Ebay just got odd

[booster]

Did ebay change for everyone else, too?

All of a sudden I see just 4 listings instead of whole page. Found the sidebar set at a 100 miles from my zipcode, even though the 4 were all further away than that, so I changed it to all of North America, and nothing changed.

[markopolo]

Were you searching Roadtrek? I got only 4 results on eBay as well.

[booster]

Originally Posted by markopolo

Were you searching Roadtrek? I got only 4 results on eBay as well.

Yep, and now it has a bar across the bottom saying sort by year that is new, also.

[booster]

I figured I would bring this back up, as it just happened again. Probably 1/2 of the postings disappeared.

This time I looked a bit closer, especially at the "completed listings" section linked off the same page. It appears that all of the ones that disappeared are now there, showing "auction ended as item no longer available", or some such. Looking into it further, items sold by those sellers are the ones that have very weird selling histories that show almost certain shill bidding, which probably explains the purge of them.

One guy has nearly 100% sell percent of both no reserve and reserve auctions (most sellers of class b's don't get 10%), but then the vans show up again in a couple of weeks. He has sold some of his vans 3-4 times, under 2 different lister names. The others were very similar.

I would encourage anyone looking at class b's on ebay, or anything else that is expensive, to check the seller sold item history and see if he has sold the same item repeatedly. If he he has, it is almost certain that he is rigging auctions to try to run up price and not have to sell to a winner at a lower price.

If you see listings that fit the profile of this scam, flag the listing to ebay, as they even have category in the report section for it. It must happen a lot.

[BBQ]

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Please take a screenshot of the scams so that we can be acquainted with it.

[booster]

Originally Posted by BBQ

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Please take a screenshot of the scams so that we can be acquainted with it.

Tough to do screenshots, but take a look at the this sellers completed page. Look for the same vehicle sold multiple times, like one of the pickups. This guy also uses other seller IDs, and moved many of the same class b's to that account when he started to get flagged on them. Best is to search by VIN to see a vehicle show up when looking for multiple games being played, I think.

mjmsrs909 | eBay

[ManWonder]

Thanks for the headsUp on this - I reckon it won't be long before eBay figures out an algorithm to sort out this sort of abuse.

[InterBlog]

I've seen obvious fake listings for Class Bs on eBay and I've alerted eBay, complete with an explanation of exactly why I suspected they were fake. Nothing seemed to happen to the listings. I wonder what triggers their purges? Maybe they start taking it seriously when someone gets scammed and then raises holy heck.

[booster]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

I've seen obvious fake listings for Class Bs on eBay and I've alerted eBay, complete with an explanation of exactly why I suspected they were fake. Nothing seemed to happen to the listings. I wonder what triggers their purges? Maybe they start taking it seriously when someone gets scammed and then raises holy heck.

How long ago was that? Beginning a while ago, it seems they have eliminated the comment section when you report a listing. Now you have to choose one of the prelisted categories.

Of course, as complicated as the site has gotten, making it very hard to contact them at all, I certainly could have missed where they moved it to.

The thing about his kind of deceit is that the listing looks to be just fine, as will the bidding unless you happen to notice a bidder with only one or two bids coming in late. If you have been watching the site for a while, though, it might suddenly dawn on you that the same van has been "sold" several times, which should make anyone suspicious.

[InterBlog]

About 11 months ago. I did screengrab the live listing but not the final state of it, and there is apparently (?) no way to go back now through the profile and see the seller's previous listings (or I can't find it). So I don't know how it was flagged upon auction ending.

That seller has scam warnings on his feedback, one of which cites the classic give-away, "BEWARE SCAM!!!!! I OFFERED TO PICKUP THE CAR & PAY CASH. HE WANTED $$$ WIRED". Once the scam warnings started to appear, he discontinued selling. He appeared to have been one of those to cultivate an apparently-legitimate seller profile by accumulating positive feedback through the selling of trinkets, just so he could appear trustworthy when he eventually moved in for the kill with scams on big-ticket items.

I am sensitive to this kind of thing and so I still run automated searches for sales of our model of Class B. We bought our rig on eBay from a flipper, and about two months following our purchase, we discovered that our seller's photos had been scraped and were being used in multiple fraudulent listings. Yes - imagine our surprise upon seeing *our own vehicle* for sale on the internet. Not just one like it, but our actual Class B. We tried to bait the scammer so that we could maybe get enough info to sic the authorities on them, and we got so far as to exchange emails, but they broke it off before we could home in on their identity. I wrote this blog post describing our adventures in that regard.

[booster]

To get to the old listings, you would need have a current listing, it appears, from which you can do the "see other items" and then "completed listings". If you have an old link to an old listing, it does seem to still work, also.

If you have the VIN on the screenshot you did, searching that might turn up the old original listing.

I tried to search the seller in the link I provided, and was unable to get any of the past things to show up, so ebay must be blocking access once they have a problem with a seller.

[InterBlog]

I don't have any VINs from the suspect cases that I've seen, but from now on I'll make a point to copy them.

[booster]

Well, the seller that I have in the earlier link is back again under a different seller name, and slightly different location. It is still Scott's RV and some of the previously sold multiple time vans are still on his site. His completed stuff already show one sold twice and the same extremely high sold %.

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