how do the conmen who ask for mobile numbers and advertise motorhomes get onto e bay?

[dav1748sport]

Many adverts for motorhomes appear on e bay with rediculously low prices and the "vendor" requests you leave a mobile number so they can contact you. This of course takes you out of the ebay rules and when you get conned you have no comeback. How on earth do these conmen get on e bay?

[red_magpie]

How on earth do these conmen get on e bay?

Very easily - anyone can open an account here.

In a TV programme about organised crime, a senior police officer reported that one criminal gang alone had registered "multiple hundreds" of fake accounts on eBay to place fraudulent listings for motor vehicles.

Bogus motor vehicle sales are attractive to criminals as these are not covered by eBay's money back guarantee. We know from questions asked here that many buyers are hopelessly naive and just assume that eBay will always protect them from fraud. They won't!

None of us knows the full scale of motor vehicle fraud on eBay, but on one day alone we heard of three buyers who had each lost over £6,000 paying for non-existent vehicles. It would go a long way to prevent this if eBay warned all winning buyers in the motors section that there is no buyer protection, and that they shouldn't pay until they have seen and inspected the vehicle properly. But I think eBay is more concerned to preserve the illusion that eBay is safe than to educate buyers about the risks.