Ebay -- Has Anyone Had Any Dealings With Jaropav?

[lodewyk]

Gentlemen and ladies of FPN,

 

There is a relatively high number of Mont Blanc pens for sale on eBay from a seller called jaropav. I've been following his items for a while and they always seem to have many bidders -- sometimes in excess of 50! Is this a genuine seller?

 

Here is a link: http://www.ebay.com/sch/jaropav/m.html?item=161731127421&hash=item25a7ed287d&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

 

Any feedback would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

L.

 

PS If this is not posted in the correct sub-forum, I apologize!

Edited June 11, 2015 by lodewyk

[luckduck369]

I want to co-ask this question.

 

He/she relists the same pens everyday for the past week. Each time those pens were bid up to (I think) reasonable market price. But next day, the pens are relisted.

 

I don't think it's due to unpaying bidder because the pens are relisted almost immediately after auction ends.

 

I didn't check whether it's the seller pumping up the price. That's the only thing I can think of at the moment.

 

Hope someone else can share some ideas of what's going on.

[Cryptos]

Just had a look. The seller has not many sales and quite a good feedback. However, there are some red flags. Firstly, there are quite a few repeat customers for very expensive pens. This may be perfectly legitimate but makes me wary and on my guard. Secondly, if you look beyond the first page of feedback - all of which is the expensive pens - you will note that the seller sold mostly sub $5 items. That is a more telling red flag for me. YMMV, but that is how I read it. Seller to be avoided until new data comes in.

[jordanjay29]

If I had the money to toss around, I'd bid on every one of them in the hopes of a sumgai, and then see what happened after the auction ended.

[MrThoth]

I bought a pen from Jaropav a couple months ago. After more than a month it hadn't arrived. I contacted her for more information, but never got any sort of response. So I had PayPal refund my money in full.

 

Being a charitable guy, I figure this might have to do with the hassles of international mail. Since she has a lot of positive reviews, I recently bought another pen from her. This one was shipped FedEx International with a tracking number. However, when I enter the tracking number at the FedEx site, it doesn't recognize it. The scheduled delivery for the pen is sometime this week. I'll report what happens. Obviously if I don't get the pen I'll request and receive another refund. So it's no loss, really, other than a little bit of my time.

 

It's true that her early sales were small items, possibly sold with an eye toward building up a positive Feedback rating. Similarly, it's also true that many of her buyers appear to be repeat buyers. I don't necessarily find the latter fact off-putting; if you collect pens and find someone who sells good ones at great prices, you pay attention to them and likely buy more. But it's a fact to be aware of.

 

As for the repeated re-listing of the same types of pens -- it's difficult to say what's going on there. It could be part of some scam (and note that she uses the same pictures for at least some of the pens, time and again, despite the fact that the serial numbers should differ from pen to pen). But there are possible legit explanations as well -- for example, she could be a "front" for a relative who has wholesale access to a large number of these pens but doesn't want to (or can't) sell them himself for some reason. Stranger things have certainly happened in the world of commerce. And it's worth pointing out that some models of pens she used to list frequently (e.g., Pelikan Seven Wonders Pyramids of Giza) she hasn't listed recently. But again, these are all facts to be aware of and take into consideration.

 

It seems odd that she'd have such high Feedback ratings and that no one would have reported her if she is scamming people. Similarly, while I don't know about the inner workings of eBay, it seems to me that if they get a constant flow of refund requests for "item not received" for a specific seller, they'd investigate and/or suspend that seller. She seems to have been selling expensive pens only since about mid-March, 2015 -- but I find it hard to believe that three months' worth of scamming for such expensive items wouldn't have led to someone reporting her, or other problems. But then again, as I said before, stranger things have happened.

 

It would be useful to hear from someone with concrete information about buying from her; right now all we really seem to have is skeptical speculation. C'est la vie. For me, it basically boils down to this: since I can easily get my money back if I don't get the item, I'm willing to bid on her pens until I have what I think is conclusive proof that it's unwise to deal with her. If the pen I'm waiting for never arrives, that will be enough proof for me. If it arrives and I don't think it's legit for some reason, that will be enough proof for me. So I, at least, remain in "wait and see" mode. Reasonable minds may vary.

[Cryptos]

 

It seems odd that she'd have such high Feedback ratings and that no one would have reported her if she is scamming people.

 

It's not so odd if you consider that all those repeat winners may well have been shills. Not saying it's true, but it is certainly possible.

 

I would advise caution. There are so many little signs of potential misdoings. Benefit of the doubt is great and all, but when you are putting up substantial amounts of money is it really a valid criterion?

[Uncial]

Is it not odd that there are multiple sets of the same limited edition pens all ending within seconds or minutes of each other with wildly varying prices from $150 through to $900? I don't think I'd touch that with a barge pole,