Do you recognize this bike shop?

Dave Wilson wrote:

No feedback, lots of identical listings, stock
photos, no PayPal or credit card, bad English, etc.

Any of these things would keep me from bidding -- even the bad English.

eBay is actually quite good about following up fraud reports, that is, if anyone
bothers to report it. Posting here is good, but forwarding this thread to eBay
is really the way to deal with it.

Matt O.

The three photos appear to be of different buildings. The sign looks
fake and the shadow isn't right.

"zulutime" wrote in message
om...
The three photos appear to be of different buildings. The sign looks
fake and the shadow isn't right.

web site looks very similiar to this one http://www.scorpionbike.com/

On 10 Nov 2004 11:56:17 -0800, (Dave Wilson) wrote:

There's a bunch of listings on eBay right now that have all the
hallmarks of a scam. No feedback, lots of identical listings, stock
photos, no PayPal or credit card, bad English, etc. Hmm, I just
checked the link I was going to paste in, and the auction has
disappeared from eBay.

Anyway, I emailed them asking if they had any pictures of the bike,
and I got back a stock reply that just screamed "scam". But the reply
included a link to their website.

http://www.akron-bike.com/

The English and writing style on the site are just like the email and
eBay listing. My guess is they just took the three photos of a bike
shop and built a fake site around them. So my question is: do you
recognize the bike shop? The only clues are the "515" address on the
front of the building. They did actually go to the trouble of using a
515 address in the contacts section of the website.

just idly curious,
Dave
www.davewilson.cc

There was a recent report on my local craigs list that someone saw the
bike they were trying to sell on craigs list up for auction on ebay!
Someone took the craigs list photos and text and used them on ebay. A
reverse of the typical scam.

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 18:12:32 -0800, Dan Daniel
wrote:

There was a recent report on my local craigs list that someone saw the
bike they were trying to sell on craigs list up for auction on ebay!
Someone took the craigs list photos and text and used them on ebay. A
reverse of the typical scam.

In the past couple of years, I recall at least one incident in which a
poster here was advising that a bike which was listed on eBay had to
be a scam; the photos of the bike and some supporting materials had
been lifted from both his listing of the bike and from his employer's
website, if I remember correctly.

I've spotted a couple of obvious scams on eBay myself, and have turned
them in to the eBay investigation folks promptly when I did.

My rule of thumb: It's probably a scam if a listing is shown as
"bidder identities protected" when there is no reason for that to be
the case, the items up for bid are expensive, and the seller meets any
of the following criteria:

- Feedback level very low, or lots of feedback but it's all as a
buyer and the most recent is many months ago.
- User identity recently changed, and feedback (as seller or buyer)
is all more than a few months old.
- Much or all of the feedback is from users whose only or principle
feedback is from a common group of users (i.e., a bunch of false
idenities created just to pump up the feedback on each other.)

I have seen all of these warning sign patterns on sales which were
ended by eBay, and have seen them as well on sales that later turned
out to be fraud cases.
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

Dave Wilson wrote:
There's a bunch of listings on eBay right now that have all the
hallmarks of a scam. No feedback, lots of identical listings, stock
photos, no PayPal or credit card, bad English, etc. Hmm, I just
checked the link I was going to paste in, and the auction has
disappeared from eBay.

I saw those while trolling through the Bianchis yesterday.

They're bogus.

The clue is that they won't accept bids, they want you to call
and make a deal directly.

That's against eBay's rules.

But they disappeared before I could even page through to
the contact form to report the violation.

So I'm not going to worry about them.

--Blair
"Have baseball bat, will keep sellers honest."

They sure list a lot of bikes.

http://tinyurl.com/67qqp

Dave Wilson wrote:
There's a bunch of listings on eBay right now that have all the
hallmarks of a scam. No feedback, lots of identical listings, stock
photos, no PayPal or credit card, bad English, etc. Hmm, I just
checked the link I was going to paste in, and the auction has
disappeared from eBay.

Anyway, I emailed them asking if they had any pictures of the bike,
and I got back a stock reply that just screamed "scam". But the reply
included a link to their website.

http://www.akron-bike.com/

The English and writing style on the site are just like the email and
eBay listing. My guess is they just took the three photos of a bike
shop and built a fake site around them. So my question is: do you
recognize the bike shop? The only clues are the "515" address on the
front of the building. They did actually go to the trouble of using a
515 address in the contacts section of the website.

just idly curious,
Dave
www.davewilson.cc

There are no buildings that look like this at that address. This is
downtown where there are only multi-sotry buildings. In fact, I recall
this building is at least five stories tall and houses San Diego
Hardware. Also the area code is bogus.

Scams must pay off for someone to put this much energy into it.

Dan wrote:
They sure list a lot of bikes.

http://tinyurl.com/67qqp

Yep. The current akron-bike username is less than a day old.
--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

Dan Wrote:
They sure list a lot of bikes.

http://tinyurl.com/67qqp

Are these the same outfit? Akron-bike1245 registered in 2000.
This link is in UK not San Diego or even New Mexico.


--
meb