Max Tung Posts: FRAUD ALERT!!

[10/4/04 04:21 GMT]:

Hi to all forum members,

Hello Max.

Just thought it would be helpful to share some information to prevent anyone from falling prey to a scam that I recently experienced (along with some other members of this forum) on eBay ( hey,what's new!).

Thanks for taking the inititave!

You may have noticed recently that some of us were bidding on the 1969 Carrera silver dial with black sub-registers, the auction for which ended on 23 Sept 2004. Ralph was the seller, from whom many here I am sure have bought various fantastic Heuer pieces from him in the past (I have).

More than a couple of us were interested, in fact that's largely why the item sold for as heavy of a price as it did. All of us OTD types saying "Geez! I know Max will weigh in heavy, I have to too!".

I, along with some other forum members (Hi Chuck),

'lo again!

placed bids on this watch and although we did not win, I received a number of emails shortly after the auction ended offering me a second chance to buy this item claiming that the original winner had failed to pay and that the watch was now available at my original highest bid price. The point is this, the emails seemed very legit with eBay formatting and hyperlinks to an explanation on the "second chance" option on eBay and the sender being "aw-confirm@ebay.com".

I recieved only one email. However it seemed very fishy to me for a couple of reasons... (Note: I was the 1st runner up on the bidding)

1st off, the person who was allegedly offering me a "second-chance" at this watch offered the watch to me at my highest bit point. I'm sorry, but if the primary bidder bails out at his winning bid, there is no way I'm going to spend as much money as I would have if that other bidder wasn't there, only enough to outbid the second runner up. In other words the "spoofer" was a bit too greedy. The difference between the second runner-up's bid and mine was well over $100. I might have fallen for the scam if the spoofer said "look the high bidder bailed on me, would you be interested in the watch at a price that was above the second runner up?" I might have been tempted to reply. As it was, I ignored the solicitation. I probably should have reported it to eBay. But I had no idea that other bidder's had been solicited until Max contacted me via email.

Secondly, I had been in communication with Ralf prior to the auction about this watch and he knew how to contact me directly (he had any one of a number of emails which he could simply reply to, why would he go through the trouble of contacting me through eBay's contact system? Especially with the differences in language (English and German)? The answer is he wouldn't.

As a result I was very skeptical and while I would have been happy to have that particular watch, at my highest bid it is not compellingly tempting. I bid not only the Stein point of indifference, but the Maddox point of regret 6 months after the auction.

What didn't look right was that each mail reply that I eventually received came from different email addresses. I finally got to the bottom of this by asking the other bidders and, most importantly, Ralf, the seller himself and confirmed that this was all a scam.

Probably the quickest and easiest way is to contact the seller and see if he sent the message, if he says no, then it's likely a scan. Because, if a person did legitimately have one of these watches (or a similar one) he or she would be willing to list it on eBay and make as much or more than the high bid that Ralf's piece fetched.

Many of you may have experienced this before but this was the first time for me and I just wanted to give everyone a "heads-up". Someone out there is targeting vintage Heuer collectors (or vintage watch collectors for that matter) so beware!

While I have received offers like this in the past, typically it's been on much lower priced items and typically people who had references or I had already had contact with whom I trust(ed).

Thanks to all those bidders and Ralf for responding to my enquiries so promptly - you saved me from departing with my hard earned cash.

As spirited and agressive as we get when bidding, I don't think any of us would be happy to see an OTD regular fleeced by a crook.

When in doubt, either ignore the email (which is what I did) or email the seller or other participants or post a query here. The easiest way for us to foil these crooks is to communicate with one another.

-- Chuck