Do you buy decks on Ebay?

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 25 Mar 2005, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Lillie	25 Mar 2005
Do you buy decks on Ebay? I have bought one or two. I have heard of 'spoof emails' and never thought I would be fooled. Last week we got a couple. The first on was obviously not right. But the second almost had me taken in. It said our account had been compromised. And I thought that maybe Ebay believed that cos I'd told them about the first. Well, I thought I'd send it on to them, just to be sure, and they told me that it was not from them, it was a spoof intended to get our account details etc. Anyhow. I am sure lots of us know about all this already, but this is for those that don't. If you get an email purporting to be from Ebay, telling you to click a link and fill in your account details... DON'T DO IT!!!!!! P.S. To the Mods. I know that this is in the wrong place, but I thought I should put it where lots of people would look.

HudsonGray	25 Mar 2005
I usually get 3 a month about ebay and 5 a month about paypal. Some even include the last 4 digits of my supposed credit card & expiration date. Well, my card doesn't have those numbers and NONE of the ebay or paypal messages (outside of 'you have cash' and that one ebay email about the fees for ebay stores going up) has been from the two places. I figure all unsolicited ones are spam & treat them accordingly. If they annoy me too much I forward them to the appropriate reporting sites. They're getting slicker & slicker, and use all the right graphics, but they're almost entirely fakes. If in doubt, forward to ebay & let them handle it. If it's legit they'll contact you in 24 hours.

SunChariot	26 Mar 2005
Lillie wrote: Do you buy decks on Ebay? I have bought one or two. I have heard of 'spoof emails' and never thought I would be fooled. Last week we got a couple. The first on was obviously not right. But the second almost had me taken in. It said our account had been compromised. And I thought that maybe Ebay believed that cos I'd told them about the first. Well, I thought I'd send it on to them, just to be sure, and they told me that it was not from them, it was a spoof intended to get our account details etc. Anyhow. I am sure lots of us know about all this already, but this is for those that don't. If you get an email purporting to be from Ebay, telling you to click a link and fill in your account details... DON'T DO IT!!!!!! P.S. To the Mods. I know that this is in the wrong place, but I thought I should put it where lots of people would look. Thanks for the warning. I did not have that, but what do you think of this? I got an e-mail I found suspicious not that long ago. About a week after I had paid, I got an e-mail telling me I owed the woman more for shipping and handling as she said they had miscalculated the amount. Which in itself is fine. But what I found funny is that she did not seem to know my name or the name of the product (some meditation tapes I had ordered). The letter went "Dear Friend....and it just said I owed them more money for the product I had bought, never once mentioning what the product was. I found it strange that she did not mention the name of the tapes...to me that would be the normal thing to do. I had bought a few things that week and wasn't even sure who she was or which one she was talking about. I wrote back and asked her to refresh my memory as to what the name of the product was I needed to pay extra for. She STILL did not seem to know. She just said " I am sure you remember what it was, if you really need me to I can look it up".Had me really suspicious. I asked if she would send me a PayPal link and I would pay her. But she said that since I had already paid with PayPal, it was blocked on the E-Bay page and I had to go to the PayPal site and pay her using her e-mail address. Which I thought sounded even more suspicious. And I knew that to be untrue as I have on previous occasions mistakenly typed in the American s/h fee instead of the Canadian one. And the sellers have always always sent me an E-Bay link where I can pay the difference. But this one said it is blocked forever, once you pay. I was going crazy on E-Bay trying to find info on how to tell if you are being scammed. I am not normally a suspicious person, but for some reason this had me going. She wrote again telling me my package was stuck at the post office and they refused to ship it without more money. I was still trying to be sure (as it was only a day later). The third letter she was MAD, telling me if they were pressuring her for the money. In the end I did not know how to check if she was legit, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and paid her. There did seemt to be a link in her e-mail to E-Bay. Hope I was not rooked. And that something even shows up. Bar

SunChariot	26 Mar 2005
HudsonGray wrote: I usually get 3 a month about ebay and 5 a month about paypal. Some even include the last 4 digits of my supposed credit card & expiration date. Well, my card doesn't have those numbers and NONE of the ebay or paypal messages (outside of 'you have cash' and that one ebay email about the fees for ebay stores going up) has been from the two places. I figure all unsolicited ones are spam & treat them accordingly. If they annoy me too much I forward them to the appropriate reporting sites. They're getting slicker & slicker, and use all the right graphics, but they're almost entirely fakes. If in doubt, forward to ebay & let them handle it. If it's legit they'll contact you in 24 hours. Wow, that's terrible! Imagine that giving the last 4 digits of your credit card number and they're wrong. Why do they even try? What are the chances they could guess the right numbers? Bar

WolfSpirit	26 Mar 2005
SunChariot wrote: I asked if she would send me a PayPal link and I would pay her. But she said that since I had already paid with PayPal, it was blocked on the E-Bay page and I had to go to the PayPal site and pay her using her e-mail address. Which I thought sounded even more suspicious. And I knew that to be untrue as I have on previous occasions mistakenly typed in the American s/h fee instead of the Canadian one. And the sellers have always always sent me an E-Bay link where I can pay the difference. But this one said it is blocked forever, once you pay. Maybe she meant that she had accepted the money and therefore the same link could not be used to add a different amount for shipping ? But I think she could have made another link if she had taken the trouble. Hope your package turns up all right. If not, you should certainly report her to Ebay ! If it is not a scam, it is a seller with a very unprofessional attitude: not knowing what the customer bought, not helpful with the extra you have to pay, getting angry with you...not someone you want to do business with really :( I have bought things on Ebay with Paypal. I regularly get ads for Ebay but not questions about my account details - maybe because I have a spam filter they can't get through ?? I'll be careful with that anyway, thanks for alerting us Lillie.

smokey	26 Mar 2005
Thanx-for the alert, Lillie; & I don't blame you one bit for being suspicious; SunChariot_I hope EveryThing turns out for the Best!!!

Milfoil	26 Mar 2005
Sun Chariot - thats dreadfully bad mannered of the seller. They must have known what you purchased and if they made a mistake on the postage costs, really they should have accepted their mistake and not made you pay for it. I hope everything works out ok and you get your purchase. Re: spoof emails wanting your password, CC details etc - Ebay and Paypal NEVER send out emails asking for this information. I ALWAYS forward this rubbish on to spoof@ebay.co.uk or spoof@paypal.co.uk - the more they get bombarded with this sort of thing the more they do to stop it and perhaps finally they might come up with a more secure system. This sort of thing really rattles my chain!

Lillie	26 Mar 2005
Sun Chariot. That is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard! I was under the impression that if a seller had declared postage to you then, right or wrongm they were stuck with it. I have had a few buys where the postage has been higher than the seller asked for. Not one of them has ever asked me for more. I would have reported this seller to ebay and refused to pay more. If they did not send the item I would have reported them again for that. Then I would have given them bad feedback. (I know that this risks getting yourself bad feedback, but I think I would have done it anyhow!) But are you sure that the person that asked you for more money was actually the seller? Did the email addresses match up? Did you contact the seller again through Ebay to confirm that it was them? You cannot be to careful when people purporting to be from Ebay ask for money or information. There are so many scams out there! Such a pity that you just cannot trust anyone these days!

Cerulean	26 Mar 2005
I had chalked up an under ten-dollar purchase to almost the 'got done-in' when ten days went by...but within 14 days, she contacted me that her system was crashed by a worm and she changed all her email addresses and did not contact sellers in the interim because she was afraid any of her addresses were going to infect someone else. I was first notified by U.P.S. that someone was sending me an expected delivery and she sent me email a day or two later. She managed to recover my address, thank goodness. So if you do get in a small patch of difficulty, if you have an address to send items, you can try using the mail systems of the delivery service to get things out...I understood that she was doing what she could and was glad I waited a small bit. This just happened in the past week or so. Regards, Cerulean

Witchn_Famous	26 Mar 2005
This information is good for me to know. I was just looking on ebay today. I will look - perhaps, but in light of all of this not buy now. Thanks

Skydancer	26 Mar 2005
I get emails every so often from usually just eBay saying I need to varify my account ... BUT ... I don't use that account for eBay OR PayPal!! :D Hope nobody gets taken in by them. Isn't the world a lovely place in which to reside? However, I don't know of a better one ... S:OL

SunChariot	26 Mar 2005
Lillie wrote: Sun Chariot. I would have reported this seller to ebay and refused to pay more. If they did not send the item I would have reported them again for that. Then I would have given them bad feedback. (I know that this risks getting yourself bad feedback, but I think I would have done it anyhow!) But are you sure that the person that asked you for more money was actually the seller? Did the email addresses match up? Did you contact the seller again through Ebay to confirm that it was them? You cannot be to careful when people purporting to be from Ebay ask for money or information. ! That's what I couldn't figure out how to do, to contact E-Bay and report them and see if they could find out if it really was the seller. How do you contact them if you are unsure? No, I wasn't sure it was really the seller. That's what bothered me. And I really found it funny they told me I had to go on the PayPal site and send it to their e-mail. In the end I did it, in case they were real. I really did want my tapes. Me too, if someone was a bad seller I would (and did) give them a bad rating. I have a score of 100% now, that I would not like to lose, but I think if someone is doing things badly it is important to warn others so they don't fall into it too. Bar

seneris	27 Mar 2005
Witchn_Famous wrote: This information is good for me to know. I was just looking on ebay today. I will look - perhaps, but in light of all of this not buy now. Thanks There will always be some rotten apples, but on the other hand there are good, honest sellers on eBay as well. I agree, you have to be careful with what you do and where your money goes to. So far I haven't had a bad experience, but it's always good to look out.

Lillie	27 Mar 2005
Sun Chariot. I assume you are using Ebay dot com. But I thinkit applies to all incarnations of Ebay. Go to the bottom of the first/front/home page and click on 'security centre' (or center if it is dot com!) There you will find lots of options for many different problems regarding security. I think yours might fall under the 'spoof paypal' category. (if it was a con.) The danger is that if it was a con you have given access to you bank/paypal account to a scam artist. I really think you ought to check this out. Canyou get in touch with the seller through the original invoice, or from the item page? (ask seller a question) Then you could get them to confirm wether or not it was them.

SunChariot	27 Mar 2005
Well, I was on Ebay.ca (the Canadian one). I would presume that they work the same way too. I will look into that. Thanks Lillie! Bar

Lillie	27 Mar 2005
Well, let's hope it was the seller wanting more money (though it was a nasty thing to do!) Lord, I hate these scam people. Friend of mine just sold an old motor bike on Ebay. The winner sent a mail saying that he was from abroard, that an associate owedhim money from a British bank, that if the sent my friend a cheque for £4000 my friend could take the £400 owed for the bike, plus £50 for helping out, and send the buyer the change of £3550. Ha ha. Yeah right, he's really going to do that! And a week later find the cheque bounces and the bank want's an extra £50 in charges. I hate these people.

Annabelle	27 Mar 2005
Wow...so many bad experiences! I don't get too many fake emails about eBay and PayPal, in part because I make aggressive use of spam blocking features in my email software. I've bought probably 30% or more of my tarot collection from eBay, and most transactions have gone smoothly. Actually, one that I'm in the middle of now has me a bit concerned...I made an error in judgement, I think, and bought an item from a brand-new seller with no feedback rating yet. They only allowed payment through PayPal, which was fine...but they aren't set up to take payments through PayPal, as I discovered when I attempted to pay them. And they aren't responding to my emails. Sigh. But all in all, 99.5% of my eBay transactions have been wonderful. And if it weren't for eBay, it would be both difficult and expensive to obtain certain decks.

HudsonGray	27 Mar 2005
Everyone has to start somewhere. My first attempted purchase ended up being zeroed out by the seller because I didn't have any feedback. I contacted ebay & they said it was the seller, but when I questioned the seller he said ebay did it (yeah, right). I managed to purchase the next thing I tried bidding on and started my 'record' on ebay. All sellers starting out are at square one too, so that's something to keep in mind. You can't get feedback till you sell things, or buy things. I remember someone complaining they couldn't reach a seller when an item was a week overdue. They never looked at the area of the country the person was in--it was Florida right when the hurricane came through, the person was incommunicado for 6 days till the electricity was turned back on. People do need some leeway. But if you have a seller who says 'only paypal' yet doesn't have a paypal account, now THAT'S suspicious.

SunChariot	27 Mar 2005
Annabelle4 wrote: Wow...so many bad experiences! I don't get too many fake emails about eBay and PayPal, in part because I make aggressive use of spam blocking features in my email software. I've bought probably 30% or more of my tarot collection from eBay, and most transactions have gone smoothly. Actually, one that I'm in the middle of now has me a bit concerned...I made an error in judgement, I think, and bought an item from a brand-new seller with no feedback rating yet. They only allowed payment through PayPal, which was fine...but they aren't set up to take payments through PayPal, as I discovered when I attempted to pay them. And they aren't responding to my emails. Sigh. But all in all, 99.5% of my eBay transactions have been wonderful. And if it weren't for eBay, it would be both difficult and expensive to obtain certain decks. Most of my experiences went smoothly too, and with very nice sellers. And usually everything comes quickly and in great condition. I only had any trouble at all that one time. Don't want to make it sound like that is the norm for me. Bar

crazydiamond	29 Mar 2005
I am one of those genuine decent sellers, i only send email through ebay.. i have sold many things on there and made many people happy as u can check from my feedback. We are not all bad. Not only do i sell on ebay i am a mother of two, i work a full time job, i have qualifications, no criminal record... and on top of that am interested in astrology, tarot, dream interpretations, collecting books and motorbikes... i hope this restores a little more faith in people.. any questions please feel free to email.. take care Andrea

Skydancer	29 Mar 2005
Just thought I would add that I have bought the majority of my decks on eBay and at half.com over the past several years, and not one transaction has gone sour. Some take longer than others to finally arrive in my mailbox, but all eventually did get there. And the 2 times that I got only books instead of books AND cards it was my fault for not reading correctly. Which brings me to rule #1 - Make sure the add says that cards are in the offering. Many times it won't be worded as such and the cards WILL be included, and other times it's ambiguous - and if you contact the seller you may (I did once) or may not (several times) get a reply. In that case I say to move on. Meanwhile, ignore those emails!! my 2¢ :) S:OL

The Do you buy decks on Ebay? thread was originally posted on 25 Mar 2005 in the Talking Tarot board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Talking Tarot, or read more archived threads.