The boys in Thailand are at it again.

One of them with 6 positive feedbacks (oddly enough many from from the same person, probably another ID the guy uses, as well as sakura_9999, another notorious seller that shills others' autions and has spoof bids put in on their own so they can go back and make second chance offers at higher than normal prices) has suddenly flooded the market with Parker 75s - but only the rare sort that you don't see but once in awhile.

He/she has 40 items listed including the full range of Premier models, the T1, and several vermeils as well as other makes, all ending within a day or so.

In this case, the buyer should beware indeed. See berdeenq

The amazing thing is that there seem to be legitimate bidders for these items. Thought I'd offer a big caveat emptor on this little scam in case anyone here had unknowingly become involved.

you know I saw those and saw the seller was (not surprisingly) from Thailand.

But I saw their feedback as a buyer was from some pretty hefty sellers, I thought it MIGHT be legit. However I didn't know about the shady dealings of sakura_9999.

I also didn't notice their feedback as a seller is from the same person with 0 feedback, and 3 of the feedbacks were left at the same time, and the other 3 were left at the same time!

I also didn't know they had 40 relatively rare listings.

Thanks for pointing this out.

If you are buying anything on ebay it pays to check into the sellers feedback and see why they got negatives.

In the case of sakura_9999 you will see that they do sell quite a lot and have a feedback total of 975 (97.5%, which isn't all that good). But look at the comments left for them. The negs are in regard to bad merchandise, poor after sales service and using fake bidders to inflate prices.

I bid on one of their items a couple of days ago. Of course I 'lost' to a bidder that had only put in a single bid, presumably a high one, and that bidder was a zero feedback mule that had never bid on anything before. Lo and behold, immediately after the auction (in other words without enough time for that zero feedback buyer to have defaulted) I got a second chance offer for me to buy at my maximum bid. I didn't bother , not because I wouldn't have paid that for the item - I wouldn't have bid it had I not thought it worth it - but because I was unwilling to allow this crooked seller to jack the price by $30 over the next lower legitimate bid by their subterfuge.

It's a scary world out there in Ebayville - be careful and do your homework.

A valuable tool that saves time is Toolhaus.org which lets you pull up only the neutral and negative feedback of a seller. It also lets you pull up the negs they have left so you can see if you are dealing with the equivalent of an Ebay rabid hyena.

I have dealt quite a bit on ebay (up to a 635 all positive rating - 726 positive received including duplicates from sellers I bought several items from) but I always do my research before starting anything with a strange seller.

I just don't buy from Thailand, the only exception being Speerbob, and he's leaving or has left the country.

A recent experience with a Chinese seller on a $9 Hero got made right in the end, but I had to get nasty to get it resolved.

I've bought 200+ items on eBay and been pretty pleased. Only a handful of questionable experiences. Just read the copy, seller's stated terms and the feedback - you can usually smell the bad fruit a ways away.

According to sakura_9999's bio, she/he list themselves as being located in the United States. Out of the six ratings for berdeenq, the first three are from sakura 9999. That person is listed as being from Thailand.

Indeed - just because a seller is in Thailand doesn't mean they are crooked, but a suprisingly high percentage seem to be - ask Speerbob. Similarly, just because a seller is listed as being on this continent is no guarantee they'll be on the up and up.

I've dealt with crooked ones from all sorts of places - Thailand, China (common), the US, UK (less common) and Italy. Research is in order for anyone you don't know from any area.

Another hint - buy only using Paypal, and even then only with one funded by a credit card, not a bank account. I have had to go to Visa 2 or 3 times for a refund when Paypal decided a dispute in my favour, followed by "We are sorry the seller has no money in their account" Translation - "You are SOL because our dispute process took long enough for them to clear out the account, and unless they are stupid enough to put any money in there again you are not going to get anything" Paypal/Ebay must hate it when a credit card company does a charge back, but apparently not enough to take a closer look at dubious vendors and jump on them more quickly.

I dont understand....... are you saying the pens dont exist or that they just inflate the prices or both? I dont' do the vintage thing yet and probably wouldnt on ebay anyway, but it would be good to understand what you have seen going on.

I do always check out feedback and I always check to see what else they are selling before bidding and would have been wary of this guy anyway i think. Certainly thanks for the head's up anyway.

Here's another one. kanapatss has 6 feedbacks all for buying, not selling. on an ID created last month.

Their debut is 31 items all at once, including many rare ones. http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZkanapatss

Maybe legitimate, maybe not. You rolls the dice and.....

I don't know why all these guys use Paypal - I guess if they are crooked, they figure they'll actually send a few pens and then abscond with the money they collect before Paypal catches up with them. The temptation is to bid once in ahwile, because their auctions won't normally go nearly as high as obviously legitimate ones will so if you do get a pen you get a bargain, and if you use a Paypal account not linked to a bank account, all you risk is the hassle of getting Visa to process a refund.

Thanks for the warning.

I guess I am in the same camp as J. English Smith - I do not buy from Thailand at all, and everyone else is suspect until I have researched them. There are some sellers I am familiar with, and I will bid on their things. Largely, I buy less and less from fleaBay.

"berdeenq" has just added two more positive ratings as a seller! wow, they must be valid sellers!

haha, right....

they are both from "adsresdy" (which by the way is THE only buyer buying from "berdeenq"), and both of those feedbacks were given to "berdeenq" at exactly the same time!

But "berdeenq" should be ashamed as "adsresdy" keeps buying from them, but still has a feedback score of 0. "berdeenq" doesn't seem to reciprocate feedback. what a jerk.

Our boy has some oddball stuff too. This Strange Waterman appears to be a sterling Man 100 barrel stuck in a blue Patrician cap. Rare indeed......

I've seen a bunch of those postings from berdeeng - noted the seller in speerbob's scam thread in the market watch forum. I don't know where the pictures, etc... come from but that seller has also listed a bunch of PFM Vs - some with nice pictures, etc.... but if I see Thailand and low feedback I stay away. I'd seen the 75s as well - they are semi flooding the market it appears with a number of interesting but suspect deals...

I remain surprised at the number of bids they receive. A bunch of auctions have ended now so we ought to be seeing if any of them actually end up being legitimate or not via real feedback (assuming the final buyer is real) or if the seller disappears into the ether.

At this point I am really cautious about ebay - haven't bought anything there in some time and am not terribly inclined to do so.

From watching Sakura's auctions, feedback and comments here I conclude that he/she is running several deceptions. A month or two ago I was noticing a lot of apparently shill bids on Sakura's auctions - multiple accounts with zero feednack would bid on Sakura's Parker 75 auctions driving the price up as much as twice over the typical price for a comparable item. From reading feedback it seems that on auctions with no shill bdding and where not a high enough price was achieved then Sakura would "loose" the item and not complete the transaction. Finally, from comments here, it would seem that when a shill bidder wins an auction then that bid is retracted and a "second chance" offer is made to the highest legitimate bidder.

I saw an attractive price on a Sakura auction this past week but didn't bother bidding as I figured that if I did win the auction at the low price then the item would likely become "lost".

What I haven't figured out is how Sakura manages to claim to ship from California.

Apparently, they identified sakura_9999 in this post.

Note that hers is the ebay account that has the highest feedback and therefore took the longest to establish. Also note that the threads in FPN detailing the questionable behavior are the 7th and 8th highest hits for "sakura_9999" in google. And the "pen scammer" thread is the top hit for her suspected real name (Wanvipa Pooraya).

Hi Bill, Yes I'm leaving Thailand in a few days. As far as I'm concerned no one should buy pens from here now. I know who all these sellers are and they are all crooks when they think they can get away with it. Yes, some people will get their pens and then they will have a bunch of great sales and take the money and run. Then they come back later under a new name. Really, Thai's are not especially dishonest people or scammers, it's just we happen to have several who are in pens. Also, Sakura_9999 is in the US and is a cousin of one of the biggest pen scammer here. I hope eBay figures this out one day and stops her. If people would start reporting all this to eBay each time they see something strange, they will take action eventually. I have had these guys her kicked off eBay dozens of time in the last few years. I have reported Sakura_9999 a few times but nothing has happened yet. Cheers, BOB

In view of all the above posts, what are the general view when a seller has a good feedback from a lot of people but all sales are shown as "PRIVATE"?

Is there a possibility of there being something fishy?

A new ID out of the blue with 35 attractive pens listed all of a sudden and a feedback rating of 2!

cheer.shop9

Half the listings for two pens I keep an eye on, Parker 75s and Waterman CF appear to be suspect these days.

A deal that looks too good---------isn't.

Don't buy from Thailand sellers, too much likelihood of a scam.

Don't buy from low feedback sellers with a sudden large lot of listings, without doing homework first!!

Sakura_9999 though makes an effort to disguise his location, his listings say he ships from California. You need to look at feedback and completed bid history to see signs that not all is right with this seller.

It seems like people may actually be catching on to Sakura_9999. I just looked at a completed auction for a Parker 75, Sterling, Cisele, early U.S. made, narrow band on cap, zero reference mark on section and in excellent condition. A reasonable price would have been $150+ . Even with a couple of apparent shill bidders the auction ended with a high bid of only $112 and that was from one of the shills. I now see what looks to be the exact same item has been relisted.

Fatehbajwa, to your question: Yes, it is a problem when the auctions are all listed as "private." It means that potential buyers do not have enough information about the seller, nor about the buyer. Could be shill buyers, for example.

So - best not to bid when you see that. I see no reason why people need to keep auction information private, nor do I understand why Ebay permits this.

Erick

Take from me pal, All have been said and investigated Do Not put your penny on any pens....... They are just photos cope from here and there. Trust me for once.
The saying goes " been there, was there and die there " That's me.

I just bought an item from another of these sellers with 'flexible' sales practices.

Take a look at these bids: Sleezy Shills

The bidder m**k (0) with that zero feedback is no doubt a shill of the seller. They used it to bump up the price early in the bidding and then again to push the older bid of a legitimate bidder.

The only way to 'beat' these sellers is to bid at the last possible minute (I got in 4 seconds before close), which prevents any more stink bids going in. If you exceed the fake bid, you get it, if you don't, expect a second chance offer, often very quickly after the auction ends - much too quickly for a real bidder to have declined/defaulted.

The only reason I bid on this was because it is a rare piece going for about $75 below normal price. Now we'll see if I get it, or if it gets 'lost'. If it doesn't turn up I'll be out some time and will get my money back as I pay via Paypal with a credit card. The final price was probably close enough to the seller's expectations (judging by the stink bidding) to make them happy, though, so I anticipate this one may come through.

If you want to play their game, do not bid before the very end of the auction, and always use Paypal.

I got real excited and bid on 4 pens and a watch since the rating was 97.8. then some of the resting brain cells kicked in, I saw some shill bids and I googled her and what do you know s/he has had a special mention here so I complained to ebay and also emailed him/her retracting my bids.

Now it's here:
stockzen
I was about to jump on one of these 75 T1 :/

...and another one:
sl-silver-boy

Yup, if you want to bid on her/his listings decide what your maximum will be and bid it in the last 10 seconds of the auction. Otherwise you will be subjected to shill bidding to try and get you to raise your bid.

One more: ksirasuk9

There are a flood of Thai sellers right now - all with low feedback - all selling some nice looking pens including a bunch of PFM and IIRC even some Pilot stuff. I just avoid them altogether.

The folks mentioned up above have all disappeared - it looks like Ebay has done what it is supposed to.

I do not buy from Thailand and that's it. Never had a problem with this kind of nonsense as a result.

Erick