let's roll the ebay roulette!

[68273b15178f1voodoo47]

was snooping around a bit, and this apparently is the second wave of graphics card fakes, with the first one hitting about two years ago, with GF114 gpus (GTX 560) BIOS modded to create fake GTX 960 cards. now they are doing the same thing with the even slower GF106/GF116 gpus (GTS 450/GTX550), turning them into GTX 750/970/980 cards which should be much faster, increasing the gap between real and advertised performance even further, and making them even less stable because of the fake non-existing extra memory - probably the reason why more people noticed this time.

and ebay apparently lets the scammy sellers live, because hey, they are paying their fees, so all's good (I'm guessing the amount of people that actually figure out that they have been scammed is not that large, and when the scammer is caught, they will just refund the money and get away with some simple excuse like "people made a mistake when packaging stuff" or similar. here's an example, see the negative feedbacks). fun times.

however, they are taking advantage of people's greed and stupidity in a kind of skillful way, so I'm not terribly mad at them. I mean, it's not a thing I would do myself, but if you have to exploit something in a semi-evil way, then greed and stupidity are pretty alright.

[68273b1517d9cJML]

[...] and when the scammer is caught, they will just refund the money and get away with some simple excuse like "people made a mistake when packaging stuff" or similar. here's an example, see the negative feedbacks). fun times.
[...]

Please accept our sincere apology, we would solve this problem soon.

We are sorry to bring you the inconvenience, we will improve in the future.

Wow. What a joke!

[68273b1517ec3voodoo47]

I'm guessing it's still profitable, so they are the ones laughing in the end.

[68273b151802cicemann]

Nice guys finish last. That's the triop way, and is how the world works sadly.

[68273b1518177voodoo47]

stumbled upon a pretty interesting video about copies, fakes and knockoffs in china;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9loDBwp5ST0

the gist of it is that that the proclivity to copy, pirate and fake everything runs deep, deep in their blood. also, 4:50 lol.

[68273b15182d4voodoo47]

aand the ebay roulette spins again - I've got a bunch of leftover SSD IDE modules for sale (they are pretty much unusable, as 2GB is not enough to squeeze any decent OS in), $9 a piece and buyers can make offers, and suddenly a guy rolls in and offers hundred bucks for five.

I've accepted (duh), very curious about whether he'll pay, or just present the purchase as a mistake and cancel. but hey, now I know that people can pay more for ebay stuff if they want, as crazy as that may sound.


//yep, it's a cancel.

[68273b15183ecicemann]

And that is why with Ebay you always put an immediate payment requirement on all of your listings, and not allow those with zero or negative feedback to bid or purchase any of your items. With those in place that fixes about 3/4 of it.

[68273b1518521voodoo47]

aaand ebay charged me $1.80 - seems like whoever initiates the cancellation process (even though the other party has asked to cancel using the system) pays a fee? wow, what a load of bs.

so yeah, never be a nice guy, always raise a request and let ebay deal with with it, that will hopefully not result in this (and even if, at least you make them work for it).

asked the seller (nicely) to reimburse - lets see whether he has a bit of decency. //no, not really, not even a positive feedback.

[68273b15186a6icemann]

Just call up Ebay. 90% of my issues I've had on there, I've had fixed up for me via either calling them or easier yet get them to call you.

You'll just likely have slight language barrier issues as their call center is in the Philippines. The accents can take some getting used to. But you get stuff resolved quick, and speaking to them phone wise is the best way to get account upgrades (for higher selling limits, creating additional accounts etc etc).

For example, for a new Ebay account your limited to listing 10 items per month for the first few months. Then it switches to the standard 40, then via either selling well or calling you can have that bumped up to 120, then 240, then 580 etc etc.

I have 5 accounts (which is the maximum that you can have attached to 1 singular Paypal account), listing between 80-160 items.

[68273b1518804voodoo47]

well, I guess it had to happen sooner or later.

and can't log a complaint straight away as I have a couple of other items on their way from china, so no way if identifying the scammer until the rest arrives, giving him plenty of time to disappear or whatever these guys do to prevent paypal from reversing the payment. it's just a handful of dollars either way, but still kind of annoying.

[68273b1518963Kolya]

These scammers got balls. And you just want to roll with it? Don't you have some kind of transaction ID? 

[68273b1519e3bfox]

Get some of these and show em who's got bigger balls and very smelly feet. Next step of escalation would be sending the shoes. If they can add two and two together, they'll know what's up after having sent those balls already.

[68273b151a06bvoodoo47]

as I've said, no way to 100% positively id the guy (everything is in chinese, and I'd say that all the names on that envelope are probably fake anyway) until the other items arrive, but it's one of these three:

https://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=ydyswy-0&ftab=AllFeedback
https://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=geoidyttwer&ftab=AllFeedback
https://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=tomtop_w&ftab=AllFeedback

most likely the first one (has two bad feedbacks with users mentioning two ball bearings, and the purchased item was 1/3 cheaper than any similar item available on ebay), but the second guy also has bad feedback and is hiding the comments, so who knows.

definitely going to log a complaint and ask for a full refund, but I need to be sure I have the right guy, so I need to wait for the next two items to arrive, with the last one finally identifying the scammer.

[68273b151a1bavoodoo47]

received a full refund. no idea what the scammer's point was exactly - I guess he could use a couple of dollars for a few days?

anyway, the moral of the story is if something is way too cheap to be true, then that's exactly what it is (he was selling the item for 2/3 of everyone else's price).

also I'm keeping the ball bearings.

[68273b151a2b3Kolya]

Of course.

[68273b151b787icemann]

anyway, the moral of the story is if something is way too cheap to be true, then that's exactly what it is (he was selling the item for 2/3 of everyone else's price).

Unless you've sniped the auction in the last 3 seconds of it. Love that little trick. Made me QUITE a bit of money .

[68273b151b944voodoo47]

cheap electronics are almost exclusively buy now auctions. ain't nobody got time for biddin.

was sniping a lot when I was grabbing various 3dfx stuff, but not doing that anymore as the prices are insane.

[68273b151bba2voodoo47]

also, the fake graphics card from china problem is apparently big enough to warrant fake gpu detection support in gpu-z, so good news for the less tech-savvy ebayers.

[68273b151bd5ficemann]

Had my own ebay issue last night. Opening up a bunch of padded envelopes containing snes and n64 carts I'd bought, and within the bubble wrap for one of them I spot a black spider. I freaked and dropped the wrap to the floor and off runs the spider. Killed soon after with my trusty shoe. Wasn't poisonous or anything, but still.

Called ebay to see what I should do, as that's the first time that's ever happened to me. They said to request a full refund since that could have been potentially deadly. Seller refuses to admit fault. I've lodged a refund request.

[68273b151bea0voodoo47]

the idea of asking for a refund because of a spider would never occur to me. worst thing I had included in a package was a fruit stone of some kind - or it could have been a small turd, didn't touch it or examine it thoroughly, off it went to the garbage bin with the rest of the packaging.

the item was fine (a 3dfx Velocity 100).

[68273b151bfb5icemann]

I was surprised that the ebay person said to request a refund as well. I'm happy to have the cartridge. Just was odd + scary getting that in there.

[68273b151c0c6voodoo47]

ah, I always forget most people have a problem with spiders. I don't, so I'd just grab the the little guy with a napkin and throw him out, as I always do - I don't kill things unless they deserve killing.

[68273b151c2b4icemann]

I'm largely fine with them. Only ones that spook me are huntsmen, red backs and anything large.

Spiders in video games don't scare me at all for example. On the other hand, if I was to wake up with a spider crawling up me I'd be screaming like a bitch lol and would be running out of the room. Return with fly spray, or something large to kill it.

Dogs are my true fear. Though there again, it's only specific ones, like dobbermen, rottweilers, pitbull terriers etc.

[68273b151c413voodoo47]

aaand another scamming attempt - instead of the X12 console, I have received just some garbage (ehh, well, even more garbage) clone - it's black and has a vaguely similar shape and features, but it's definitely a completely different product, and also is in chinese only, so completely useless. again, no idea what the seller's deal is - did he really think I wouldn't notice? requested full refund, again.