Fraud making eBay motors unusable

[hairykrishna]

I'm in the market for a new car. Not really sure what so trying to browse eBay motors. Literally every other advert is a picture of a random car, then a picture of an email address and phone number. Blatant fraud and there's hundreds of them. Should be trivial to detect so what the hell are eBay playing at?

[Sebring440]

hairykrishna said:

I'm in the market for a new car. Not really sure what so trying to browse eBay motors. Literally every other advert is a picture of a random car, then a picture of an email address and phone number. Blatant fraud and there's hundreds of them. Should be trivial to detect so what the hell are eBay playing at?

It's been going on for years. Not sure what good complaining here is going to do.

Perhaps complain to Ebay?

[hairykrishna]

It's particularly crappy today. Surely it's not normally this bad is it? Complaining to eBay does bugger all regardless of the subject in my experience.

[Cliftonite]

This has been a regular issue on eBay for some time . . .

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

[Trevor555]

hairykrishna said:

It's particularly crappy today. Surely it's not normally this bad is it? Complaining to eBay does bugger all regardless of the subject in my experience.

I often report them when I see them but lately Ebay are very slow to act, to the point nowadays I think why should I bother.

Some people must fall for it or they wouldn't bother.

Autotrader has got better in recent times.

[leef44]

This is ebay's business model. Lack of integrity, take your risk and you might get a bargain or be fraudulently caught out.

If the stakes are too high for you then it's best to shop elsewhere. They don't seem to care and are happy with that business model.

[mat205125]

I'll occasionally report them, but nothing ever changes

Searching for genuine bargain no reserve cars to take a punt on seems impossible any more

[Fady]

The fraudulent ads are easy to spot, meaning that you can just disregard them. Then with the bone fide ads, you just carry out the normal set of checks that you would undertake buying a car from anywhere else. Problem solved.

[hairykrishna]

It just makes it annoying to browse. Half the cars you click on to have a look at don't exist.

[anonymous-user]

I've been using Ebay for nearly 20 years, but it is sad how it has gone downhill, presumably the owners are deliberately trying to reduce its value.

[lost in espace]

I am about to list my L322, surely it costs money to list an ad. Or are the accounts hacked.

[andyalan10]

Do you tweet? Might be fun to tag ebay and a few other consumer focussed/journalistic accounts and see what reactions it gets.

[hairykrishna]

I'm sure it's hacked accounts.

[Trevor555]

hairykrishna said:

It just makes it annoying to browse. Half the cars you click on to have a look at don't exist.

I agree, it's annoying that Ebay are allowing it to happen.

They should be doing more to protect the public from fraud. After all, criminals are using their site for fraudulent activities.

As a society it seems it's become the norm for scammers to operate freely.

[Trevor555]

hairykrishna said:

I'm sure it's hacked accounts.

it's quite clever how they do it.

They send a message to a dealer inquiring about one of their cars for sale.

They say they have a part exchange that's also listed on Ebay and click on the Ebay link to view it.

Then the dealer gets a convincing looking Ebay log in page to view it, they enter their log in and they've just given a fraudster access to their account.

Most dealers are well aware of it now, but many got caught early on.

[brightonpad]

I find that putting in max distance of 500 miles seems to weed out the dodgy ads.. works in the Classic Cars section anyway.