Australian Cycling Forums - Bicycles Network Australia

Guys,

There has recently been a swarm of electric bikes being listed on eBay, usually with a starting price of either 1 cent or 99 cents. These are coming from China from sellers with no prior history. The actual advertisements look good and with lots of quality pictures, and well written text. When several carbon-fibre electric bike were listed with a starting price of 1 Euro I became highly suspicious.

I reported this to eBay as possibly being fraudulent and last night I received the following email from eBay:

However eBay has had to remove the listing. All bids or offers have been cancelled. Also, we recommend that you consider carefully whether to complete this transaction.

We hope you understand that due to privacy reasons we're unable to discuss the details of why this listing was ended.

*Important*
We strongly recommend that you do not go ahead with the purchase however if you have already paid for this item but haven't received it, you need to act quickly to get your money back.

- Contact your bank to stop payment if you paid by cheque or bank deposit.

- Contact your credit card company if you paid by credit card.

- If you paid with PayPal, you may be eligible for up to $20,000 in PayPal Buyer Protection. To file a dispute go to the Resolution Centre in My eBay and click on I haven't received it yet or I received an item that does not match the seller's description.

If you have recently bought a really cheap electric via eBay, please DO NOT pay for it without checking with eBay first.

I am currently notifying eBay of more potentially fraudulent listings. This is of course not directed at the many thousands of legtimate sellers

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/281111055950 ... 1423.l2649

The above is a link to one of the sales that I suspect is fraudulent. As it is one that I have reported to ebay, the listing may over the next 24 hours simply disappear.

I've saved the photo of the bike for future reference. I've certainly seen plenty of items from chinese sellers with 99c starts, obviously intending to get people excited and into a bidding war but normally it's things like wheels (my singlespeed wheelset was such an item, and ended up being mine for $50).
But I agree, it looks suspicious when it's a complete ebike, and a nice looking bit of gear too.

It's not just suspicious, eBay would not be deleting the advertisements and sending out warnings unless they had good evidence that it was fraudulent.

thanks for sharing this.
Can we assume that they rack up as many buyers as possible and then take the money and run.

One was to check up on these type of sales (via ebay or even shops where you are uncertain) is to copy sections of the text and paste into a google search and see what results come up. Sometimes you need to try different combinations though may also spot other shops that are dubious or even the original retailer (from where the text was ripped) who have completely different contact info.

Saw some land rover branded electric bikes on feebay yesterday too, they looked pretty good but also rang the alarm bells when I saw the 99c starting price and zero feedback.
Always have to be careful using eBay or any other online site.


Cheers

Sent from my GT-P5110 using Tapatalk 2

As I spot them I've been notifying eBay that they are possibly fraudulent and to eBay's credit within a couple of hours the advertisement disappears. I've lost track of how many I've reported but it has got to be well over a dozen so far.

I suspect that the "seller's" business plan is to establish a bank account and a eBay account, sell as many as possible then withdraw the money from the bank account and abandon the eBay account and then repeat the process. These bikes have been "selling" for around $120 but I saw one reach $355. I don't know what a factory worker (for example) in China earns but I suspect that a couple of hundred dollars would be a lot of money.

I hope that not too many people have lost their money.

I spotted one (the same bike) and the seller had a feedback of 5, all $1 purchases within 5 minutes of each other...

Xenon wrote:I spotted one (the same bike) and the seller had a feedback of 5, all $1 purchases within 5 minutes of each other...

That's his standard method of operation, usually also a 3 day auction. I suspect that the plan is to get a 'sale' before eBay notices and cancels the auction. I'm still reporting them as I find them, it you could so the same thing it'd be great and might keep somebody's hard-earned dollars out of this scumbag's hands.

While you may not be getting much thanks from ebay, from my side, thank you. I also put in effort in helping to protect others and have helped take down a few scam bike websites...

Thanks for that AUbicycles and congratulations on taking down some fraudulent web-sites.

I've notified eBay of around 40-50 of these and to eBay's credit the ads usually get quickly cancelled but they are still appearing and some people are sending their hard-earned $$$s to these scumbags. The really scary thing is how much other stuff there must be advertised on eBay that is fraudulent.

Noticed some chinese carbon wheels selling for under 150 ( with free postage) last week. The seller had no history/feedback, There were about 10 auctions running and finishing that night. I reported the seller and noticed that there was no trace of them the next day.

These bikes are continuing to appear on eBay. The warning signs are that the seller has very little feed back and a really cheap starting price. I've reported another 2 and eBay has pulled the ads.

Be careful people.