Fake buyers

Omg! Two more straight away!
What’s happened to the security?

Kia Ora Robert, what's happened indeed - I spent 2hrs in the chat queue yesterday on number 1 in the que which said Reach out to our Trust & Safety Team - Lol - A whole 2 unanswered hrs I left message & ended chat! - Security must be too busy rescuing false sales/auctions like yours - Cheers.

Yes it’s not flash and of course I can eels it but then buyers see auctions they are watching sell and get relisted it just looks dodgy.

Just put on relist - 'Relist due to Buyer error' - the more common I see are 'Relist due to timewaster' - Ur customers will understand - There needs to be a link that puts your relists back on Buyers & Bidders Watchlists - if there isn't already. 

Yes, I also have had 2 x fake buyers lately, thank goodness I wasn't home and didn't see that sale until the following day where I received the email from TM to "NOT go ahead with the sale".  They wanted to pick up the item, but glad I was slower in replying!

One never contacted me, another I can't remember, but today one wanted to know my best offer to sell after they had hit buy now (WTF) and the other wanted to pick up and had it not been for both saying "Kind Regards" and my spider senses I may have thought it was legit. I'm struggling to think why they want to pick up. To anyone watching this, before you reply check their email addresses - they are generic name@hotmail.com or generic name@some strange domain. So they aren't your normal email addresses. 

Kia Ora Robert, Pickup possibilities: 1) to start the scam negotiations before they're due to pick up so keeps you waiting a further few days until you twig in which time scam is done & successful. 2) to case your place?? And I'm sure there's more but that makes me shudder - Cheers.

Yes, I can't see how there can be a scam on a pick up but the latter option was the most concern. 
Not much here to steal except me and I'm free to a good home :P

Lol - Have a read through Scammer warning message??  - Cheers.

My four most expensive items sold last night -ALL FAKE! This is bloody ridiculous. Trademe, whst are you doing? I’ve asked whether I can add the requirement that only authenticated buyers can bid but heard no responses and can’t see how to select that for all listings in My Products.

I guess the alternatives are removed but nows off anything over $500 as I think all these issues are occurring in that bracket.

Kia Ora Robert, there is a box to tick when listing an item for sale to 'Only allow bids from Authenticated members' - this is at the very bottom of the Price & Payment page screen

Yes I've not copied the mid section of the screen - I feel for you Mate - Cheers

Robert, you can't do it as a bulk edit from within My Products, but you can do an export/import and change the value in the column av_bidders_only from FALSE to TRUE, then drag/copy that yto all items, then import and update. For full export/import instructions, see this post....

CSV Export - edit - import - Bulk update. How to guide. – Help - Trade Me

You guys are annoyingly clever :p

Ok, so I’m thinking I can probably protect myself by at least selecting authenticated bidders only on the items of higher value. That’s not too major a task.

Never really looked into that export/import option but need to edumacate myself methinks. Thanks for the feedback people.

2 Options - Your spoilt for choice! - Thanks Gary.

Can we assume the address verification was ruled out due to cost? 
TradeMe could do a few things here based on what is happening:
- require all users to be authenticated
- allow address verification and attach some incentive such as allowed to bid on all auctions
- limit zero feedback purchasers to items less than $500 and limit number of purchases in the first week or two to say 10 (inset arbitrary number here) and maybe no more than two auctions per day which would mean these scammers are being shown up really quickly
- create a one-button auto-relist or restore function for sellers

I don't doubt this is as much a pain for TM as it is for sellers but there needs to be some attempt to limit the disruption and increase the difficulty. 

I have a feeling that this must be an attack intended to destabilise Trade Me as a platform by destroying it’s credibility. Perhaps the reason for Trade Me not responding is that they are too busy firefighting and are being held to ransom by whoever is behind these multiple scam purchases. Would be good if Trade Me would communicate with us.

- create a one-button auto-relist or restore function for sellers ...

And puts your relists back on legit Buyers & Bidders Watchlists keeping in mind the scammers accounts are already disabled so they won't / can't be notified this way at all.

There is currently an algorithm which auto relists to Buyers & Bidders Watchlists for the MQL Sellers, an adaption or implementation of that for All Sellers in these circumstances would be a simple quick & easy enough change to make in benefitting both Sellers & Buyers whom missed out.

If anyone needs to restore a listing from the sold page you can use sell similar item. Good design from TM to have the sold page view differ from the Unsold page view so people don't accidentally relist their solds. Easy to do on a tired day! Then you can be stuck with withdrawal fees and trying to unravel it all with TM.

If watchers are keen enough they will find the listing again. A few also check their items I lost page to see if something went wonky and the item is listed again. :)

Kia Ora L, Thank you for your comment - That is most helpful for those who have asked - Much appreciated - Cheers.

Kia Ora All, A heads up to those of you not yet in the know - Trade me are officially intercepting scam Sellers and notifying Buyers - Keep Safe on all fronts - Cheers.

Hi, this has just happened to me. Sold an item to a buyer who used ‘buy now’, emailed them regarding payment and received a reply saying their account was hacked and TM would have messaged me (they haven't) and not to send account details for payment to be safe (these are sent automatically when auction is won so I am now worried). Have tried to apply for listing/success fee reimbursement and just receive a TM 500 server error message. Any suggestions gratefully received!

Kia ora Catherine, it would be a good idea to jump onto Live chat for us to get the full info and check that out for you. 🙂

Kia Ora Catherine,

Sorry to hear that has happened to you,

One of the import steps coming forward is to know how to Keep Safe from any phishing scams which you may be emailed with attempting to have you further provide more information, requesting you to login to personal accounts, click on any provided link etc.

A couple of very good Posts to read are:

 Tips to Spot scams - A new Trade Me buying scam attempt I haven't seen before

And TradeMe's Updates to our Trust and Safety blog

Refresher reads are good to upskill one's knowledgebase as these incidents are an ongoing evolution. - All the Best - Cheers.

Thank you so much for the info above, I have indeed received a phishing scam email with links etc identical to the one in your article. Very frustrating! Unfortunately I receive an error message when I try to apply through the listing to have success fees etc reimbursed as I will now need to relist the item. Thanks for all your help.

Welcome to TradeMe

Cheers Catherine, - I've responded through the Tips Post for you - Pleased the info' has helped you also - Keep Safe 😊

Little update for those interested, this scam still happening despite me only allowing bids from authenticated members (doesn’t make a difference). The poor genuine owner of the email attached to the hacked account actually messaged me this morning to apologise and said he had ‘somehow’ managed to buy 70+ items overnight while asleep! 😳

Cheers for the Heads up with that Catherine - The poor Member and how gracious of him to message out and with an apology! - Much appreciated 😊

I just saw an account that received 23 negatives for purchases last week that were scams.  Their rating is now -19, so it really spoiled their first 3 perfect feedbacks.