Bitcoin Forum

I am kind of curious as I see this more and more often - where the sellers are listing items with "30 day returns" and list prices but when you get to the description, it states they will only take direct payment - ie not thru eBay/PayPal - or will take crypto only.

how and why does eBay allow this? For example, taking direct payments and/or crypto cuts eBay out of their commission, right? Yet, these sellers have ratings in the 10's of thousands.

here is one such example.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Bitmain-Antminer-S15-28TH-s-Bitcoin-BTC-ASIC-MINER-w-PSU-Read-Description/293070290137?hash=item443c59bcd9:g:X2AAAOSwIz5cyFkN

what do they do once you hit buy now and pay in crypto? cancel the sale? because eBay is expecting to receive payment - correct? and if you do pay via eBay vs their crypto method in the item description - what do they do? refund the payment? relist the item?

I would be tempted to buy based on their eBay rating and that if I go thru eBay and they do not deliver - I have recourse for a refund. This seller makes it sound like he will be ripped off if they go thru eBay - seller's are also protected, they can prove they shipped with a tracking.  And again by going outside of eBay, there is no recourse or safety for the buyer.

I can find listings like this for all types of items - heck one guy asked me to pay him more on PayPal on the side after I won an auction because he found that the item was selling for more on another ad on eBay. When I refused, he cancelled the sale and refunded me what I had already paid...

I do not see how eBay allows this.  Am I missing something?

ebay doesn't allow it.
You can report them and ebay will act on it.

i get that, but how does the listing even get made? do they not review it?

crazy...

I'm let down by this thread in soo many ways. ;)

lol how so?

They use ebay just as advertising. Their idea is for you to contact and shop directly. Eventually their account on ebay may be blocked. But then they buy another account and continue the business.

the guy I linked above is not being removed from eBay he has a rating in the 16k range - that means they have operated for years.

They are heavily breaking the rules of ebay.  They are just using ebay as an advertising platform.  Never trust anyone that is only willing to accept a payment method that can't be refunded.

The seller is actually really stupid, he has other expensive items on his store that say absolutely nothing about crypto.  Makes no sense and he is likely a scammer.

my opinion as well. must have did legitimate sales to get up to that 16k rating but is now running ads for some items as crypto only

Was thinking it might be more than some scam reseller was all.

well, after my fiasco with one buyer that cost me over 10k - I will never buy from someone I have not had prior transactions with without using a form of payment that is secure enough to get a refund if they decide to rip me off. Whether it is using a credit card, PayPal or an escrow service.

I am not wanting to ever take that risk again.

Understandable this reseller is a huge red flag though. Stay away.

Let me know what you're after if you want to use our service at all.  

We can act a escrow if you find a 3rd party seller, push everything through our website even.

Thanks. Really wanting to see Bitmain release more T15's but somehow I doubt they will - those are a quick ROI for me and are below the limit for tariff tax.

s15 and t15 are done, you'll have to get from a reseller.

that is my guess as well, and that is why I have been looking around at resellers - just dont trust nary a one ya know?  But never know - Bitmain did resurrect the S9's for a bit last month and were selling them at same time as the T15/S15's and T11 I think was up at the same time as well.

so far the only reseller I see selling the T15 for a non-ridiculous amount is Hashdeploy.net and I have not found any thing to verify their legitimacy

Watch and wait is a good idea. Only 26T from inno is under de minimis atm.

only thing I dont like about the Innosilicon miners is their efficiency about 3 TH more than the T15 but its power consumption is 1.5 times that of the T15.

My S9's are running at about 13.5 TH and only using about 1150 watts so 2 of them would be about the same as the Innosilicon 26 TH miners - making it a moot point of me selling S9's to replace with them.

LPM is usually all I look at anymore personally. 21th at 1.4kw isnt the greatest upgrade but still reasonable. Was just mentioning the unit because of pricing.

totally understand that! and it is appreciated.

This is a scam listing. I saw many listings like the one you linked for the Obelisk SC1s a few months ago stating only cryptocurrency is accepted in the description and it seems there's still people trying to scam others through this sort of listing. As for the sellers making listings like this having thousands of ratings, it's likely an account that has been sold off to a scammer. Pretty sad that eBay accounts are being sold now, but as long as you use your common sense and don't buy through listings like this you'll be fine.

ahh, i didnt think about sold accounts. but yes - that would be entirely possible.

by no means am I saying it is a legitimate listing - just amazed that listings that blatantly go against eBay's terms are all over on eBay.

This is likely because eBay doesn't have any sort of filter or anything of the sort that stops these kinds of listings from making it onto the main site, and eBay takes some time to read through any reports filed, but this listing and the account will hopefully be taken down soon. Just reported it under the Listings practices category and Banned or inappropriate payment methods, hopefully nobody falls for this scam before it's gone. I really wish eBay would remove these listings quicker than they do as well, I recall one of the SC1 listings I saw a while back was up for around a week before it was taken down. Hopefully they get quicker at taking these down in the future.

I mean it could be legitimate sellers that just want payment in crypto - but if that is the case, eBay is not the place to do it. Now--- if eBay could start accepting crypto, that would be awesome!

I highly doubt they care on you. Ebay clearly states to not do any payment where ebay isn't involved, otherwise more likely you are getting scammed and there is no chance to get any refund. This bitcoin payment situation is somehow unique and makes more sense, since ebay doesn't let you to pay in btc, they offer it outside of ebay. User thinks oh. they have great rating on ebay and I can trust them with my bitcoins, but in reality this is a scam. Glad that user was reported.

again i get it and I am not planning on ever purchasing from them - just curious as to why it is so rampant? are there that many people that actually fall for this that it is actually beneficial for people to take the time to do this?

We'll scammers are coming back out the woodwork as they see price rising all they need is once sucker for the scam to pay off.

right!?!?! lol oh well, this is all stuff we here know. I just felt I needed to vent about it especially after 4 hours of shopping and buying all for it to end up a farce

Yea, been looking hard at new units for myself. Then power bill dropped so that itch for more hash has subsided for the moment.

The example you mentioned can't be found. But, even I have encountered such problem and I think that this is something which could not be trusted upon. You should always use Ebay smart payments where the funds would also be escrowed so that the chances to have any scam are pretty less there.

The sellers who are demanding direct payments via cryptos can actually have a lot for you to scam because they can simply run away with the funds you send them and even ebay can't do nothing to this situation as you did  not prefer to use the payments from ebay. Also from my end, I think ebay might soon ban these kind of payments once they get to know about it because ebay is one of the trusted marketplace and they would never let this happen to their customers.

yes they actually deleted that one - I also then received emails that the user claimed his account had been compromised and that ebay was restoring the owner to the account.

sounds like he got busted and when contacted he claimed that his account had been hijacked.

Yes I agree onto this. Scammers are coming back as even the price for bitcoins is now on the merge of rising. There are a lot of masterminds who will invent newer and newer methods to scam you or to rip you off. There always needs to be major precautions which could be taken to avoid such scams.

Ebay, being one of the most trustworthy marketplace would never let something similar happen on their platform. There would be scam shaddy minds behind this and also the link the OP posted can't be accessed so for sure it was something from scammers. Miners are in high demand and scammers would do anything to scam peoples in these field.

the link is not accessible because the item was removed. The user who was selling the item was contacted upon my reporting them and they claimed their account was "compromised"

The link cannot be found in my location. What you are explaining here is not legal to ebay as it is always said when we go out of the site like clicking the seller's own website which is not connected to ebay anymore, that we are no longer under ebay's buyers protection, so if they impose rules that are only their own and irrelevant to what ebay gives that will not be under ebay and you as a buyer will not be protected by ebay's buyer protection program.

again - the link is no longer working because eBay removed the seller's listing. I know it is not allowed by eBay but I see them every day. I saw 3 posts today where it say payment would need to be made in BTC/BCH/LTC or ETH