Watch Out For Freelancer ebay Selling Scams

Outside of Hub pages I like to try my hand at a few other money making methods. One of these methods I have done for a few years is join freelancer.com. This is basically a website where people post projects they need completing along with a budget they have to spend. If you like one of these projects you put a bid in with how much you will charge for the service and if the employer likes your bid he will select you to complete his work. Anyway back to the headline Watch Out For eBay Scammers!!! Only yesterday when looking throught the site I came across the following:

Description

We are looking for 13 people who have eBay seller account preferably with feedbacks.

You will be posting around 13 auctions or more per week and you need to post it on eBay.
We will e-mail you the details of what auctions to post up (images, descriptions, just copy & paste) daily.

We need someone who can post the auction quickly and send report daily. We will pay all seller fees that eBay and paypal will charge you and your pay.

========== ELIGIBILITY =========

1. You MUST have an eBay seller's account.
2. You MUST have at least 10 positive feedback

================================

If you're interested, please PM me your answers for the following questions:

1. Your eBay seller ID + feedback
2. Able to start work immediately?
3. Ready to report us e-mail daily?
4. How many items can you sell daily.

===========PAYMENT===========

1. You can keep your commission before you send the sum to me. So, technically, YOU WILL GET ALL THE PAYMENT WELL IN ADVANCE.
2. If you sell Lot of 10 items or more, You'll get 3000USD commission.
3. I will pay for all the fees. But if you can reduce eBay fees then your commission will be more

Naturally when I seen this advert I was very interested $300 just for listing and selling a single item. I have a lot of eBay experience so I thought why not. I proceeded to contact the employer to find out what the script was. Anyway within minutes of sending off my e-mail I recieved a quick response with the first 5 item descriptions and photos to sell.

I thought this guy is keen, never mind ill have my first $1500 in my back pocket before the end of the week. So I started to load the first item on to the eBay dashboard I even thought what the hell i'll even pay for the feautured listing, but then just before I pressed the submit button, something in the back of my head thought why not search this item and see how much this product (was a racing bike) sells for. $3450 was the current bid. My first instinct was yeah go for it, then I noticed the pictures and description were the exact same as what I had just been sent!!!

After this twigged in my head I emailed the employer and dually noted my concerns. The reply I got was this is not a scam and once the auction had ended I could keep hold of the money until the buyer had left me positive feedback. So happy with this answer, I turned to the submit button on the eBay dashboard once again, i couldn't bring myself to press the submit button again. Something else had stood out for me. The 7 day return policy!!! How can this be a scam? I hear you ask.

Simple I list the item for this guy, I send him the ID number of the said item, he bids on it so much that he is gauranteed to win it regardless. He then pays for the item and I think nothing of it, I keep my $300 and My seller fees thinking I've done well for myself. He then leaves me positive feedback the next day so I'm sending the money he just paid, back to himself. As there is a 7 day return policy on the item he then puts a claim to paypal that he wants a refund. They automatically return him his initial payment. Then there it is I am left high and dry as the employer has dissapeared.

 When I returned another e-mail describing what I had found out just through intuition I never heard a single word back from the said employer. I wont mention any names but i have reported him to freelancer.com.

The Morale of the story if something looks too good to be true, then it is. i had a lucky escape but I feel sorry for the ones who never as they could be up to $15000 if the isted all 5 bikes and they all sell for over $3500 each.