second chance offers, real or not?

I have noticed recently there has been an increase in the number of second chance offers for high value items such as cars, boats cameras etc, in fact a car I recently offered for sale on ebay, it was not sold as it failed to reach its reserve, the next day, it was offered as a second chance offer to all of the bidders on the car by some scammer who attempted to get each bidder to send him or her a deposit, which prompted me to write this guide,

So how do you know if the offer is genuine or just some scammer after your wedge, hopefully this guide may well help you protect yourself from the ingenuity of these crooks.

There are dozens of scams but these are the ones that you really need to be aware of.

1. the deposit scam.

This one uses your disapointment on not winning an auction to get you to part with a deposit to secure the goods you were bidding on as a second chance offer. almost always the person making the second chance offer is not the person listing the item, this is how it works, After bidding on an item you are outbid, sometimes by the scammer themselves, you will never know, the scammer keeps a record of all the bidders on a particular item, they prefer high value items as what they are after is at least a deposit.

they will then contact the you along with the other bidders with a second chance offer by personal email as the winner cannot complete and you can have the item for x pounds he or she will ususally ask you to phone him or her urgently to let them know if you are still interested in the item, what the scammer is trying to do at this point is break you away from comunication through ebay by making personal contact, the last thing the scammer wants is you to contact the proper seller as that would alert the seller that someone is making the "second chance offer" and reveal his hand, dont fall for it, keep your communications to emails through ebay, if you do not call they may try your personal email, by removing ebay from the negotiation what happens next is your word against theirs.

The scammer will then ask you to pay instantly, usually through western union or an escrow service, they will usually claim that the paypal charges are too expensive or some other excuse to keep the transaction away from ebay, if you refuse they will suggest that you just pay a deposit to secure the sale, typically 10 or 20 percent and the balance in cash on collection, they will seem very friendly and plausable you send the deposit, you go to collect the item and pay the balance and nobody knows what you are talking about, you never hear from them again. typically a 10 thousand pound car will yield a 10 percent deposit of a thousand pounds multiplied by 4 or five bidders is a 4 or 5 thousand pound payday for the scammer.

Unfortunatly the chance of recovering your money is nil. 

What to look for!

Go back to the original listing and search the sellers details, has the sellers email come to you through "ebays messages" or has it just appeared in your inbox,  if it has just appeared in your inbox the email could well be from someone else other than the seller, contact the seller yourself from the contact link on the sellers feedback page and ask them to confirm the offer,

Read the sellers feedback including the items bought and sold in the last six months to see if their feedback is justified and do not send any money via western union, direct transfer, or escrow as the money cannot be traced once it has left your bank, preferably use PayPal even for deposits, the money you pay must then go into a legitamate bank account so a trace on the funds is always available should things go wrong.

The trotting up scam.

This is a very proliferent scam at the moment and unfortunatly the scammers are usually bright enough not to use the same identity twice making it dificult for ebay to catch them at it. how it works is this. the seller either creates a second or even more identities or arranges for a friend to create  new identities, usually these bogus bidders have little or no feedback or the feedback has been manufactured by buying and selling penny items such as e books and software downloads, read my guide on feedback fraud and how to avoid it,

They will list items of reasonably high value, usually with no reserve as they are so confident it will  the seller will then use the bogus bidder to bid up the price against the genuine bidders, when the auction ends the bogus bidder is sometimes the winner sometimes not, if you were the winner you will never know if you were trotted but should be satisfied that you paid as much as its fair market value.

If the bogus bidder was the winner and you get a second chance offer because the bidder failed to turn up then be cautious, think back to when you started bidding against the bogus bidder, lets say the item sold for £800 to the bogus bidder you started bidding against the bogus bidder at £500 when the last genuine bidder stopped bidding, you are offered the item at your last bid of against the ficticious bidder at £780 then you have been trotted to the tune of £280 because without the bogus bidder you would have bought the item for your £500 highest genuine bid.

spotting a trotter

watch for bidders with no feedback to lose, usually using autobid to get the highest price from you they can, read the feedback of the seller, use your instinct, if you think your being taken walk away before you buy.

I have made it a personal rule never to respond to second chance offers under any circumstances, and I do not bid against auto bids if the auto bid goes up more than a hundred pounds and finally I always set myself a maximum price before I start to bid and never, ever go over that price.

Auctions have always atracted the good the bad and the ugly, sellers who will try to get more than they deserve and buyers who will try to get more than they bought. the majority of us are straight forward people who trust everyone as our default and most of the time we are not even aware of the tricks and scams that the crooks and wide boys play.

I hope you found this useful,  you will remember this if you ever get a second chance offer and check its authenticity before parting with your hard earned cash.

if you found this guide helpful please click the yes link below, best wishes CRAZYDAVEFOUR