REAL SCAM ALERT

LOOK on ebay now. Some seller with 0 feedback and shades AND form israel is claiming to have 13 empegs for sale. He uses the same picture for each empeg.

WATCH OUT AND DO NOT BID!!!!!

Good gracious...give the guy a frickin' chance. Ask him to post the serial numbers of the players before you call him a scam artist.

He may very well be, but have a little tact dude.

> He may very well be, but have a little tact dude.

Yeah, it sounds a little suspicious, but only a little. His stated reason for selling them sounds plausible (a shop that went out of business). You could always use escrow if you are nervous.

Here is a link to all his stuff:
http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=electric_il&sort=3&rows=40

lol

No friggin way in hell will I give this guy a chance! Its so damn obvious he/she is a scammer that his/her ebay user name should be scamshop

i'm with you. That seems f'ing ridiculous.

Some seller with 0 feedback and shades AND form israel

No feedback doesn't mean much, everyone has to start somewhere - but Jewish as well?? Buyer beware doods!

Rob

(yes i'm being ironic)

Greetings!

I am curious why those auctions are not showing up when I search for empeg on ebay. Strange...

I sent the seller a question, asking what the serial numbers were and if they were still under warranty. I will post the reply.

Try unchecking the box that says search "in titles & descriptions"

Link to ebay


Jerz

Strange, though. "empeg", my search term, is in both the body and title. It should have still found it. A bug in eBay???

Hopefully, I will hear back from the seller. If the auctions are valid or not, more information would never hurt.

If the players were sold by SB direct to Israel (or anywhere outside of North America) then I should be able to find the original transaction by serial number, but there are other sources that could have supplied them.

Note that we never offered a dealer discount to any company outside of the US and UK (AFAIK) however many dealers chose to pay full price and resell above SRP.

Rob

A couple things that worry me...

- Look at his other auctions. 42" flat screen TV's for $2500?
- You can't pay directly with a credit card. Almost all electronics stores that I know of have this option.

I may be wrong but something just doesn't feel right. I also would not buy something from Israel that only accepts money orders or checks. Lastly, someone should ask him to e-mail or post a picture of the empegs (with a dated newspaper).

AARRRGGGH!!!!!

I'm TOO paranoid to bid now after reading this thread!!! heh! Damn it. I still don't have an Empeg player and this dude's auctions are at the right price!!!! Seems too good to be true... I'm pretty skeptical about it as well because why would ou set up these 13 auctions and only set them for 2 days and 8 hours?!?! I figure that you have 13 products that are in HUGE demand (in a niche group of course... but there's demand nonetheless...) and if you set up the 13 auctions for the maximum days allowed for an auction by eBay (which is 10 days) you have WAY more people bumping into the auction to jump in, bid, and drive the prices up higher!
It seems like this person is trying to make some quick cash... I just hope that the buyers are going to receive something in return for their money!!!
I wish these auctions were spread out, if they were, I might bid if I found out the results from an earlier winner.

I agree about the time limit; it is short. It could be that he wants to live to see the end of the auctions.....

What I'd like to know is, doesn't Empeg deny warranty transfers?

"Inside the riocar manual it says the warranty is not transferable from one user to another." yn0t_

That means you'd need the original owner to do the talking. I woudn't trust a guy as far away as Israel to stick around if I had problems.....

Just hang on a little bit. Pgrzelak e-mailed him asking about the serial numbers and I e-mailed him asking if he would do the escrow thing. If he e-mails us back in a timely fashion, then you might have a better idea about his authenticity before having to make the decision to bid.

BTW, about the price....his reserve has not been hit yet, and with a $400 starting price, I would take a wild guess that his reserve is $600 or higher.

but Jewish as well??

Oi, cut that out - would you buy an Empeg from me!

I sent a message requesting serial numbers as well. In addition, escrow is a must. It's the only way that we can protect ourselves.

looks like he's getting a load of those messages...I sent a message asking for serial #'s before either of you guys

If he is scamming, maybe he'll get the message that the empeg community to too smart to scam and stick to scamming lesser beings.

Has anyone received a response with serial numbers?

Are you really counting on them serial #'s? IF I am somehow wrong about this guy then I would apologize 100x's BUT it is so obvious. Why do you think he only accepts money orders and cashiers checks. I am 100% sure that anyone with this much HIGH END merchandise could accept paypal, credit cards, etc.

Perhaps the loss of the store (that he claims to have happened) is a bigger blow than you might think. Maybe he has no source of income now or even a checking account. It's possible.

It is possible that the units are legitimate. The presence of valid serial numbers would clear that up. If you are are so concerned about him, don't bid on any of the units.

> Has anyone received a response with serial numbers?

Well, all I asked him was whether he does escrow or not, a simple yes or no question, but I have not heard back from him. It is late night there now and he has had all day to answer it if he wanted to.

I have enough Empegs, but those LCD monitors look real nice, and for an expected reserve price of $300, I could sure go for one, but I certainly wouldn't buy anything from this guy without escrow. I wish I could just bid and force escrow on the guy later, but Ebay rules state that both parties must agree beforehand.

Strange things going on in those auctions; some guy went through every monitor and TV electric_il was selling and apparently bid exactly the minimum price for each. Odd.

This seller is not currently offering any items for sale.
seems like electric_il is no longer selling them
the 13 empegs are no longer for sale

And he is no longer a registered user. Well, so much for that. I wonder if Ebay shut him down.

Haha, that'd be funny. Any scammer that was stupid enough to try to sell 35 dead items at once is just about as bright as three college grads who hack EVERY bet at a famous horse racing event and plan to get away with it. Greed always kills.

Greetings!

I just received a reply from the seller. This is quoted, with the hotmail HTML formatting cleaned up. I did not mess with the spelling or grammar.

--------->8========

From: "yossi cohen" <electric_shop@hotmail.co.il>
Date: 2002/12/11 Wed AM 05:18:47 CST
To: pgrzelak
Subject: Re: Question for seller -- Item #1944417995

Hello,

Since Ebay suspended me from using my account, untill i use ID veridy, the only thing that didnt notince is that ID verify can be used only to American people, and not International people like myself. Due to this fact i cant sell more then 20 products at a given time.

I would like to pay your attention to few things:

1. All the products being sold by us are new and have never been opended.
2. The reason im selling the products is because our shop suffered a failure and is in a process of closing.

I would like to thank you all for taking place in the auction, I hope that in the future Ebay will be able to provide a better service to the International sellers for our all interest. for users who aksed me about purchsing outside of Ebay, Im now cansultaning on the matter with my lawyer. You are welcome to propose a suggestion, and such will be considered by us.

Best regards,
Uri

I got a word for word identical letter.

Hmm.. strange he still did not mention anything about the ser. #'s.

> I got a word for word identical letter.

Ditto. I liked the very cool right justification on the email; hard to reproduce here.

I received the same letter and like you said, no serial numbers.

But he was quick to offer the items off-Ebay... with no sellers protection.

But hey, that's what escrow.com is for. I'll be closing my first escrow.com transaction tomorrow (for a $650 30gig new-in-box MKIIa ) so I'll let you all know how it went.

Oi, cut that out - would you buy an Empeg from me!/

I don't know, is it a used empeg?

Im now cansultaning on the matter with my lawyer.

Obviously to see how much jail time is involved if his "business" gets shutdown...

I, too, was being ironic!

So I can buy a used empeg from that man.

.......An explorer came to a fork in a jungle road, sitting at the junction was......

Are we doing irony or double negatives?

But I'm holding on to my Empeg anyway!

Please tell me that you all are not even entertaining the thought of dealing with this guy... I don't care what he has to sell you are talking about INTERNATIONAL transactions here. Ebay can't touch him if he is outside the US. The government isn't going to help you. Please don't be blinded by the carrot he is dangling. You have a language barrier, a political barrier and ambiguous circumstances, not to mention an insistance on payment that can''t easily be recovered. Come on... If anyone sends him money, I have some beachfront property about 50 miles east of Myrtle Beach for sale. Really cheap... But I need cash because my reality had a failure?!?

I have some beachfront property about 50 miles east of Myrtle Beach for sale

How much?

1000000000000000000 acres for the low price of one empeg...haha