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Subject: 
another possible set scam on aussie ebay
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.loc.au
Date: 
Fri, 22 Dec 2006 06:54:24 GMT
Viewed: 
3261 times
  
Be careful when buying 'New Sealed' LEGO sets on ebay. If a fixed price listing
is too good to be true, like less than wholesale, then it's possibly dodgy.
Especially when the same seller has had an auction run to higher than retail for
the same set in preceding days.

Seller 'jshenderson1' (now deregistered) from the Wollongong area south of
Sydney, had 21 auctions for 21 different sets end on December 6th this year. The
sets covered a range of themes, but were mainly Star Wars and Harry Potter,
though there were a couple of Duplo, a couple of City, but even a Spongebob set
and even an Advent calendar. There were a few older sets like 6097 and 6291, but
they were mainly current.

On December 7th and 8th, they then ran a series of Fixed Price listings selling
multiples of the Dec 6th auction listings for considerably less, another 50 sets
were sold this way. So over 3 days....71 sets in total (21 unique sets) were
sold for $5,900 ! It's hard finding the items of deregistered users, but there
were earlier auctions that finished on 1st December (4 auctions for approx
$350)...there may have been many more.

The seller had registered on ebay on 27th Aug 2006, building feedback by buying
things and selling Braun Oral B toothbrush head packs for half the RRP. The last
feedback they left for a buyer was on 7th Sep 2006. The last feedback they left
for a seller was 14 Sep 2006. They received feedback in October for the
toothbrush heads, but no feedback related to LEGO until the 14th Dec 2006, when
the same buyer left positive feedback for item 300053026449 and 300053026893. On
the 18th Dec 2006, the same buyer modified his feedback with followup comments
saying the feedback was a mistake and he had never received any sets yet. Over
the course of the 18th another 8 users left a total of 10 negatives. The user
deregistered/or was deregistered.

Examples of the sets include...
6210 Jabba's Sail Barge sold at auction for $128 on the 6th Dec.
Another three 6210 sets were sold fixed price for $74 each on the 7th and 8th.

4504 Millenium Falcon sold at auction for $337 on the 6th Dec.
Another five 4504 sets were sold fixed price for $159 each on the 7th and 8th.

6211 ISD sold at auction for $167 on the 6th Dec.
Another four 6211 sets were sold fixed price for $99 each on the 7th and 8th.

Add $9.50 postage Australia-wide for each seta and you start to get an idea of
the scale.

So...do your feedback homework, watchout for newbies selling huge numbers of
items at 'too good' prices. It wasn't just new buyers that were caught out, but
also some ebay veterans including some resellers !

-pete.w



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: another possible set scam on aussie ebay
 
(...) Thanks for the heads up Pete, seems to be a few scammers and shammers on Aus ebay, and the more we know about them the less effective they are. Have a Merry Christmas Gary (18 years ago, 22-Dec-06, to lugnet.loc.au)

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