Without fail, the scammers always trigger a few of my more obscure saved eBay searches that seldom go off naturally.
Thanks
@JimInOz and anyone else that helped report as the listings were all taken down. The scammers are easy to spot. I’ve seen them use 24 hour, 3 day, or 6 day auctions but whatever duration they choose, every listing will be the same. The ~50,000+ listings will include watches, cameras, pens, coins (and other collectibles), musical instruments, bicycles, heavy construction equipment, and more… and all of it will have free shipping. There will be no continuity in style between the vast listing images and that’s because they are all stolen from previous and, in some instances, still active eBay listings. Many of the images will still have the genuine vendors watermark on them. As Jim pointed out, the eBay store is often in a different location from where the items will “ship” from.
And this is essentially their calling card. When you see this, report it.
I have seen that mixed in with the other listing images or the description, however, it’s always said the same thing: bids are not accepted and the item can be purchased for the buy it now price (which is never included).
A quick PSA- If you don’t already, start using multi factor authentication on all of your accounts, but specifically your eBay account. These account take overs have been happening for years and still occur far too often. For tax and other reasons, eBay has your sensitive personally identifiable information and you definitely want to protect that. At the very least, update your passwords. If you struggle to remember a variety of different passwords for all of your accounts (use a password manager or), start using silly pass phrases that you can remember. A longer plain password will be more secure than a short one filled with a variety of characters. Though, combining characters and length is always good. For example, here is a password vs pass phrase:
But I digress… stay vigilant! Time for coffee
☕
