Can someone explain this eBay scam?| Off-Topic Discussion forum |

rob_lewis SuperDork
10/31/15 4:56 p.m.

Searching for Honda parts, and sort by price to find cars and not "Mad Turbo Kit, Yo" stuff. Things like lug nuts or carbon fiber shift knobs listed at $1000. SURELY no fool would buy a shift knob for $1000. Why are they listed? What's the scam?

-Rob

Ransom PowerDork
10/31/15 5:05 p.m.

Based on a small-to-dangerously-small understanding of the arena, I suspect it's more likely poor settings on dynamic listing/pricing software than a scam.

EDIT: Mercifully, even if it were a scam, there's not much reason to chance it, huh?

rob_lewis SuperDork
10/31/15 5:10 p.m.

Oh, I'm not dumb enough to bid on it, just kinda makes it hard to search (yeah eBay stinks in general) for stuff when it gets filled up at the top end with silly ads like this. And there's a bunch of them.

-Rob

Stefan (Not Bruce) MegaDork
10/31/15 5:51 p.m.

I started reporting them as I got tired of it. It helped me feel better briefly, but ultimately using the search function a bit more smartly helped quite a bit.

Hint: if you want to drop something use this; -(word) you can multiple words in between the parentheses by using a comma between each one. A bit of work getting all of the words added and quite a lot of them go away.

That and limiting the search to the US Only to drop the overseas junk.

EvanR Dork
10/31/15 5:59 p.m.

Especially when it comes to long-term listings like buy-it-now, I believe that sellers crank up the price on their listings for out-of stock items.

i.e. I sold out of $9 shift knobs, and rather than cancel the listing (and pay for a new one when they are back in stock) I crank up the price to $999. It keeps the listing active, and when I get more in stock, I lower the price back down to $9.