You know about the plethora of dud ebay sellers from Thailand and SE Asia in general (except for Speerbob, who is great).

Well here is my nomination for pen seller of the month - take a look at this feedback:

Worst Seller

Only 3 positives all from guys with zero feedback themselves, and a net rating of negative 1. You don't see that very often, but the amazing thing is that he has a bunch of items for sale and people are bidding on them!

PT Barnum must have been right......

As for the people who bid and got scammed... IF you are too stupid to look at the feedback and you bid on something that is obviously way way way undervalued because no one else is bidding on it..... you deserve what you get for being overly greedy...
NOW, I am the first one to admit that I am always looking for the ultimate deal... but I have also learned to read feedback information and to examine pictures.

Here is a prime example of what I mean... take a look a this photobucket link
Photobucket link.... , look at the subdirectories.... any names look familiar... 2 more of the Asian scammers.... apparently this KKLINEKKLINE is the one running this garbage...

I don't buy things off eBay anymore (just don't have time to look for stuff), but when I used to do I used eBay Negs. It's a very convenient Firefox extension that shows neutral or negative feedback on the seller.

eBay Negs

But for this guy you don't even have to use it to figure out

Nice detective work Griz. By the way, looks like the only people bidding on his items are shill bidders with 0 feedback.

P51 flighter omg

I actually have seen someone with feedback less then -1. On another forum I frequent someone posted a link to an auction on eBay Germany for what I believe was Sennheiser HE90 electrostatic headphones (which are discontinued, legendary, and go for thousands of dollars), and the seller had -2 feedback.

If this is what I think it is, he may not be so much a scammer as a spammer. As an eBay seller, I've had some experience of this recently with someone with a similar sort of profile posing as a potential buyer.

What they're doing is using eBay's internal messaging system to acquire members' email addresses and then send them junk mail through it.

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Col

Wow that is amazing information! Thanks for the link to Toolhaus.org. VERY useful.

And about those Thailand sellers... Man oh man, I knew that either some of them are working together, or there's another guy with multiple accounts (blesseo and siamkash, just like oasiso and suthapon of last year). puget2005 is one of those "borderline" sellers that sells real pens and follows through on the transaction, but hides the flaws in carefully crafted photos. I got ripped off by him.

What is it about Thailand that produces so many scam eBay pen sellers? I have personally bought a few pens from one of them LUCKILY before he went rogue, and got a few nice deals (my Pilot Custom Bamboo was one worthwhile trophy). But I have been burned by two of them, enough now that I don't chance it.

There's almost always telltale signs. The description is conflictive. "Very good nice perfect pen". Or "Never used pen, no scratch ding dent" and yet you can plainly see that it has been used. The photos are taken on a smooth reflective surface with multiple lights overhead, suggesting the pen is being photographed in a hotel bathroom.

I've been to Bangkok. There are scores of street sellers in various parts of the city, with all kinds of designer brand knock-off items. And then vintage item sellers... some of them pawning old pens. Lots of them pure junk. I had heard if you look hard enough, you can periodically find a rare pen that the seller doesn't really know how valuable it is.

But anyway, I digress. In my mind, I picture some guy there coming into Bangkok with some cash in his pocket, a junky laptop computer that basically works, a macro lens digital camera, and an on-line connected bank account. He starts his eBay account, buys many $0.01 "items" from a bunch of different "sellers" on eBay so he can get a few dozen positive feedbacks, and then he goes to work.

He proceeds to buy up a bunch of pens on the cheap from street sellers. Then he goes into his hotel room to photo graph the pens and upload them to eBay auctions, where he proceeds to sell them for far more than he paid with misleading auction descriptions written in poor English and photos that try to show only the best parts of the pen.

He manages to sell enough pens to pay for his hotel room and to acquire more pens. But his overall plan is one of two possibilities: Try to keep going with the scam and work around possible negative and neutral feedbacks he gets, OR go for broke and unload as many auctions as possible before the negatives mount up enough to force eBay to shut him down.

Anyway, big time Buyer Beware on these guys.

Dangit. I bid on a pen he was selling and won it. He was shown as a different seller with zero feedback on the item at the time of listing. So I figured I got it cheap, I'll give it a shot - after all, we all had zero feedback at one point, maybe he's a new seller! Now for some reason his real name shows on the item with the -1 feedback. I didn't think eBay could do that.

Anyway, I got one response from him, so I am hoping to get my pen. If I don't hear from him in the next day or so, I am going to dispute the sale.

I'm afraid you are probably not going to get your pen... Hopefully PayPal will help you recover your money.

That natantong is about to fall. He is mounting negatives. Check this out, ebay item: 220064314398

Notice that he has a shill bidder that forced the winner to pay much more. And that shill bidder has feedback only from buying $0.01 items. eBay canned his proverbial a$$. Yet another pen scammer from the bowels of Thailand.

Edit: YES! Look at natantong's auction photos--they point to seller siamkash's images.

If I get it, I get it. If not, the republic won't fall and my daughter won't starve because I lost $25, and I figure Paypal will handle that eventually. I do hope I get the pen though!

Just kidding!!

But seriously, it saddens me to hear stories of con artists thriving on eBay; it's a great place to get bargains...but "buyer beware".....

I opened a dispute with Paypal. It hasn't been all that long, but with that track record and the changed ID to hide it, it's pretty clear he's a scammer. Interestingly, when I wrote up the complaint and submitted it, Paypal told me he can't be contacted and that it would be upgraded to a claim. So there is some hope, I think.

What's really tough is when you run into a guy like I dealt with... he sells a lot of stuff that is probably legitimate, but he also sells LOTS of fake things like Parker Sonnets. The problem is that they are really good fakes and people leave him positive feedback because they don't realize they are fake. I bought two from him when I was just getting into fountain pens and then shortly after learned that the Sonnet is often faked. I realized mine were probably fake and Antonios helped confirm that.

I tried to get PayPal to force him to give me a refund, but they acted like it was my problem and that I should just send the pens back to the seller... That's the exact opposite of what PayPal policy says for fake items, but they simply closed my claim and I was stuck with the fakes. (not a real loss though--they look good and write pretty well, just kinda sad when you get your hopes up and then learn you were tricked.)

I think I made the seller nervous though... right after I started bugging him, he terminated his e-bay account and opened a new one. <_<

This experience has lead me to really avoid bidding on certain modern pens though, but I still bid on vintage/less frequently faked stuff like Esterbrook all the time.

--SD

I had bought 2 pens frompuget2005 so far. A NOS black lacquer Sailor and a used Kawamaki Platinum. Both items were as described and I have no complaints, though he is quite slow in shipping - in fact, items that I had bought from the USA or Europe on the same day often arrives first before his. Funny considering Thailand is a neighboring country to Malaysia and in fact share a common border

One thing though... this fella processes your credit card payments via the www.thaiepay.com gateway, and not PayPal, so be careful coz if he wants to con you he can easily do so.


But I once got burned by this Thai fella peaantique111 . It was for a cocoa-brown P51, and after some furious last-minute bidding I won the item at US$89.00. Inclusive of shipping, I had to pay him a grand total of US$99.00, which I promptly did within 10 minutes of winning the bid as per my usual practice whenever I'm present online during an auction's close. But later in the day I received an email from eBay stating that this fella's account was closed by them and the item that I had won was removed from the list. I logged in to my PayPal account, found out that he had not withdrawn the money, and promptly canceled the payment. But not before I lost the equivalent of US$4.00 due to foreign exchange differences


So the moral of the story is... buyer beware /:)

Notwithstanding the horror stories, I still maintain that the original case was not of that sort. If you look closely at the link Bill provided, you'll see that none of the transactions were completed - none of the winning bidders lost any money.

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Col

You make a good point... perhaps the guy got routed out before he could complete his transactions.

The thing about sellers like puget2005, is that they do hide a lot of flaws. If you go into the transaction knowing this, you won't overbid what the pen is worth and you can get a decent deal. The same was true of this guy Oasiso. I had a number of good transactions with him once I realized that "mint" meant "excellent" and "excellent" meant "very good", etc. If he used multiple conflicting descriptions, the lesser would be the truth (such as "very good perfect pen"--no, it's not perfect, but it's good++). Even once he mixed up my order with someone else's. I sent it back and he refunded my money (including return shipping). But then later on (thankfully when I wasn't buying from him), he went rogue--didn't send out pens for a number of transactions and then eBay closed him.

I bought a "like mint unused" Pilot Custom from puget2005. It actually ended up being a used pen in "excellent" condition on the outside. However, the nib FELL OFF when I wiped it clean. I've never seen a Pilot nib do this. I told him about it and the guy acted surprised. I'm sorry, but this was definitely a misrepresentation--he lied and thought he could get away with it. I tried to get him to take it back and he just kept saying "I refund you $xx" (which was a 20% discount). Well, I really didn't have any recourse but to accept it. And then this dragged on for a couple of weeks... he was trying to get a 'friend' of his to refund through that person's PayPal account. Eventually he did do it, but only after I threatened to leave negative feedback. This whole thing was a carefully crafted ripoff.

I'm sure that some of his pens will be fine, but you just never know which one will be more significantly misrepresented. Oasiso was like this. So I imagine it's only a matter of time before puget2005 decides to do a rip off of his last round of buyers and take off. Maybe I'm wrong... I mean afterall, he has dodged negative feedbacks at this point. Perhaps he'll wise up and become more truthful about his pens, to eventually garner enough positive feedback to attract more buyers to try him out. I'm not willing to find out...

I sent eBay an e-mail about this seller 3 days ago, so far no answer. And I do not expect one. eBay has lost touch with its customers and to respond would mean they do something other then count profits.

Now that's new one to me. Thanks.

As for myself on this subject, I decided long, long ago to buy from US and Canada only. I know there is plenty of scammers all over the world so this was more a "it just makes me feel better" decision.

Here is a thought, how about a section to this site focusing on E-Bay scams/poor sellers? I'm sure a vast amount of FPN members buy from E-Bay at one time or another (I know I do) and maybe, just maybe we weed out the bad ones. At a minimum, make the buyer aware

eBay can be ruthless at times.

I know a few sellers on eBay who have had their auctions shut down with no recourse. eBay declares that right in their agreements that you have to accept. But just as any other business always has disclaimers, there is a "within reason" implication.

In one case a guy was selling a vintage microphone (he sells them frequently) and happened to use the name "Elvis" in the transaction. That's because there are photos of Elvis using that microphone. Well, eBay contacted him and said they are closing his auction because the name "Elvis" is copyrighted and he isn't allowed to use it.

Well, he clearly didn't state it was Elvis's microphone, only that this is the type of microphone he used. PLUS there were other sellers out there with auctions using "Elvis" in the title, where their item didn't have any sign of Elvis on them, nor any real connection other than perhaps the Elvis 'era'. Why didn't eBay close THEM down?

This kind of big brother approach is really disarming. eBay knows it has great power and it doesn't hesitate to wield it as such. I just don't understand why no one else has taken up the on-line auction arena, to provide a similar yet different kind of auction site. I see many ways eBay can be improved upon. Certainly there is an opportunity to offer a more competitive pricing model (eBay fees seem to be the highest around).