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I've noticed on Bricklink that this set has been selling "cheap" in The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.
I've been watching a series of auctions over the past week or two from a particular seller. They are/were listing many "large" sets over and over again and charging free shipping on every auction.
I finally scored a great deal on like the 18th copy of Portal of Atlantis that they've sold recently:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/200674175156?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649 (yay me!)
Now, this isn't the same seller ID that's selling the Unimog in this thread, but they both are selling a nearly identical list of items, and using the same stock photos, and both offering free shipping. AND they are both listed from the same city. The only difference is that the seller I won from tonight sells via auction-style and this Unimog seller seems to use buy-it-now.
Also, when tracking my current order from [email protected] tonight I noticed that the departure origin was... *drumroll* ...Southaven, Mississippi.
Do we have a couple of rogue Lego outlet salesmen working out of their distribution center or something? Maybe not even rogue, but authorized and undercover Lego sales?
Just remember, "if its too good to be true, it probably is"
I for one use ebay only for retired sets, this helps reduce the chance of scams.
Hmmm... I paid as soon as the auction ended. I guess I'll see what happens?
How does a fraudulent seller successfully do this 500 times over without being shut down?
Then again it might not be fake (I'm betting it is though sorry lol), either way I too would like to know how fraudulent sellers do this with so much feedback, it help us know what to look out for in sellers with 100% positive feedback
I don't know... there's a lot here to investigate.
The Southaven, MS location on their eBay pages can't be coincidence. These must be shipping from a Lego warehouse.
Ok, I'm going to bed with a scrambled brain. Hopefully someone else can make sense of this tomorrow. heh
"He used a stranger's credit card to buy from Lego. They confirmed! Thief"
Sadly, I didn't consider this kind of thing to happen when I thought I got a good deal on a Grand Emporium for $120. Made me sick when I realized what was going on.
I wondered how people with such high rankings could continue with this practice without being caught. Then, I got an email from the seller:
"You recently placed an order from us, we hope you enjoy your purchase.We are looking for sellers with good ebay accounts to distribute our products.
By working with us you can easily make $500 per week. If you are interested and want more details, please don't hesitate to ask."
Makes a bit more sense now, but you'd have to have no conscience to take them up on that. :(
http://www.bricksetforum.com/discussion/1936#Item_8
I checked his feedback, it was all good, he had been selling sets for several months now so I thought all was well.
I ordered 2 larger sets from him, the Paypal payment goes to the UK, they arrived no problem, except they were both shipped directly from Lego with an invoice in each box showing a bill to name and address , each box had a different person it was billed to, one was a lady in Kansas, the other one was a man in Mi. They were billed to their Visa for much more than I paid!! I was the ship to address. His name does not appear anywhere on the Lego invoice.
I called Lego as I knew something was wrong, they put me in touch with the their consumer sales affairs who handles these kinds of things. They agreed it was unfortunate I got caught up in the middle of this. They said yes this looked like definitely a fraudulent transaction, the problem is, there is no connection back to the seller. To Lego or the persons Credit card company it looks like I was the one who charged their card and had it shipped to me!!
The only connection to this seller on Ebay and the package that will arrive on your doorstep directly from Lego is if he sends you a tracking number, that will link your transaction from him and to the ones Lego shipped you.
Lego had me forward all my Ebay and Paypal reciepts for this transaction to the legal department. They said this be one of the people they have been trying to trace for awhile now.
The reason he is almost impossible to stop is he uses a different credit card for each purchase. If he used the same one for multiple purchased then he could be flagged. What will happen to all these hundreds of people who have purchased from him is in 2-4 months from now they will be contacted by police or credit card fraud dept.
Lego told me it was unusual for them to be contacted by someone like myself BEFORE the person whose credit card info was stolen reports it. They said these people likely weren't even aware their card was compromised.
If you do not take preemptive action and contact Lego your self to provide your info and straighten this out your account will be flagged as having fraudulent activity to it.
YOU DO NOT WANT TO WAIT UNTIL THE FRAUD DEPT CONTACTS YOU and then have to sort this out months down the road when he is gone and all you are left with is trying to explain how you bought something on Ebay and why you are the ship to address on a stolen credit card
Your tracking number the seller gives you, if he does, will BE THE ONLY LINK TO HIM TO PROVE HE WAS CONNECTED TO THIS SHIPMENT!!
The good news is the seller will refund your money if you ask him.
Lego offered they would send me the prepaid return slips as they would like to see the sets back to them so they could credit back the people who were defrauded, I replied absolutely, I am sending them back today. They said they could not force me to return them OR help me get my money back, that is between you and Ebay and Paypal. But it will get you out of trouble with them and help clear the matter up.
I just received un update from Lego legal dept. my name has been cleared, I am free to once again order from them, the seller refunded all my money, even before I returned the sets!!
I never told him anything about what I found out or that Lego was involved, I was very nice and he wants to keep this thing going, as long as he is still selling on Ebay you will have zero trouble obtaining a refund from him!!
He wants no trouble or Paypal disputes, flying under radar!!
This only took me 3 days total to clear up, but ACT FAST and contact them if you have an invoice from Ebay that the Bill To: looks suspicious.
I did not have to contact Paypal over this, Lego got me out of hotwater with the fraudulent card use after I provided all required info and offered to send the sets back and the seller immediately refunded money once asked.
Good Luck!!
Oh and one other think , take screenshots of everything on Ebay pertaining to your ended auction, if Ebay shuts down a sellers account, everything dissappears, your completed buying summary, you will no longer see it, much harder to prove things when the Ebay completed auction in your summary is gone, screenshot it so you will always have proof what you purchased.
I realize you will always have your Paypal reciept but you can't have too much proof when trying to defend against this kind of stuff. Lego advised that also. They had me scan invoices/reciepts and screenshot everything and send it to them. If your Ebay summary containing this transaction goes away, you lose that screenshot showing the tracking number attached to that item. Make sure you have the tracking number!!!
Except pay attention to the Lego invoice in the box, the Bill To: and the Ship To:
Look at the neg. feedback, I think the first one he got, the lady said he used stolen card and Lego confirmed!! Look at the date she purchased from him compared to when she left the feedback. I didn't look at the neg when I purchased because there was sooo much good feedback.
If this is a problem, Lego needs to change the way they take credit cards. Perhaps require the 3 digit security code, or use Verified by Visa or Mastercard Securecode.
I suppose Lego wants to make it easy to send out "gifts" to different addresses, but in such a case, there should be some verification for first orders from new accounts.
Not excusing the behavior, rather just pointing out that Lego could take action as well.
Without the tracking number the fraudulent seller on Ebay will say that the set you received from Lego was not one he sent you, he will claim ignorance about that order as it doesn't implicate him.
Lego said this is what will happen, when the person whose credit card was charged that person will call his credit card and say it was an unauthorized charge,
Then the card company will reimburse the victims card and then will contact Lego to charge it back to Lego. At that point Lego legal team will look at it and see where the stolen merchandise went, and guess where it went? to you, and the they turn it over to the police to investigate!! Scary.
The whole thing is sad, really... If this is what is happening, Lego needs to change their procedures. Even more, credit card companies need to do a better job, a card number and address aren't enough to secure anymore against this sort of thing.
Grr...
I think LEGO just needs to stop sending to addresses not your own.. does it make it a bit inconvenient if you are buying for someones gift? Yes, but in the long run they will save themselves a headache as well as stopping a lot of this fraud going on.
Bottom line folks, if it is too good to be true then it is probably not true.
Now I just saw on Amazon a seller with $150 Lego sets for $99.99 and wondering what's going on there. I'd buy the Pet Shop for $100 if I knew it was legit.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/shops/storefront/index.html?ie=UTF8&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER&sellerID=A30C3HUNL4SH16
@adol I believe these guys are now doing this on Amazon, notice the Seller's Name is a meaningless name, and only has a feedback of 1, from someone with another meaningless name.
I can't believe how bad this is getting, I no longer trust buying ANY new sets from auction sites.
If you sell me two sets of lego on Ebay, I pay you and deal is done. I could also order two sets myself from Lego using a stolen card, and then say those sets were the ones you sent me. The problem with that is, there would be no way to link you with those sets UNLESS you gave me a tracking number attached to that auction in My Ebay summary and that can be linked to Lego tracking number from Lego to those same sets which were fraudulent.
I know it is confusing and hopefully you don't have to experience it but that is the way it played out. On my screenshot of my Ebay summary the seller had given me a tracking number, I showed Lego how that corresponded to the fraudulent order number on their invoice and the their tracking number, it all matched, proving that the Ebay transaction was linked to that specific Lego order.
Without that link there was no other path back to him. All Lego had was a anonymous internet transaction from someone who gave a credit card number to them and it was dropshipped to me, making me look like the bad guy. Yes I suppose if they wanted to get really serious maybe they could have traced the internet order to an ip address showing it wasn't me, but it was easier to clear it up fast.
Looks like you've done everything right though, if everyone who received dropshipped packages did what you have done then it would put these sellers out of business pretty quick, I think.
This must be costing LEGO a bomb in legal fees and lost product trying to sort all these cases out.
https://usa.visa.com/personal/security/vbv/index.jsp
http://www.mastercard.us/support/securecode.html
Unless I'm mistaken of course, and these wouldn't help. I don't take credit cards, so what do I know?
I said sorry, my wife had already left the house to ship them back to Lego (she hadn't really left) and I would email him the tracking number. 5 minutes later he refunded my money for the whole amount, so I have two sets here that I have been refunded for. To bad I am so honest as Lego said they couldn't force me to return them and I have been cleared by them, BUT.. I will still be shipping them back to Lego today! They have been very appreciative of all my help and all the forwarded information. I feel good!
However, it begs to be asked.... who gets stuck with paying the shipping back to LEGO? That can't be cheap :o(
Very interesting stories regarding the ebay sellers. Asking you to forward the sets to the next customer is amazing. I'm glad to hear things are getting sorted out, on your end at least.
I hope more people that have experienced this will follow-up with LEGO (or eBay) like you did.
We may not end this kind of scheme, but it would be nice to put at least some of the scammers out of business and into jail.
Later on I started emailing and sending information to a lady on the Consumer Sales Support Team who was sending all my information on to their legal dept. She was extremely helpful and once she would email me asking for something or more information, I would send it right away and she would get right back with me. It was nice that there were not long delays in communicating and she knew what Jessica(the first girl) and I had already talked about, so it was as pain free as it gets when dealing with a large company.
I was much impressed by how they handled it, and happy this morning when I received an email from Tiffany in Consumer Sales saying my account had been cleared by their legal team and I could order from them again!!
Just my 2 cents worth, if that is worth anything. :)
credit card fraud usually goes up at this time of year as the post office hire a huge number of temps to sort the post. a few years back a reporter filmed guys nicking the cards before they got delivered. they could use them for 72 hours or so before the card company locked the card - they were flying to new york and shopping for designer gear to bring back. this way saves them taking the risk of being caught in the US with a stolen card...
I've been trying to get a deal on a 10195 Dropship & AT-OT and have been watching them on eBay for months.
Now there's one that has an unusually low price (granted there are still hours to go) and I'm thinking I'll let this one go.