We all know that the eBay auction site is, and has been for some years now, one of Internet's institutions. This site has become much more than a virtual marketplace for every kind of item; it's a real global marketplace, an universal store, where you can find, as the tagline of a department store in London went way back when, everything from the nail to the locomotive. We could say that, on eBay, you can find everything from the microchip to the supersonic airplane.
The reason why eBay is so dear to me, however, is another one, and it's not strictly tied to its primary function as a meeting point between sellers and buyers of the most disparate goods. EBay has acquired, over time, a reference function, becoming a kind of universal catalogue: if the Web is the cybernetic, global, infinite inheritor of the Diderot/D'Alembert Encyclopédie, eBay is its market extension, not a simple history of objects, but an exhibition, a museum of those, always changing and renewing itself.
This function makes eBay a precious resource for historians of a specific Company, as I am for EMT, Thorens, Porsche. I often hang around eBay not to buy or sell something, just to gather information. If something exists, sooner or later it will be offered for sale on eBay, and that is an immediate, material, practical proof for historians. To corroborate this, I can tell that during the documentation work on my EMT book, I often found, offered for auction, turntable models which were evidently existing, but which were never officially manufactured, as the 'R80', the '940' and so on. The Company had no documentation on those, no technician, no user remembered about them; they wouldn't have been on the book. By contacting the seller and identifying the products, I have been able to add another tile to the puzzle of history.
But there are drawbacks to eBay and to on-line auctions in general. The main one, which is growing in a worrying way, is the army of swindlers which have gathered around on-line auctions to take advantage of the situation.
There are many kinds of fraud: the simplest one is that of selling an item declaring false features, for example describing an item as 'as new' or describing an item by referencing something more sought after, trying to confuse or to influence the buyer (for instance, the Thorens TD 124 original tonearm, the TP-14, invariably described, by malicious sellers, as an 'EMT' because of the similarities between the tonearms); these are, however, venial sins, as the buyer can defend his interests by asking for more detailed information or for pictures of the item he's interested in, in a normal, polite exchange between buyer and seller.
Clearly, these details, and a clear, accurate evaluation of shipping costs, must be required before bidding on an item; it's considered unfair to retract a bid because of a disagreement on this kind of issues. So, let's ask everything we want to know before bidding.
Then there are the real swindlers. It's really uncommon for a seller to pocket the auction winner's money and then not sending the item; as the identity of users is registered and should be verifiable, this kind of fraud could result in legal action, which would be long and expensive, certainly not worth the kind of amount the seller could run away with (tens or hundreds of dollars). Now the frauds seem to be taking other ways. The most common one, but, at the same time, the most dangerous one, is to propose something to a losing bidder, an item similar to the one he is bidding on. It's called, in eBay terms, 'Solicitation of an Offsite Sale', and it is an explicit violation of eBay's rules.
In this case, the swindler scans the list of bidders for a particular item; as it is possible, from that list, to get the eBay identity of the bidders, the swindler sends a message to all of them, in which he offers the same item the auction seller has put up for auction (the auction seller is, of course, completely innocent and knows nothing about the fraud) at a lower price than the auction final one. The swindler hopes someone will fall for his offer, taking advantage of some possible psychological mechanisms. The first one is the plain and simple will to save, to get a bargain: a turntable which closed for €1100 is offered for €900. The second one is the fact that a losing bidder might be itching for the turntable, he's probably green with rage because he wasn't at home when the auction was ending. The offer gives him a second chance, which he might be eager to take. A third one, which I think is not a significant one, but might be for someone, is the chance to save on eBay charges, the swindler explains to the potential buyer that, this way, both would save money.
This kind of thing is simple to do and might seem completely legal. So I would like to show you an example, hiding real identities (I will explain why below).
On July, 12 I put a GBP750 bid for this EMT 950 'BBC', offered by a seller I know very well:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3035075237&category=3283&rd=1
(warning: the link might have expired)

I was immediately outbid by another (legitimate) user, who bid GBP900. Three days later, I got this message in which I was offered an identical 950 'BBC':

To member: ***

From member: ***

Dear eBay Member, Sorry for disturbing you. I am from London,UK and i have something to offer you. I have like new JAW Dropping EMT 950 with Ortofon in box.(just like the one you are bidding on)The price that i want is 900GBP.I accept payment only by Western Union and i will pay the shipping at UPS.Please check me on ebay and you will see that i am there for some time.Have a nice day and reply me a.s.a.p if you are interested!

I am always suspicious of this kind of offer. I have received some other messages like this in the past, but this time I tried to go on, to see what would happen. So I replied, asking for details:

Thanks for your offer. I'd like to see some pictures of the turntable, especially the side panel with the groove indicator and the serial number tag (in the front part of the 950.) Then I'm interested.

Requiring this details is of fundamental importance. When in doubt, in particular if the item is expensive and if the photo seems to be an official one, that is taken from a catalogue or something like that, it's necessary to get a photograph of the actual sample offered for sale, not a picture of a similar one. If someone tells you he's not equipped, don't believe him and don't buy anything from someone with this kind of attitude. Everybody has a camera, often a digital one or a scanner, so don't accept excuses, especially for rare and expensive items. The serial number is a way to identify the item in a safe way, and, in particular cases, for some electronic products such as EMT turntables, can tell you if a particular sample is a special version, worth the purchase.
This particular message had some other features which raised my suspicion, which I would like to point out to you readers. Grammar is iffy, technical terms are imprecise, the item description is a cut-and-paste of the eBay item description. This points to a different geographic origin than the one declared by the malicious (let's just say alternative to the official one for now) seller, who told us he lives in London; furthermore the seller told me he would pay for UPS shipping, and that's completely absurd, normally the seller doesn't pay for shipping, much less for an item weighting 100 Kg as a boxed EMT turntable! Then he specified Western Union as a payment method, a way normally used by Asian/Third World people, again quite suspect for a Londoner. Even greater an anomaly, the fact that the item for sale on the eBay auction was a rare one, and the chance of two being for sale at the same time is quite odd.
My wait wasn't a long one. After a few hours, the low-profile swindler's reply arrived:

Hi, here is the pics. i will not give you the number till i recive the payment info. have a nice day and i wait your e-mail!

The fact he wasn't willing to give a serial number is extremely suspect, obviously, and every kind of intention to deal with such a guy is immediately void. But the interesting part of the thing is that the swindler sent a picture, but… in choosing the one to send he was both unlucky and ignorant. The attached photo was the following one, one of A TURNTABLE OF MINE, one of my 950s; the photo is on my site.

http://www.stefanopasini.it/EMT950%20Restoration-Final-2.htm

The swindler simply downloaded the picture, and sent it to me as the photograph of the turntable he was offering, without even trying to understand if the turntable in the photo was similar to the one he was trying to sell me; in fact, they are quite different. He would obviously disappear the moment I did the payment. So, this swindler was particularly stupid and immediately proved to be one, giving his game away in a more than evident way.
In this case, the swindler was so inept it's funny. Other times, he could be abler and subtler, less idiotic, and one could even believe him. I think it's necessary to talk about this in public, to alert as large a number of people as possible.
I have already posted some messages on boards and mailing lists (TNT-Audio, Vinyl Asylum, eBay, obviously) and I am indebted to Bebo Moroni, who is hosting me on these pages in order to be able to alert more people. This isn't a single, isolated case; the fact that the number of cases is high was confirmed by the seller of that particular EMT turntable, a person I have known for years and to whom I forwarded my correspondence with the swindler, to inform him of what was going on. Here is his answer, which includes some other interesting information:

Hi Stefano,
Thanks for the message. This is now getting to be a very common problem and it is happening not just to EMT but to the VOX vintage stuff I sell too.
I have also had one customer who actually fell for this and is now down to the tune of 1100 GBP for a VOX amp the person claimed to have. A lot of people who do this are also using a stolen eBay identity so that it looks like they have amazing feedback - be very careful if you ever get an email from eBay or Paypal asking you to log in as this is how the steal you id. I am considering making my auctions private now to try and stop this happening, it is not something I like but I see no alternative at the moment.
I'm glad you exposed this one and I hope it has put a stop to him, at least

I didn't know about stolen identities, and that's why I am not disclosing the eBay identity of the swindler: it might well be the identity of an honest person, completely unaware of what's happening.

eBay's answer is useful, too: it doesn't offer a cure for frauds, but it explains how to defend oneself from them. I don't think that the fact they are discouraging the use of Western Union is a chance; they also advice to reinforce and update anti-virus and firewall systems.

Hello,
The recent email sent from this account was the result of an
unauthorized account takeover. The password was guessed or discovered and then used to send email like the message you received. Unfortunately, we were not made aware of this activity until after the email had been sent. We are now in the process of getting the account restored to its true owner.
Let me suggest a few ways this takeover could have occurred.
First, if the user had a relatively simple password or password hint question it is possible that a third party was able to gain access to the account by guessing the password.
It is also possible that the user could have unknowingly provided his or her password to another party. Some eBay members have reported receiving messages asking for User IDs and passwords. These messages appear to come from eBay Support, but in fact are not. eBay will never ask for sensitive information of this nature through email.
Last, there are a number of computer viruses in circulation that log and record keystrokes. It's recommended that computer users keep their virus alert software up-to-date, and check their system often for problems. A firewall for high-speed Internet users is also highly recommended.
eBay urges caution when purchasing high-priced items, especially if the price seems too good to be true. We do not recommend the use of instant cash wire transfer services such as Western Union and MoneyGram, and we ask that users decline sending payment in cases where these are the only methods of payment offered by the seller. Generally, if payment is sent using an instant cash wire transfer service and the item is not delivered as promised, no recourse is available for recovering funds. In most cases, an escrow service should be used when purchasing high dollar value items. More information on the benefits and risks of individual payment methods can be found at:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/payment.html

Please be aware that eBay discourages all transactions that are initiated by parties other than the seller and the winning buyer in a completed eBay listing. Sales that take place outside of eBay carry a potential fraud risk and are not eligible for eBay services, including feedback, contact information requests, and the eBay Fraud Protection Program. You can review the services provided through the eBay Fraud Protection Program at:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/problems-fraud.html

Regards,
Ian eBay SafeHarbor Investigations Team

What can I say? Obviously eBay is an extraordinarily attractive marketplace; the honest "parallel seller" may exist, and he will send you the item he offers. But the risks, in such a transaction, largely outnumber the possible advantages, in my opinion; it's much better to make a purchase the safe way, paying through PayPal via credit card or by a wire transfer.
To sum up: we know that in on-line sales interesting items can be found at cheap prices and that it is possible to get to know some particular categories of products to an extent which was impossible before these systems were common; the ease of use of the eBay system is incredible, so I can only congratulate eBay and, overall, recommend it to everybody.
Remember that you can also sell your items very well on eBay, an important fact because it allows to keep your collection/system up to date, often with interesting results, even economically. The most important thing is to stay alert, and to forget the logic of the absolute bargain, the attempt to outsmart everybody.
In a virtual world counting more and more swinlers (smart or less) you must keep your eyes open and defend your PC like a fortress (it's not only a metaphor), putting the best defensive systems in place. Remember that there is always someone smarter than we are. The best we can do is trying to hinder their plots, to avoid to fall into their net.

* www.stefanopasini.it