Friendly warning (possible scam)
 

There is a guy on ebay that is selling collectible dvds and not sending them after taking money. His id is Suite 150 and he goes under the name Steve Padilla. I got hit for around $75, but the credit card company stopped payment.
Austin

Thanks for the heads up Austin.

People like him are the reason I don't buy DVDs on ebay.

When I was building my collection, I'd buy hard-to-find discs on eBay and only got burned once. Luckily it wasn't a very expensive lesson learned but it sure curtailed my eBay fun.

i buy alot of stuff from ebay and just am very careful who i purchase it from, only with alot of feedback,aren't you covered for a certain amount of cash from ebay and paypal if you get screwed, i thought so....

Wow... is that the guy, Austin?

I guess I'm wondering why you'd want to deal with someone with feedback that atrocious.

Wow... that's some seriously sucky feedback.

I like this one: "Who is this F**k head? Hello e-bay!!!, why is this A**hole still selling"

I agree...that feedback would be enough to make me look elsewhere. I do not care how bad I want something.....

It now says No Longer a registered User.

Yes, that is the guy and I am new to ebay so didn't see the warning sign. I didn't get burned so there is no harm done.
Just wanted to warn the people here so that they didn't get harmed.
Austin

Always, Always check the feedback if you've not dealt with A seller before. If they have it hidden, phone them or email them before you bid to ensure that they are Kosher. The minute something smells funny, walk away and don't look back.

Guys,

Why buy DVDs on ebay if you have found this forum?

I haven't bought a single DVD since I joined DVDtalk. It's because of this forum that has brought me numerous good deals. It's because of this forum I have found dvdpricesearch, deepdiscountdvd, columbia house and many other good sources where I can buy DVDs at the price lower than ebay. My expense on each single DVD (including some 2-disc SE) is less than $7, all in brand new sealed condition. I fancy if you buy DVDs on ebay you can beat my average (s/h cost will suck the deal). It's because of this forum I never have to risk buying on ebay.

Didn't you read the original post? Austin54 was looking for "collectable" DVDs which I presume are OOP DVDs.

Sometimes even when you check everything out and it seems like a great legitimate deal you still get screwed. Recently I bid on the first season set of the New Avengers and won for $27.00, the guy had 82 feedbacks and was at 100% satisfaction, so I pay the day the auction ended then the next thing I know 2 days later he is no longer a registered user, doesn't return emails and basically vanishes.......but I will say I have bought and sold hundreds of items on Ebay and that was the first time I have been duped.

Can you fake feedback? In other words how are these people getting such good feedbacks only to turn around and scam somebody. It seems like a lot of work.

It looks like things really fell apart for him in the last month. 199 negative feedbacks, 137 of which have happened in the last month. In the previous five months, he only had 57, and then in the six months before that he only had 5.

Some unscrupulous sellers plan this right from the start. They do good business for a while to get great feedback and once they have it, they'll run a huge sale on "hard to find" items with great prices and just take the money and run.

You can even get burned by people with high feedback. I used the "buy it now" feature to snag a collection of almost 900 DVD's for my store. About 7 hours after I paid for the auction, Ebay cancelled it because the guy accidentally listed a Girls Gone Wild DVD in there. As I said, I had already sent the payment via Paypal, and I decided to go through with the auction because the guy only had 1 negative out of over a thousand positives, and that one bad feedback seemed to have been written by someone with a 3rd grade education.

So the movies arrive... and I'm short 101 titles from his list. On top of that, the X-Box that I was supposed to get for free along with the auction hadn't arrived either.

Suddenly the guy starts piling up negative feedback from other auctions.

He's now telling me that he's "looking for" the missing DVD's. As for the X-Box, he claims to have been robbed before he could send it out to me.

I've given him a deadline of Friday to get me either the DVD's and X-Box, a full refund, or a combination of the two. We'll see what happens.

As for buyer protection, they have something like that, but it's still all up to the Paypal dispute resolution people as to whether or not you get it.

Somewhere else (maybe in the Other forum) someone speculated that a huge drop off like that might mean the seller died. You have to wonder how someone could get so bad so fast.

I wouldn't take any buyer protection plan too seriously. I got burned on Ebay recently trying to buy a Lady in White DVD and got a boot instead. Both paypal and eBay were of little help. Even my credit card company wasn't much help. :(

I have bought and sold on ebay,Ii am always wary but haven't gotten burned yet. People like this give online auctions a bad name :(

If you get your money back, it might be a good thing -- I thought Lady in White is a title that should get a re-issue in 2005?

Hey all,

I suggest you all be careful buying any DVDs on Ebay no matter if they're new released or out of print. Fraudulent sellers have started selling fake DVDs with fake sealed stickers either with or without shrinkwrap. As far as it goes, you can't distinguish what is original or what isn't until you actually have the DVD in hand and watched the DVD in question.

Here are a couple of sellers who are doing this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...333437858&rd=1

(The above seller sells them in batches like that every week. He/she used to sell them unwrapped and without the sealed stickers.)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=6330191437

(The above seller sells multiple copies without shrinkwrap but with sealed stickers tons of them every day. ** UPDATE: It appears the seller is no longer registered ** But there are many other sellers who sell without shrinkwrap but with sealed stickers.)

Another way to be burned by a user with a great feedback score is when their account gets hacked. You just never know these days.

I did get defrauded once on a LCD monitor, but I was able to receive the majority of my money back through PayPal's buyer protection program. The seller had near flawless feedback in the thousands and a physical storefront in California. Either he did the "build feedback and then defraud" scheme or his account was hacked. Or maybe he died. The negatives started piling up after my auction ended and then he was no longer a registered user.

Something I learned from that experience is to look at the items a seller has recently sold in his feedback and compare it with the items he currently has for sale now. If the seller has previously only sold DVDs and CDs and stuff and all of the sudden he's selling lots of computer equipment, something is fishy.

I saw one seller do something like this: They bought a ton of cheap postcards for like .10 or .15 each and had impeccable feedback after they paid for them. Then they went ahead with their selling scam. You have to look at what sellers buy. If they're buying "normal" stuff and they have great feedback, then that's a pretty good sign obviously.

There's a new scam every day on eBay. It's amazing. I won't ever use eBay to buy things over $100 or so. It's just not worth it to me.

Glad that you got your money back. :)