RogueRose
International Hazard
Posts: 1593
Registered: 16-6-2014
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Ebay - deals too good to be true
I found an account that has some amazing deals like a $450 60v Dewalt drill set for $19.99 and about 100 other items of similar or more expensive
value for $19.99. I wanted to report the seller but there is no way to do it as all the options are not related to "questionable pricing" or
"possible fraudlent sales".
The guy sold over 100 of the sets in 1 hour and has good feedback and some other nice items that I'd love to get for $20. Heck most of them can't be
shipped for that price!
Here's a link to the item and the seller if you want to see what else he is listing. Unless he just stole a couple containers at the dock and wants
to unload the stuff fast, I can't see this being legit. I also think Ebay should have some kind of method for reporting this, similar to that
microscope sale many people went through months back.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/333357893913
For those of you who want to know why these scams work, here are some links. It seems the scammers actually make off with all the $$ and ebay/paypal
take the hit.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Buying/How-does-this-scam-work...
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Archive-Bidding-Buying/Items-o...
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Buying/Weird-Super-Cheap/td-p/...
What I can't understand is if Ebay knows that this is happening, then why don't they allow users to report these exact situations? This guy has
almost 1,000 items sold in last week or so at $20 a pop, so $20K he will make out with before Paypal catches on - IF it is a scam (I dont' want to
disparage a good businessman now....)
What are y'alls thoughts?
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Twospoons
International Hazard
Posts: 1324
Registered: 26-7-2004
Location: Middle Earth
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Mood: A trace of hope...
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I see your point and its a good one, but I can also see how competing Ebay sellers might abuse this by reporting each other for "suspicious pricing".
It may actually be cheaper for Ebay /Paypal to wear the cost of these scams, than to investigate every report of suspicious activity.
And how many people would actually genuinely report a low price, when most people want exactly that - a low price? The recent microscope sale is a
perfect example: folks willing to take a punt , even though they knew it was likely to be a scam.
[Edited on 13-10-2019 by Twospoons]
Helicopter: "helico" -> spiral, "pter" -> with wings
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macckone
Dispenser of practical lab wisdom
Posts: 2168
Registered: 1-3-2013
Location: Over a mile high
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Mood: Electrical
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This seller is selling refurbished and counterfeit items from the comments, the item is listed as a refurb, so a low price is warranted. I only saw
one complaint about the item not received and he has sold a lot of stuff.
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Twospoons
International Hazard
Posts: 1324
Registered: 26-7-2004
Location: Middle Earth
Member Is Offline
Mood: A trace of hope...
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Its bizarre that all the other listings from this guy are the same price. Its also a bizarre range of stuff being sold. This raises so many red flags
...
Helicopter: "helico" -> spiral, "pter" -> with wings
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RogueRose
International Hazard
Posts: 1593
Registered: 16-6-2014
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Yeah, what really raised red flags was the wide range of items. What was odd was I ordered 3 items and every time I went to check out, it dropped one
of the items, so I had to make 2 seperate purchases for some reason, and I actually bought the square trade warranty (3 additional years full warranty
on entire dewalt set and Fluke multimeter, one was $2.99 the other was $1.47 - can't really beat that, especially with how I go through multimeters.
Th eother purchase was a milling vice that sells for $400-900 normally and I've wanted one for a long time.
The odd thing is both orders show up in my order history but I only got one email saing the order has been processed - and they were with the same
credit card.
If this guy is legit, I'll order a bunch of other stuff and probably a few more Fluke multimeters. I'm definitely going to open them up and do a
thorough evaluation to make sure they are authentic. I have heard that there is a company in China that makes a Fluke knock off that sells for just
over $20 and it is supposed to be identical except color and branding - same parts and maybe made on the same production line. If they can make a
profit at $20 on an identical unbranded clone, maybe they pump out some "unauthorized" versions and ship them here to sell for the same price. So
they sell 10,000 Faux-Flukes per year instead of 500-1000 china-brand "flukes" even though they are all the same internals as a real fluke.
I suspect that many of the companies over there do this type of thing and if they make counterfeits on the actual production line (unauthorized
production) then they would be near impossible to stop at import/customs. The problem is when people try to deal with warranty problems and they say
"we never make SN XXXXX - you must have a counterfeit" - unless the manufacturer uses SN's they have already made, so there ends up being duplicate
sets with the same SN on the market.
This exact thing was done with Iphones a few years ago as well as, from what I heard, Intel CPU's! The manufacturer somehow even made some CPU's that
were faster than what Intel produced by 10-30% but I suspect it was just over-clocked out of the box, ran hotter and just required more cooling than
stock Intel cooling. There's been lots of cases where peopel make "jail broken" phones, devices w/o security controls or regional security, etc. I
actually support this to some degree b/c there are people who are serverely limited to what they can buy, watch, use because of the country they live
in, but removing that feature allows them to have no restrictions on viewing content. DVD's, Blue-Ray, CD's, SAC's, Play station games, and other
console games all had these protections and the factories would crank out unauthorized versions w/o the secutiry for the pirate market but they were
full price or even higher $$. /rant - sorry...
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Sathariel
Harmless
Posts: 2
Registered: 21-9-2018
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yeah dude it's legit.
I worked at a place that sold Dewalt tools online. A HUGE online tools place. They had cheap Dewalt stuff. 3 piece sets for $20 just the ebay seller.
We would get the 'refurbished' tools in a gaylord by the hundreds. We would just wipe them down and stick them in a dewalt bag with a battery or
whatever.
The real truth isn't that this guy is selling them really cheap.
The real truth is that every place that sells them (like home depot or whatnot) charges waaay more than they pay. I'm talking around 1200-3000%
markup. Dewalt may be a so called name brand, but their stuff is mostly cheap garbage. Well, maybe not garbage but there's nothing special about it.
Just a different brand image for the same company that makes craftsman.
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nzlostpass
Hazard to Self
Posts: 66
Registered: 3-9-2019
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I see all that guys listings are now gone.
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