eBay Motors Scam - Muscle Car Buyer Beware! Custom Search Fall for an eBay Motors scam? Not us we thought, but the excitement you feel when you find your muscle car - exactly the one you're looking for - can obviously override your intelligence.
We added it to our Watch List to see if the bidding would put the car out of our reach. The Buy It Now price was very low but if someone bids lower than the Buy It Now price on eBay, the Buy It Now option disappears and the bidding begins. We were sure the car would be gone in a flash.
The next day we checked and oddly enough no one had bid for the car. We reviewed the many detailed photos in the eBay item description. The Buy It Now price was less than the cost of the engine that was in the lovely blue Dart and it was well within our budget. The decision was made, let's buy it! The "seller" had set up the auction so a potential buyer had to get pre-approval before bidding. We followed the instructions and clicked on the link to notify the seller that we wanted to bid. Within an hour, there was a response from the seller saying they had notified eBay to allow us to buy the car and that we should follow the instructions from eBay to proceed. The response was very clever, saying that it was the seller's husband's car and that he had recently died. The car was a source of sore memories and she wanted a speedy transaction. Yes, the eBay Motors scam comes complete with a muscle car lover's sob story. The location of the Dart was on the opposite coast but the extremely low Buy It Now price included shipping directly to our home. Awesome! We were worried about how to get the car to our house once the transaction was completed. Shortly thereafter we got an email that certainly looked like it came from eBay saying Congratulations - You are approved to buy! It gave us the good news along with instructions to send half of the winning price to an individual in Detroit via MoneyGram (similar to Western Union). Once we received the vehicle we would pay the other half.
KB and I were both at work and kept leaving voice mails for each other trying to decide which bank account to take the cash from in order to go to a local MoneyGram office and wire the payment. Luckily, we never hooked up or we would be telling a very different story! Late that afternoon, CB finally stopped long enough to sit down and re-read the instructions on how to pay for our Dart. On looking at the original listing of the car on eBay, to make sure that we had the usual 72 hours to make the initial payment, CB suddenly noticed a tip for buying a car on eBay on the right side of the page. Here's what it said:
If you look back at the graphic of the email supposedly from eBay, the text of the tip is completely opposite from this one. With a sinking feeling, we went to eBay Help pages in the community help center for further information and there in black and white was a full description of the eBay motors scam that we had almost fallen for! We sent an email notifying eBay and the car for sale on eBay was immediately pulled. You'd like to think this would be the end of that person's crooked dealings but just a few days later a similar listing appeared. Just for kicks, CB asked a co-worker to send an email offer to purchase the car on eBay using the Buy It Now feature. Within a few hours, he received an email from the seller saying the car was her deceased husband's.... The eBay Motors scam lives on regardless of the efforts of eBay's very responsive security department!
A friend of CB purchased a car on eBay with no problem. I guess the important part is to be fully informed before any transaction takes place. It's pretty embarrassing to say we almost fell for that eBay Motors scam now that we look back on it. Hopefully our experience will keep you from making a sad mistake. That's what our whole website is about, helping you find your muscle car, the best way possible.
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