[whojammyflip]

Anyone in the UK noticed this lens keeps popping up on Ebay at the moment with someone with a rating of zero? Anyway, if anyone is looking for one of these, its up at the moment on Ebay UK, but the risk is that something fishy is afoot. I was wondering whether anyone has bought the lens from this guy and then sent it back? It was originally listed as having been checked by a camera shop, but now its listed as being unchecked. I guess I am answering my own question here...

[Johndav]

Are you sure it's the same seller? This seller is in Bristol - but strangely when I look at completed listings there appears to be the 28mm f2.0 in Newcastle sold in three consecutive weeks for different prices (but each picture is the same lens). But clicking on the three individual listings yields three different items - something very strange is going on.

[wolfiegirl]

perhaps someone is just using the same picture? or am i missing something? it's early here...

[johnha]

There's another one which doesn't show the serial number in the photo, again zero feedback, "Looks OK...Can't test...No returns"!

The three shown above list RRPs of £740, £755 & 755 - must be still available

[patrick9]

Looks like a stock photo instead of one of the actual item up for sale

[whojammyflip]

whats even more strange is that I received an email from the last one being sold:
Dear whojammyflip,

hi i forgot to include the tracking info for your parcel, please read the previous email for further details
KF517834550GB

- antheap410


I wrote back and said that they had emailed the wrong person. When you put that tracking number into RM, it doesn't come up. Most odd. But, a lens like this is so rare. This reminds me of the time when I was little someone had dropped two amazing marbles in some dog sh1t, and everyday when walking to school, I had to resist the temptation to pick them out, as obviously they were covered in sh1t. But how much can be wrong with a prime...this is surely worth a punt. Cleaning a lens up is no more than 50 pounds, and these babies are rare...

update: I see the auction had a bidder with zero feedback who placed 17 incremental bids...shill bidding? will be interesting to see if this gets relisted again

[Ray-uk]

I noticed this, it was an obvious case of shill bidding by the seller and his accomplice.
They failed on the first attempt because the accomplice ended up making the winning bid.
Then the seller listed the same lens again and the accomplice made bids to increase the price and it was eventually sold to a third party.
This same behaviour was going on with other items being sold by this seller.

I reported these 2 ebay members to ebay pointing out the obvious practice of shill bidding .....
ebay replied a few days later and stated that there was no evidence !

Ebay don't seem to care, all they want is their cut of the money and the higher selling price means more money for them.

[whojammyflip]

Yeah, I bet they had to relist previously as the previous buyers worked out that bidding against someone with a zero feedback rating was likely to have meant they overpaid.