I am currently bidding on a new digital camera on E-bay and I have the high bid. I have set a limit of $70 more than my current bid.

I estimate my top offer to be about $100 less than I can buy the camera plus extra memory outright. If my bid remains the current high, I will save about $170 over buying it from a regular on-line source.

Just now I get an E-mail forwarded through E-bay mail service from another E-Bay member. This guy says he is the the marketing manager for Electronics firm out of Prague in the Czech Republic. His line is that his firm is surveying E-bay auctions and if I am interested I can buy the identical camera to the one I am currently bidding on right now at a Price $5 over my current bid.

He then indicates that we will deal direct and I assume that he means outside of E-Bay.

First of all I am not going to order anything from over seas, and secondly the whole thing sounds fishy to start with. I immediately reported it to E-bay as unsolicited commercial spam, and they mailed back that they would take action.

It was all done through E-bay form responses so I can only assume that this is a common occurance for them.

Anyone experience this before?

Since someone reported a Paypal scam a few weeks ago, I have gotten bit paranoid about E-mails from even recognized organizations. I get an E-mail form Paypal about every other week now, but so far they have appeared to be normal Paypal spam asking me to use and promote Paypal.

The internet is truely a scummy place at times.

Never happened to me, i'm real leary of bidding and then covering a bid range though. I don't see how they could prevent the seller/his friend from bidding you up. I usually only try and snipe at the last minute or so.

I never click on links for ebay or paypal from inside any email. I go directly.

I've gotten similar things before.. I do believe its against eBays rules. Even if it was perfectly on the level I don't think I'd trust it.

Don't trust it. If something goes wrong, you're screwed. Did the email have the guys ebay username? If so, I'd report him to ebay and get hin booted....

But then again, I'm a prick

I've worked it both ways. Bidding directly at the last minute and using the bidding proxy system. Of course there is nothing keeping someone from driving the price up, but since they don't know my ceiling they run the risk of loosing my purchace if they go over my ceiling.

It's pretty much a two way street. Sure, I hope the price stays where it is, but even if I hit my ceiling price, I will have saved about $100 or close to 20% over the best discounted price I have found so far. Also there are at least 100 of this same model camera on E-bay right now, so I have the luxury of knowing that if I miss this one there are plenty more to try for.

My old man ran a used car lot for years, and he alway got the best of any deal. I just wish I was half the horse trader that he was, but I still got some of his blood in me.

Cheers

Yeah, I did report him along with his mail service and all routing headers. E-bay instructs you how to do this in their complaint system. They said they might suspend his membership for what that's worth.

At least I feel better about doing the right thing.

Cheers

Was bidding yesterday for a cctv camera,seemed to be very little interest in the item, but I been stung before, so I slipped me bid in about two seconds before the end, and some twat still beat me.
One has to be exceedingly sneaky on ebay.

My roomate had a similar thing happen, except it was a good thing.

He was bidding on 256 MB RAM, and he ended up winning, but a guy from montreal sent him a message that he could get him the RAM for X amount (close to his winning price). So he ordered both and I bought the second one from him. Happy endings for everyone.

Well I danced solid all night in the middle of a field and loved absolutely everybody. Got darned thirsty though.

oh wait, you said E-bay

Its a scam. Few years ago, I got an offer for a PS2 for 30 dollars from Thailand. :rolleyes:

I was the one who felt scammed by ebay few weeks back.

I had a frank talk with the seller who had become a non-member after payment and auction close and I guess he listened and sent my GF4 card. It took me 4 weeks to get it.. but at least I walked away without losing my money.

Im probably not gonna buy anything on ebay unless its belw $50 any more.

I did that a few times for car parts- usually you can tell right away if the guy's legit or not...

Well, here is the latest. I lost out on the particular item I was bidding on. Some "bright" person bid $540 and got it. My limit was $470.

The funny thing is that this a Canon G3 digital camera, which has been discontinued in favor of the newer G5. The only real difference is that the G3 is 4 megapixels and the G 5 is 5 megs. Prices are dropping daily because photo-shops are trying to get rid of the G3's

I just checked and as of today, the lowest online price for the G3 is $445. The auction deal included a 256 mb flash memory card worth about $80. This brought the value of the auction deal to about $525 US.

The dufus who won the auction, did so by paying fifteen bucks more than the lowest retail on-line price available. Add to that the fact that 20 other bidders including myself wasted 2 days of our time tracking this fabulous (not!)bargain. I was also tracking 3 more auctions of the same camera and they all sold for more than the current retail price too.


As usual, the only winner in this deal was E-bay, and it also points out that they have no moron filters. There may be good deals on E-bay but this item just doesn't qualify

I would start jump into another auction, but it's
just not worth the hassle for a standard item with an over abundant supply.

I just placed my order direct. Screw all those bidding geniuses on E-bay.

Cheers

Never pay more than 2/3rds of retail when you buy electronics on eBay. Use dealtime.com to find your lowest price online and then bid 1/3rd less.

E-bay can be a good place for deals on occaison...

I got my old visor Deluxe there for 125$/US back when they were selling here for 300$.

I know a guy who bought a TPS doublewall softball bat (retail ~300$) for 13$ USD.

I buy my companies' blank TPS forms on Ebay...