NoBs Digital Dogbowl

WARNING: Photographers Selling Or Buying Equipment On Ebay

Many of us have had reasonably good luck buying used photographic items on eBay. Photography equipment is not exactly a specialty area where one would expect to be scammed. Unfortunately, NoBS member Kristi found out the hard way that this is not necessarily the case. She was recently duped by a dishonest seller out of $800 for lighting equipment she never received. Fortunately, Kristi's story ended well with NoBS members pitching in to help her recuperate some of the money and embark on a new marketing campaign to bring in some much-needed cash for equipment: Kristi said: "I got screwed over big time. I "won" an item on ebay. I should have known it was a bad deal. It was a sweet alien bee setup! I paid $800 for it. Unfortunately it was a scam. I just sent the information to ebay and they informed me that I was taken for a scam. I can't do anything about it...the stupid payment was western union. I was nervous about making payment that way, but I got an email from "safe harbour" associated with ebay telling me how the transaction would be secured...blah blah. I fell for it. I should have just hit the reply button because that is what I did today (after not hearing from the seller for 5 days from sending my payment) and it was a fake yahoo account that some jerk created.

So, now I have taken $800 out of my savings for this. I have to explain to my husband what happened (over the phone to Iraq--this should be fun). And I still don't have a nice set of lights. I will not be getting a nice set for a long time now. I've been having a very depressed week, but this is just too much. Thanks for listening....."

Not everyone on NoBS has been soured on using eBay, however. In a recent survey, 29% of NoBS members who reported being scammed are still using the online auction giant. When using eBay, it is extremely important to pay attention to a user's ratings/feedback and payment methods accepted (Western Union being a big red flag as we have just discovered). An interesting way one scammer was recently smoked out was when they were sent an e-mail about the item they purported to be selling. The response received was that they were not selling such an item. Sounds fishy, right? It turns out their eBay user id had been phished by a thief. Another good thing to look at is if the seller normally sells the type of equipment you are interested in buying. If this item seems very out of place with what they have typically sold, then another red flag should be going up. The point here is not to avoid eBay all together, but to be better informed and careful before making any large purchases. You can actually get some fantastic deals through honest sellers; you just have to circumnavigate the sharks first. If the deal seems too good to be true, the it might be a sign of a scam artist at work. Check the sellers history. And, if they seem in hurry, that could be a sign as well.