SR2 ON EBAY WARNING

Rich Steel · September 21, 2004

Just won the following on ebay:

Arri SR2 HS, with full set of zeiss lenses, mags, extension viewfinder, Follow Focus, MatteBox, Filters, sekonic 508 Meter etc etc etc....

Anyway, this joker asks me to wire funds to western union branch (you know the scam).

I send him an email asking for serial numbers but apparantly everything has been packed good for shipping so can't provide any. I then send him the following email:

Before I send money. Can you tell me how many Flange Valves the sekonic 508

has, is it the one that has 4 or the factory standard one that has 3?

HIS REPLY:

Dear Richard,

This one has 4.

I'll wait for you to wire half of the money.

As soon as you'll do that please send me the payment confirmation(mtcn,

sender's name and address, reciever's full name and address, and the

amount transfered or the scanned paper) so i could be able to proceed with the delivery

Thank you,

Beware

JUST FOR THE RECORD HIS APPARANT NAME IS "RICK TEAS" and HIS EMAIL IS:

mountainloverteas@yahoo.com

September 21, 2004

Yeh...

That sounds quite an expensive purchase; if I were you I just wouldn't make those kinds of deals on eBay. Pay on collection of course, because you know exactly what you?re getting.

I hate those scamming dick heads.. Well that?s eBay for you.

Eric Steelberg ASC · September 22, 2004

I hate to say it but you should have gotten answers to those questions BEFORE you placed a bid. If the auction said you have to pay by western union and you bid on it, you entered into a contract with the seller agreeing to his terms if you won. I don't understand why you WOULDN'T get verification on something of this magnitude before placing a bid.

That's certainly alot of stuff and I wouldn't want to have to unpack and repack it again just because the winning bidder is now unshure.

HOWEVER, if Western Union was never mentioned when you bid, you are only obligated to pay for it in the specified way. Just tell him that you prefer Paypal because it offers some level of protection for you which W.U. doesn't.

LangISback · September 22, 2004

Once I won an auction for an Arri bl that was a scum too, I got rid of it like this: You should tell your seller that, because of such a big sum of money implied, ebay advices to use an escrow service (there's only ONE escrow service aproved by ebay and you should use no other than this one, I think it's escrow.com, but check it out on ebay's site first, there could be another scum there!!). An escrow service works like this, you send the money to them, they keep it till you get the camera, when you have it they send the money to the seller. This way no one risks nothing. You are safe to get the equipment before the seller gets the money and the seller is safe to know that you are paying him good money. They don't charge that much for the service too.

Off course the guy who was selling me the camera disapeared form earth when I told him to use the escrow service. He even canceled his email account!!

One more hint: if the seller has like hundrets of transactions with superb feedback you have less to fear, if it's just a few ones or none at all... beware!!!!!!

Also beware form sellers from homg kong, malaysia, indonesia, etc...

Consider that if the seller is a $300 plane trip from you you may go yourself and pick it up.

regards!

Rich Steel · September 22, 2004

I think your missing the point here Eric. I had no intension of buying this equipment. This guy was asking $6500 (US) for all this stuff, he had no ebay track record and he emailed directly, not through ebay so I instantly smelt a rat. I continued a bidding war with another ebayer.

We had a bit of fun, I think we actually had the bid amount at $2,100,000 (US) at one point. We informed ebay and they had the item withdrawn.

I'm just letting others know that if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

I almost split when he replied to my flange valve question. For the record I don't believe there are any flange valves in the sekonic 508c but I believe they'll be introducing them on the newer model 708c......(LOL)

Eric Steelberg ASC · September 23, 2004

Oh ok. Yes I do think I was missing the point Rich. Sorry bout that. I now understand.

I did find the flange question amusing.

dangertree · September 27, 2004

And, if you were bidding on that you probably received my email showing that it was a cut and paste ripoff of a camera for rent in Chicago.

Try cutting and pasting some of these scam ads into Google, this is how I found that the ad was word for word off a Chicagoland camera rental house.

I have successfully bought a few high value items off Ebay, and not all people with low feedback are scammers, though many are. Get a phone number and give the seller a call, find out who they are.

Anyone who actually thought that particular item was legit needs their head examined. I reported the item to Ebay, so much for them cancelling it!

Cheers and Be Careful.

DT

Matt Pacini · October 12, 2004

The "cut & paste into Google to see if it's fake" is a tough call.

I've bought a couple things (including a Canon Scoopic M) that someone happened to acquire, (like estate sales, for instance), didn't really know much about it, so THEY searched Google to find a better description than they could guess.

But certainly scam artists would do the same thing.

I never bid on anything without a picture.

4 flanges eh?

Gee, I thought that was the model with the hyperbolic octaganal throssle rod assembly.

Or was it the diatonic optical modulation flux-phase ring modulator?

I can't remember...

Matt Pacini

Haakon Storm · October 28, 2004

> Arri SR2 HS, with full set of zeiss lenses, mags, extension

> viewfinder, Follow Focus, MatteBox, Filters, sekonic 508 Meter etc etc etc....

Hi,

this is quite funny - I won the same auction 6-7 weeks ago and smelt rat

the moment I asked whether the camera was the 250fps or 700fps high-speed

edition. He assured me it went to 700fps. Right.

> Anyway, this joker asks me to wire funds to western union branch (you know the scam).

But I´m interested in the western union branch thing... how does this

scam work??

> I send him an email asking for serial numbers but apparantly everything has

> been packed good for shipping so can't provide any. I then

Same procedure as last year..

> JUST FOR THE RECORD HIS APPARANT NAME IS "RICK TEAS" and HIS EMAIL IS:

> mountainloverteas@yahoo.com

Strange - yahoo told me they had shut his account; same with eBay. Maybe

you won some of the "second chance" things eBay has, after my bid

was cancelled?

Best,

Haakon Storm.

November 20, 2004

Adding to the list of ways to weed out rats on ebay:

I always ask the sellers if they'll accept a local pickup. If they say "sure.. saves me the shipping hassle!" then go for it.. if they say "no local pickup", move along.

November 22, 2004

There is also the seller "all_soughts".

I bought Adobe Premiere of this guy for £99, thought it was too good to be true, and it was. I didn't pay up until I saw that the other buyers had a successful transaction. I asked one and he said he got it the other day; it was a copied CD with a serial number on a scrap of paper. NOT the official software.