[Collins] Ebay withdrawals???

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

On Sun, 2006-02-19 at 13:21 -0600, Jim Isbell, W5JAI wrote:
> I was looking on ebay this morning following up on an email alert on a
> standard search that I do, and saw a Collins item I was interested in
> but when I tried to go to it I got a message the it had been
> withdrawn.
> 
> I have seen a GREAT increase in this in the past month and am
> wondering what is going on?
> 
> Anyone have any idea why the sudden increase in "item has been withdrawn".
> 
> --
> Jim Isbell

Its been happening more in farm tractors. Lots of times the disappearing
items have been scams, sales pages stolen from legitimate items but with
inconsistent locations and pictures of items already sold. Some times
when asked the seller gives different location and descriptions that are
on the ebay page. Often the seller has a bogus e-mail address in a
different country than the supposed sale item location. Then someone
recognizes the pictures as being from something advertised (or personal
pictures from their own web page having nothing to do with epay) and
complains to ebay, then is when those get withdrawn.

Might be private sales but properly the original listing should say the
private sale is possible. Often its not so stated.

And some begin to recognize sellers who have tended to pull such scams
before and complain to ebay as soon as they are seen.

Closed sales where you have to register before bidding seem to be more
prone to being scams.

And there's always to possibility of there being someone close to the
seller ready to bid up the prices, just like at live auctions. I've been
to farm auctions where that was done directly by the auctioneer. I don't
go to auctions by those auctioneers again.
-- 
73, Jerry, K0CQ, Technical Advisor to the CRA
All content copyright Dr. Gerald N. Johnson, electrical engineer