Scam?

[jkn]

I wouldn't say it is a scam exactly, but they do certainly get up to the practices you describe. They factor in complaints and having to make refunds etc without checking ... it is part of their business model.

I've just had something similar with another eBay supplier - book paid for and didn't arrive. From looking at their feedback you can see this happens a lot. They just refund without a quibble.

A 'friend of a friend' used to work at World of Books in Worthing. I understand that (as you might expect) conditions and pay are pretty poor there...

[Tim Lamb]

I don't think so. Googling turns up reems of Tim Harford!

Books arrived today in excellent order.

>

[Tim Lamb]

No. I tried that.

Ok. Ta.

[Tim Lamb]

Indeed. Very coincidental! The books arrived this morning.

>

[John Rumm]

Paste the URL in here:

it will check if the site is a known scam or phishing page, and scan for malicious content if it is not known.

Sometimes you luck out. It is the way that many phishing exercises succeed - they just happen to land at a time where the circumstances make their pretext plausible.

[Rod Speed]

Fuck.

[Joe]

You've just bought books from Amazon, who certainly have your email address. You probably buy from others online.

You'll probably find that most suppliers have terms and conditions which do not actually preclude their selling your email address and other data, which you have agreed to.

Certainly Microsoft do this, or they wouldn't bother demanding that you sign in to one of their servers whenever you use your computer. Yes, this is avoidable, but difficult.

I have a Hotmail emergency address that is my name followed by no extra digits or letters. That's how long I've had it. Within thirty minutes of registering this with MS, before I had actually tested it, there was spam in the inbox. Literally nobody but MS knew that address. I'm sure MS now makes more money from advertising and the sale of data than it does from software.

[Tim Lamb]

Bit technical for my limited capabilities!

Indeed.

1st. ever to my current mail address. Directly within the likely delivery timescale and mimicking the actual post service being used!

Few too many coincidences for random targeting.

[Robert]

And my hotmail account which only get used when MS insist and I cant get round it has been active for over 15 years and never gets any SPAM. I must be lucky

[Robert]

eBay definition: Very good: The book does not look new and has been read but is in excellent condition. There is no obvious damage to the cover the dust jacket (if applicable) is included for hard covers. There are no missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, and no underlining/highlighting of text or writing in the margins. It may have very minimal identifying marks on the inside cover as well as very minimal wear and tear. See the seller's listing for full details and a description of any imperfections

WoB also has very dynamic pricing to keep on top of the competition.

[Joe]

Why?

Twenty-four years ago I leased three domains, and in a spirit of investigation I used one main address for pretty much everything. It's the one in your headers today.

I get a bit of spam, and three or four a day make it to my inbox. I'm only actually rejecting about fifty other attempts a day, which never see the inside of my mail server.

That's nothing to the glory days of SWEN, when I was still on dial-up, and literally couldn't download them fast enough, at about 145K each, to keep my POP3 account empty. I had to resort to webmail, which I've always hated, to delete chunks of them at a time.

[John Rumm]

Can't see how - so long as you can manage copy and paste...?

Copy the address of the page it is taking you to that you think might be a phishing site (highlight everything in the address bar and copy).

Then visit the virus total page above. There is a box there for you to past in the web address. Do that, hit enter, job done :-)

[Tim Lamb]

It is in the body of the mail. There is no URL. I don't want to poke about in what seems to be an active script.

I can forward the whole thing or just shred it!

[SteveW]

Yes. I am normally very good at not being caught out, but was recently fooled by a test email sent out at work. It referred to digitally signing an updated contract ... and happened to arrive on my second day after coming back from holiday, when my contract *had* been updated while I was off and I had not yet received the updated version.

[Theo]

Yes, I sell the occasional book on Amazon so I have to grade them (I think the Amazon and ebay condition definitions are aligned) and WoB's 'very good' stock is sometimes only 'good' or 'acceptable'.

Amazon make it annoying to open a 'not as described' case, which seemingly WoB are exploiting.

That is quite common: when I set a price, the script kiddie sellers come along and undercut it by 1p. I CBA to keep up with them - eventually my book sells when they have gone out of stock.

(There's another seller called Paper Cavalier who do arbitrage between different Amazon countries, buying a book from a seller in one country when somebody orders it in another. Lots of algorithmic stuff going on)

Theo

[jkn]

Indeed - I have both sold books to, and bought books from, Paper Cavalier, and similar merchants.

WoB and their ilk also play with the pricing if you look at one of their listings too often, I think!

As long as you realise that that is the game you are in, you can still get decent buys. Patience is often a virtue.

J^n

[John Rumm]

Yup, send me a copy, I will have a poke about :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

That is truly awful. I get spates of spam every time I give my email address to s new supplier of almost anything.

I ought to use one-time email addresses like ' [e-mail]' and bin them every few weeks

[Fredxx]

You must be giving your email address to some dodgy site. I don't get spam from anyone I have recently given my email address to. I think the latest was Linkedin, and that leak was well published.

[John Rumm]

ok, had a look - definitely a scam - just arrived at a time it could have been plausible.