DER EE DE-5000 , counterfeit ?

[NoisyBoy]

This is the constant risk/inconvenience one encounters on e-Bay. 

For that last listing, fraud is very evident.  If you go in the seller review, you will see a mostly positive reviews.  However, if you dig deeper, you will see a ton of transactions of very low price item (like a small stone for $1.99 - really!), each giving a one sentence review.  The pattern repeats for low price identical items within that short time frame.  So this set up of a fake store with a set of fake buyers is how they make the seller appears as a reliable seller.  Most buyer will never spend the time to review it, and fall into the trap.

Now, when it comes to how they profit from the fraud.  There are a number of red flags in the listing:
"We Accept Paypal ONLY!  Payment Must Be Blanced in 7 days After Auction Ended."
"The images shown are not the actual item and are for your reference only."
"If you have not received your shipment within 30 days from payment, please contact us. We will track the shipment and get back to you as soon as possible with a reply. Our goal is customer satisfaction!"

Typically, funds are withdrawn from your account and placed into the seller PayPal account as you make the payment.  It often takes a few days before seller can transfer the funds they received from their PayPal account into their own bank account.  Given the goods comes from China, even if they actually ship you something, the payment would be settled well before you receive your merchandise.  If you follow their 30 day suggestion, the money is long gone from the PayPal system by the time you file a claim.  Assuming they close their bank account, or hack into someone else's, so they can take their money and run.  In that case, I presume PayPal would end up getting hit with the fraud, and the buyer will eventually get the money back.

If you look at the reviews, you will see some -ve reviews of people who actually got scammed.  They said the seller never respond to messages, send out fake tracking number, and the merchandise never arrived. 

So buyers beware for goods that are too good to be true, do your research before hitting the buy button.

[rsjsouza]

Even more... The bad reviews are mostly concentrated in the last few weeks or the last month, hinting the account was hijacked. At least that was the case with a couple of the listings shown here.

[NoisyBoy]

I believe that was true with one of the earlier account I looked at, they might have hijacked one of the store that sold primarily plastic model kits (like the ones we built as a teenager).  But this one, I did not go all the way back to the beginning, but from the first four pages of reviews, it was apparently set up as a scam with phony reviews.

[coromonadalix]

Well   my order seller name has changed to : zdda12589   (no items in the store section)    and i received a tracking number,  surely a fake one  loll

The fun thing is :  the feedback section has been made private    wow      tought of everything  loll

Delivery  Eta:   end of NEXT month  ......  pfffff

Funny the item was previously  lost or broken  loll

[John_Cavanaugh]

I fell for this at a price of $59.  Doh.     

I just chatted with Ebay, they said it looked suspicious and would forward to their back office team for investigation.   My unit has a china post tracking number that somehow says it will be here by the 20th.  So the ebay team told me to file a "did not arrive" on the 21st and they would refund me etc.

Grr.   Now I just need to order the real thing from Amazon.com.    Or is there a better price available legitimately somewhere??

[rsjsouza]

I think there are a few sellers pricing the unit only at a believable $79. eBay auction: #254060179810

[Mr. Scram]

The good thing is, there's buyer protection through ebay. 
https://pages.ebay.com/ebay-money-back-guarantee/

With people intentionally taking a gamble and ensuring these scammers walk away with a nice chunk of cash, I'd not only say the Buyer's Protection perpetuates the problem but also that these buyers are complicit and should be banned. The problem is distinguishing between the helplessly naieve and bordeline criminal opportunists.

[Mr. Scram]

I think there are a few sellers pricing the unit only at a believable $79. eBay auction: #254060179810

A lot of the real units come from Japanese sellers. This item is reported to be located in Japan and the seller is Japanese with a believable price. This one appears legit.

[Bud]

I bought a couple tools from Japanese sellers, good deals and good quality items.

[Gregg]

The good thing is, there's buyer protection through ebay. 
https://pages.ebay.com/ebay-money-back-guarantee/

With people intentionally taking a gamble and ensuring these scammers walk away with a nice chunk of cash, I'd not only say the Buyer's Protection perpetuates the problem but also that these buyers are complicit and should be banned. The problem is distinguishing between the helplessly naieve and bordeline criminal opportunists.

Ebay would wither away without buyer protection. 

What really needs to happen is for ebay to take charge and develop algorithms that quickly flag known scam tactics by sellers, put a temporary hold on dodgy appearing listings and alert a competent person to investigate.  Things like hidden feedback for sellers is blatantly against ebay’s rule for sellers and a change to making feedback hidden after an item is listed for sale should immediately cause the listing to be put on hold. 
Buyers shouldn’t be banned for attempting to nab a bargain; that is the basic premise for the existence of ebay auctions.  If buyer protection hurts ebay’s profits, then maybe they will sit up and take notice (but that is doubtful for a company run by bean counters that are mainly trying to get away from auctions and convert to “buy it now”).

I purchased my DE-5000 via ebay from a Japanese seller who shipped the genuine device quickly and thanked me for buying.  I have also purchased some Engineer crimpers and pliers from Japan always with great results.

[thm_w]

This is the constant risk/inconvenience one encounters on e-Bay. 
...

Typically, funds are withdrawn from your account and placed into the seller PayPal account as you make the payment.  It often takes a few days before seller can transfer the funds they received from their PayPal account into their own bank account.  Given the goods comes from China, even if they actually ship you something, the payment would be settled well before you receive your merchandise.  If you follow their 30 day suggestion, the money is long gone from the PayPal system by the time you file a claim.  Assuming they close their bank account, or hack into someone else's, so they can take their money and run.  In that case, I presume PayPal would end up getting hit with the fraud, and the buyer will eventually get the money back.

If you look at the reviews, you will see some -ve reviews of people who actually got scammed.  They said the seller never respond to messages, send out fake tracking number, and the merchandise never arrived. 

So buyers beware for goods that are too good to be true, do your research before hitting the buy button.

Exactly, someone is making money here. No one cares about "getting your information" of name and address, that is completely worthless.
There are a number of ways they could potentially siphon this money off, not to mention there may be buyers that lose track of the purchase and forget to file a claim.

When this happened with some meters not long ago eBay eventually shut it down and refunded everyone.

IF you file a claim, then yes.

[Mr. Scram]

"Nabbing a bargain" isn't the same as willingly participating in a scam. We've seen plenty of threads with people knowing it's almost certainly a scam but still making a purchase "because you never know". If it isn't criminal behaviour it's definitely borderline.

[coromonadalix]

As a end note for me,  i'm now the 270 th person scammed, the supposed bought items is delivered in another country, the tracking number on ebay did not work (nothing moved / no change),   but tacked it thru another epacket website, refund request under way. The seller feedback was made private, and growed day by day up to 270 bad feedbacks.

Saw another DE-5000 sold for 45$ and many other tems for a ridiculous prices,  sent many reports to ebay ...

Lesson finally learned  loll

EDIT :  got refunded

[e0ne199]

hello, btw i was also the one who ended up buying that scam and i absolutely regretted it... i don't know how rotten ebay can be because it really was my first time buying things at ebay and and the first thing i purchased  was a scam and now i am currently waiting for paypal to refund my money..

[bitseeker]

Yeah, there's been an ongoing wave of scammers the past couple of months. In general, if the price is significantly lower that everyone else, it's a scam. In the case of these scammers, just check what else they're selling. Their inventory is usually all the same or similar price regardless what the item is.

eBay has so much product and behavior data that they should be doing a better job of detecting these scams.

[coromonadalix]

I saw tons of Ebay registrations dating year 2017 and 2018 before they dissapeared,    maybe they used some kind of bots