Check out seller tommy-jones-smithy.

This guy has a couple of hundred listings a day on Ebay and it appears from his feedback that he asks buyers to send money to a PO Box. He doesn`t use Paypal. His feedback is in freefall but he is still selling MP4 players at £20+ as well as other items. I have emailed Ebay twice today about it and even used the law-enforcement@ebay link, but still it goes on.

Here is one of his listings: Seller: tommy-jones-smithy >> 8GB MP3 PLAYER MP4 FM RADIO SAMSUNG 1.8" LCD VIDEO FM

I have successfully contacted a few of the people bidding, but then the Ebay system clicks in to stop you contacting Ebayers. Ebay are an absolute joke.

User ID: tommy-jones-smithy
Name: joe smith
Company:
City: barrow-in-furness
County: Cumbria
Country: United Kingdom
Phone: 01614083837
Registered Since: Friday, 16 Feb, 2007 23:01:30 GMT


PAYMENT
You can either pay via Cheque/Postal order or Bank transfer
After the auction you shall be send an email with the correct payment details

Please pay within 3 days, therefore you can have the mp3 player faster

TERMS
Please do not purchase if you disagree with the payment or shipping methods
We provide 12 months warranty on all items purchased
All payments must be received within 3 days at the end of the auction
All defective products must be reported within 7 days of purchase
Feedback will be given once we have received feedback
If you do not have the merchandise after 10 days please contact us
Please note it can take up to 10-14 days for the item purchased to be deliviered, this is due to the postage delays and the clearence of the payment.

What do you think E Bay will do Rob?

Yes his account is still active! but he still has plenty of listings active as I bid one pence this evening at 20.38 so I could pull his details. The listing ends July 09 at 16.45.

I have been out bid wonder what it will sell for?

Geez, the feedback from other members just rips into him!

eBay should have seen all this feedback and put an end to this guy's account straight away!

I've attached a .pdf of his feedback (this is only the first page as well!)

Ebay are getting nasty again. Here is an email I got from them today.

eBay sent this message to Robert Jones (robjones555).
Your registered name is included to help confirm this message originated from eBay. Learn more.
eBay Listing Removed: No Item (=LS &12362 JM120221388)

Dear robjones555,
We appreciate that you chose eBay to list the following Fixed Price listing(s):
180136742481 - MP3 MP4 SCAM 2GB 8GB 4GB 90of 8GB MP4s r SCAMS READ
However, your listing was in breach of eBay's No Item policy and has been removed from eBay. All fees related to this listing have been credited to your account. We also notified members who placed bids on the item that the listing has
been canceled.

We would like to take this opportunity to let you know what part of your listing is not permitted.
Your listing(s) contains the following information:
7-7-07 URGENT UPDATE!!
SELLER TOMMY-JONES-SMITHY
CHECK HIS FEEDBACK
Here are some links for other sellers selling these players
jungle.foodstore
http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=jungle.foodstore&Dirn=Received+by&ref=home
maryclassic
http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=maryclassic&Dirn=Received+by&ref=home
showthepower
http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=showthepower&Dirn=Received+by&ref=home

You may not list intangible items or items whose existence cannot be verified, such as ghosts, souls or spirits.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you relist this, or any other item that breaches eBay policy, your eBay privileges could be suspended. We value you as a member of our community and wish to continue this relationship, so we must ask you to refrain from further breaches of the User Agreement and eBay policy.
Please review eBay's Listing Policies and User Agreement at the following locations:
What about that then? An interesting point here is that most of my listings have carried the feedback links that have been pointed out by Ebay as being cause to stop the listing. I am thinking about trying to get the listing fees back for them as well.
Astonishingly, tommy-jones-smithy`s account is still active.

Seems E Bay are only bothered about the sellers, and not the interest of the buyers.

Well you have had a good run Rob, but it was just only a matter of time that your white knuckle ride would come to an end.

But at least you gave it a good try, and drove your message home to some buyers and perhaps E Bay. I think watchdog might be of some help? if they were to get their teeth into this as they did on one occasion before about fake boots. I wrote a couple of e mails to them, but had no feedback.

Great job, there. Too bad doing it to the next eejut that comes along is likely to cause you to lose your account.

And I must say, the following line is at least a bit funny from the email you got, not least because it has nothing to do with you:

"You may not list intangible items or items whose existence cannot be verified, such as ghosts, souls or spirits. "

Great Work:)

Great work Rob! You've educated many and hopefully hurt the scammers sales alot!

Thanks for the support. I have just had a thought. Judging by the Email they sent me the only things they could find fault with was the things they stated. (maybe they decided tommy-jones-smithy was a ghost or an intangible item )
If I remove them and maybe move the listing to the "info and how-to guides" section then the listing should still show up in searches in the right places.
What do you think?

Sounds good. Worth a try anyway. Hopefully eBay won't pull it again. I would be curious to know how many people you prevented from buying a hacked player. I would be willing to be it was enough to hurt sales badly on hacked players.

he used to be Mr Mobiles ...
Mr Mobiles now booted off, is, should I say, was ,operating under a new name:
http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/tommy-jones-smithy/

I was stoopid enough to be scammed.
His po box address is
FONEXS pobox address is pobox 1054 Nelson BB9 7WV

I have traced his po box address to here:
(thank you nice lady @ Royal Mail)
She wouldnt give me his name though.
123 Scotland road
Nelson
BB9 7XR
I rang a neighbouring shop who say there was a phone shop there.....

I think it may have been because the actual "item", the information, was buried too deeply. Keep the same type of title, but make the first thing the "info package". Something along the lines of what you will get is a detailed list of instructions on how to keep yourself from getting scammed and how to locate information on scammers. Then go on with the rest of the Public Service Announcement citing it as excerpts from the full pack. Make sure there is some stuff you keep in reserve so that no one can really complain.

Truly, I think what happened is another user played stool pigeon and turned you in thinking they were the listing police. It's happened to me on a legit auction before. Could even be one of the folks you singled out in the post, I suppose.

Hey, if people can run auctions with a buy it now of 99 cents with the title "Brand New iPhone 8GB Limited Supply" or some such and then somewhere in the middle of all the cut and paste from Apple.com is a one liner about how this is for information on how to get one for "free" from one of those horrid promo sites, or even for info on a so-called wholesale list, I fail to see how they could remove your info purchase posts.

I used to sell timeshare years ago, I did stuff like that for a living, so I'd be happy to take a look at your listings if you want an opinion before they go live. Of course, I'm on the road this week and on Vacation at the end of next, but there's the offer.