Beware of Fraudulent eBay Dealers

There is at least one fraudulent dealer who lists every Easton Press and Franklin Library book as First Edition First Printing....then sells them for $275-$475. Even the most frequently listed book "Moby Dick" which you can buy for $39.95 from EP. EP used to give it away for S&H. Let's get these criminals off of eBay. I report them to EP and sometimes mark a 100 of their books as fraudulent listings and send to eBay. Please help. I feel bad for people paying $275 or more for a book they can get cheaper on eBay or direct from EP....they just are not savvy customers......I know because I read their positive reviews thinking they got a rare book for such a deal!

I see in other posts that you have identified the fraudster as rare-book-cellar who calls every EP and Franklin Library book 1st Edition First Printing and sells them for $275-$475 each even if you can buy them now for $40 from EP. This is the one I am talking about too. The only thing we can do is report him as a fraud to eBay. He is big with close to 42,000 items in his eBay store. If we all pick 25 of his items and report them as frauds to eBay eventually eBay would shut him down.

rare_book_cellar doesn't care if you report him, I suspect. I've asked him about how he can sell shrink-wrapped books that have had numerous re-printings as "1st/1st". He just ignores such questions. That fact alone means he knows he is a total shyster, IMHO. It is certainly not plausible to sell that many Easton Press books and not understand EPs lack of printing history in the books.

All you can really do is to try and educate buyers so they don't buy from him. It would almost be worth putting up an educational website and making sure the meta-data includes the name "rare_book_cellar". eBay will do absolutely nothing.

Personally, I have configured my eBay followed searches so they exclude rare_book_cellar, gilded_legacy_books and a few others. I'm just not interested in their auctions.

Some honest retailer once posted a fictitious EP and Franklin Library eBay listing just to educate people to beware of 1st Edition First Printing....that they were fraudulent listings. It needs to be out there 365 days out of the year. I feel bad for people paying $275 for Moby Dick which I believe you can get for $39.95 from EP without subscribing to the series.

I agree. This is really terrible. I think most EP resellers are honest, even if their prices are high. This however is clearly dishonest.

>6 astropi:

He isn't the only one that does this, though (although he seems to the major culprit that I have noticed). And selling product that is still available direct from the publisher at huge markups is just unethical -- that's what these resellers do, even when they are not telling lies in their product descriptions.

A bit overblown? It's far more likely that no one has actually bought these books.
It's pretty easy for an Ebay seller to fake a sale to drum up interest. Doesn't mean anyone
is falling for it. There's also the concept of a "Completed" ebay listing, which can sometimes be confused for a sale.

I won't even go into why the whole concept of a First Edition is a scam (hint, that $12,000 your paying for first ed. To Kill A Mockingbird, when some identical Book Club edition is floating out there for $5).

Justin, go their feedback and you will see they are selling many at ridiculous prices.

>9 HugoDumas:

IF they are real sales. It is totally easy to set up multiple e-bay accounts (all you need is an e-mail address) and then buy from yourself, leave great feedback, and then cancel the transaction to avoid paying e-bay fees on the bogus transaction.

I agree with Justin, you are overreacting to what you see on e-bay.

They must be selling some of these books: Let's say you were one of these scammers and you set up multiple accounts or worked out a mutual buyback with a friend. Even if you neglect shipping because it's not actually being shipped, both Ebay and Paypayl are still going to take their commission from the sale. Thus, a $275 fake 1st/1st, if "sold" to yourself or your friend, will cost you 10% + 3%, or roughly, $35.75. You've got to be selling enough books at these prices to make the occasional loss of $35.75 just to get a good review an insignificant cost to your operation.

The only way I could imagine getting the cost lower is if the fake sale was a Best Offer, set to $1.00, and the commission would be a few cents. I would like to believe Ebay's software can detect and flag such activity.

So, you don't think ebay would catch wind that these transactions keep canceling? I think they would. They're very very good about making sure they get paid.

>12 astropi:

Why would they care, so long as they are making an overall healthy profit from the seller? The cancellations cost them nothing. So long as none of the buyers or sellers complain, there isn't an issue from an eBay perspective. Put it this way, I've never even seen eBay take down a fraudulent auction, even where I know there have been multiple complaints about it. They have millions of auctions each day, and stuff like this isn't worth their attention. They like to make out that they care, but they don't. Not at all. Sure, if every transaction for a seller was cancelled, it would probably be an issue, but if a small percentage of high-value transactions get cancelled (and this is what is being suggested), this isn't going to raise a single human eyebrow.

13: You *may* be right. Then again, you may be wrong. It's speculation. Of course if you had real evidence, that would be interesting, in a rather sad way. Sad that people would go to all this trouble to lie, but again without evidence it's just speculation.

I wouldn't doubt that some of these transactions are real, there are unfortunately suckers out there that don't do their research, but to have thousands of suckers, well that is suspect indeed.

I also doubt that EP cares, after all they use these in their marketing tactic. Ever get the email "Buy it now from us, or pay 100x the cost later in the secondary market". They embrace these ridiculous prices.

>15 JuliusC:: Ah, yes - I remember EP using that line, or something very similar, in their marketing e-mails peddling soon-to-be-out-of-stock titles (or ones that they wanted us to think were in short supply, whether truly the case or not).

>14 astropi:

Astropi, as has previously discussed ad-nauseum, it is a hypothesis that multiple people have, based on observation. You aren't going to get your evidence (other then anecdotal), so just accept that there is a ** difference of opinion **. There have been many ideas throughout history that were postulated, and evidence didn't come along until much later to prove one way or another. That's the way discovery often works.

eBay loves that guy because he makes more money for them. The person recommending educational site with meta data about it is right on. I put up an auction trying to expose this practices and immediately got not only that auction taken down but punitively ALL of the rest.