day auction. I just wanted to sell it to the first one who would cough up my asking price but for some reason, I couldn’t figure out how to do that. Oh well, no biggie.
Two days after my listing appeared, I began to get emails from eBay that some interested party was asking about my listing. Turns out they all were from spoofed or hacked accounts that were offering me way over what I asked for it and all wanted it shipped out of the U.S. Best I could tell, to Nigeria.
I got emails again from eBay telling me that the offers were most likely from spoofed or hacked accounts and that I should ignore them. No kidding, eBay! I never would have guessed. 
Along about the last day of my listing, I get an email telling me that my laptop sold. Congratulations! it said. It had links to take me to areas of eBay where I could begin the process of getting paid and so forth. Not! The email was a spoof too. Someone had found a way to spoof eBay’s email. Wonderful.
After chatting online to verify my suspicions, I decided to try listing it one more time.
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!” - Gomer Pyle
Right after I relisted the laptop and made sure that it was obvious that it would not be shipped overseas, I got an email saying my account was possibly hacked or spoofed and that the listing was yanked. I could relist if I wanted to for free.
Uhm, no. My listing wasn’t removed. It was still there. I verified this yet again by chatting online with a CSR who told me that the email was very likely spoofed.
The final nail in the coffin was when I got an email this past Saturday telling me my laptop had sold. Huh? How’s that possible when it’s an auction? Damn eBay can’t even keep their own software intact for anything.
One last chat with a CSR online to verify this and after being told that yet again it was most likely a spoof, I told the nice person I’d had enough. I wasn’t waiting around for some hacker to get into my account and mess up my financial well-being. I asked that they delist my item and close out my account. I was politely told that I had to de-list it myself and then wait 180 days before I could then close out my account.
That went over like a lead balloon.
By the way, I did go back to PayPal and change my account’s email address. Hopefully that will remain secure.
Monday, 14. July 2008
Geez. I hadn’t heard the latest on all that. I’ll think twice before I sell anything else through them. Thankfully, the harp we sold went pretty well, but then again, it was a harp and not a super nice laptop.
Tuesday, 15. July 2008
I twittered before I read this…
I’ve been using eBay for a long time (since ‘97 I think?) and have never had an issue. For selling stuff, there is a “Buy Me Now” option that you can set that will allow someone to buy the item on the spot (at the price you set for “Buy Me Now) as long as there are no bids.
I’ve never received that many spoofed emails in my dealings with ebay so that is definitely weird. But I don’t see how that’s eBay’s fault?
Tuesday, 15. July 2008
lol.. apparently I can’t type.
“I twittered before I read this…”
What I meant was I read this, then twittered my reply then decided to clarify. NO idea why I typed that instead.
Wednesday, 16. July 2008
“I’ve never received that many spoofed emails in my dealings with ebay so that is definitely weird. But I don’t see how that’s eBay’s fault?”
Guess I felt that as long as eBay’s been in business, they still can’t keep their site / email / user’s accounts secure enough for folks to use their site without feeling like their account is about to be hacked at anytime. As many times as I contacted live chat over these concerns, I never left feeling all that better off for it. No matter how much they tried to assure me that my account was safe.
Or, it was just my unlucky number that came up and I was spoof-bait. I dunno.
I’m giving Craigslist a try now so we’ll see how that goes.
Wednesday, 16. July 2008
eBay isn’t being hacked… I highly doubt that’s what is happening there. The emails are likely NOT coming from their servers.. it is someone spoofing them. That’s not a hack. There’s really no way for them to prevent it from happening. Having worked in the hosting business, you know this.
On the plus side, Gmail, eBay, and PayPal are all working together to help stop it. http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/fighting-phishing-with-ebay-and-paypal.html
In a nutshell, “Now any email that claims to come from “paypal.com” or “ebay.com” (and their international versions) is authenticated by Gmail and—here comes the important part—rejected if it fails to verify as actually coming from PayPal or eBay. That’s right: you won’t even see the phishing message in your spam folder. Gmail just won’t accept it at all.” If you have a GMail account, you could try using that at eBay.
I’ve been using eBay since 1997 and while I have received a few paypal/ebay phishing attempts and such, not a single one of them have ever been generated from eBay servers. Usually they are generated from some innocent person’s hosting account that had an exploit. It happened to me once. See: http://jackntracie.com/paypal — My account got suspended and I had over 15,000 bounced emails in my inbox.. It happened over one single night.
Wednesday, 16. July 2008
Sorry to harp on this at you, Scott… lol. It’s just that it bothers me to see the scammers win in this situation. You gave up on eBay for something that’s not their fault. So they scammers win.
And it’s not that I’m in LOVE with eBay or something… (I’m not a power seller/buyer etc or anything) but I do think it and PayPal are great valid services. It’s not their fault they are targeted by the scum of the world.
Thursday, 17. July 2008
I wish I had kept the last 3 emails I got from eBay. I’d forward them to you so you could see that they originated from eBay, graphics and all.
Even eBay admitted they came from them. It’s their client’s accounts that were hacked that the emails came from. You know how you can ask the seller a question, right? Well, the culprits used that route to send the emails to me about the laptop. All of them were pretty much the same.
It was after several of these that I got one from eBay that stated that my account was possibly breached (hacked) and that they removed my listing. Turned out it hadn’t been de-listed and the email was spoofed right out from under eBay’s noses.
So was the one saying the laptop had sold the very next day.
See, I do know that email can be spoofed just like you mentioned, from working in the hosting industry. However, these came from eBay.
I use GMail for all my email yet I still got these in my inbox. So apparently they passed muster with GMail’s filters. And I did use a GMail account for both my eBay and PayPal accounts.
BTW, the scammers haven’t won. They didn’t get my laptop. I just moved on to another venue to see if it’d sell like the local paper, Craigslist and word of mouth.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll give eBay another try. But not until I exhaust all my other options first.
Thursday, 17. July 2008
Ah, another customer’s account hacked? Probably with a phishing scam to gain their password or they had a weak password. That’s people being stupid. That sucks.
Friday, 18. July 2008
Yup, and add to that I kept getting emails from “eBay” telling me my account had been breached and then that the item had sold…and you may begin to understand why I was not feeling all that secure on eBay’s site anymore.
I couldn’t trust emails that were supposed to be coming from eBay without first verifying them with a CSR and the constant checking back and forth just got old fast.
In retrospect, I may have been a bit harsh towards eBay but it got to where it was like listening to a politician. You just couldn’t believe anything you heard anymore.
Monday, 28. July 2008
That’s disturbing, Scott. I haven’t sold anything in years but sounds like things have gotten worse.
Friday, 1. August 2008
Sorry for the late reply Emory but we’ve been on vacation.
Well it would seem that each user has a different experience maybe. All I have to go with is what I experienced and it wasn’t all that good.
Never the less, it didn’t sell and eBay’s constant emails trying to get me to re list are fast becoming annoying. To be honest, I’ve had better luck locally than with eBay.
Thursday, 7. August 2008
I’ve had luck when dealing with e-bay in the past but lately I have been getting a ton of spam saying that there are problems with my account. I haven’t had an account with them for over a year now. I’ve also been getting spam from so called “interested bidders”, well, I have nothing on auction either. Of course the paypal spam is non-stop. I gave up my paypal account ages ago. I’m not so sure I would use ebay again. Used kijiji last time I sold something and it sold the next day for the price I asked.
Have you tried having a “yard sale”???
Thursday, 7. August 2008
It’s crossed my mind Das as I’m also running it in the local paper so maybe it’ll fit with someone soon.
As for eBay, I’ve really got no use for them. Too much spam, spoofs and so on.