eBay marketplace fraud: How to fight it!

Did you realize that online auctions tops the National Consumer
League's list of scams perpetrated online? Although the ebay
marketplace has a wonderful track record of 99% honest
transactions, you still need to be savvy to the sort of criminal
activity that does happen within the ebay marketplace and stay
clear of fraud from both an ebay seller and ebay buyers.

Below is a list of the top three offenses that happen within the
ebay marketplace community. 

1. Bid Shielding: This is when a pre-organized group of ebay
bidders enter the ebay marketplace and team up to bid on a
particular item, thus inflating the high bid to scare off real
shoppers. At this point the lowest bidder (member of the scam)
then has everyone else retract their bid and comes out winning
the auction at at a dishonest low price. If you sense that bid
shielding is going on within the ebay marketplace then report
them immediately. 

2. Descriptions are are totally misleading or photos that are
obviously fake: This is an ebay marketplace sellers scam where
the auctioneers falsely and unethically distort the description
of the products they are selling. This criminal seller within
the ebay marketplace will go as low as stealing photos from
online and totally create a false product presentation. And when
the buyer receives the shipment it is always a lesser classed
product then was bought that does not match the auction. 

3. Shilling of the Bids: This scam is perpetrated by the sellers
of the ebay marketplace and is something that is hard to catch
unless you were closely following the seller in question. Simply
put, bid shilling is when a seller auctions off a product on the
ebay marketplace and actually raises the bids himself in order
to draw attention to it and have the price raised. How does one
do this? They use multiple Ids or the enlist other separate
bidders to enter the ebay marketplace and team up on the scam.