Silica Gel is NOT Poisonous

Had a little scare with my 1.5 year old. She somehow found a stray silica gel packet in the house. You know, the ones that say "Silica Gel - Do Not Eat". Well, she ate some and I called poison control worried that she ate that which is labeled do not eat. The operator told me that it is not poisonous and that Silica Gel is the most common call they get, all day, every day. Turns out it's just sand. Whew!

eBay Cashier Check Scam - Alamogordo Daily News

One of the latest scams is making the rounds on the online auction site, eBay. According to a news release from Key's office, two 12th District residents who sold items on eBay were given cashier's checks for amounts in excess of the agreed price. The two were then asked to return the excess amounts to the purchasers. They did so, only to learn after that the checks were counterfeit. The two must now pay back the full amounts to the banks that cashed the checks.

Fraud? Don't ring us
Reprtinted from Times Online

By Janet Daley
FIRST WE GOT a phone call from Germany to ask about a laptop computer that had supposedly been bought from my husband on eBay, and never received. Then there was an e-mail from an Italian who said the same. But we had never offered anything for sale on eBay.

Our alarm was obviously so genuine that the victims were persuaded that they had been defrauded by someone using a false name, especially as they had had to search the internet to find my husband’s actual e-mail address and phone number, as opposed to the phoney ones that had been provided by the eBay fraudster.

Clearly there was someone using the names and addresses of real people (presumably chosen at random) to mislead would-be buyers. We were implicated in a crime, and since our real home address was being published, we might have a knock on the door from the police or a brick through the window from an angry victim.

So began the process of attempting to rectify a potentially dangerous situation. EBay’s website has an elaborate procedure for reporting fraud. I tried using its system for establishing e-mail contact and it failed repeatedly (as, I have learnt since, it often does). Trying to communicate with eBay in the traditional, old- fashioned ways was hopeless. I discovered that the company scarcely exists outside the web. It seems to have no locatable presence in the real world — no telephone number that is obtainable and no address that is actually occupied.

Using the resources that are available to a journalist, I managed to contact the shadowy public relations firm that acts as eBay’s press spokesman. It could make no comment on this form of fraud, it said, without the details of our case. Our Italian victim helpfully supplied these, and we passed them on to the PR company, which promised to get back to us and never did.

EBay may say that buyers purchase at their own risk, but can it be acceptable for a company to incriminate innocent people and escape any responsibility? Anything that is circulated on paper (even a single page flyer) must contain the contact details of publisher and printer to cover legal liability.

It is outrageous that the internet can be a lawless zone for traders, a kind of virtual car boot sale where the usual rules of accountability do not apply.

eBay makes public comment on auction fraud

An NBC affiliate ran this very interesting story about the infamous Alisher71 seller on eBay who listed over 1000 fraudulent auctions over the holidays. According to the eBay spokesperson, eBay has no responsibility for the fraud and that even though the seller had positive feedback, that's not the only thing a buyer should look for.

Donnelly says feedback is "not the only thing they ask people to look at because no one parameter is going to capture everything. Some of the other things we recommend you look for in sellers is what kind of return policy they have, what kind of payment do they accept."

It's stories like these that make me even more confident that the average eBay buyer needs a service like gumshoo.com. EBay's rep is right. You can't just look at feedback to figure out if you are going to get scammed. The problem is, eBay doesn't do enough to educate the buyer.

Gumshoo instantly scans eBay auctions for potential fraud and scams. Arm yourself with the information you need to make safer, smarter buying decisions on eBay. Try gumshoo today.