Share links to known scammer accounts here so members of the fourum can easily reference before buying!
It’s helpful to list their username(s), platform(s), methodology and link to their profile.
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Name
E on Mercari
Method
Requires comments before allowing purchases, which allows them to only sell to non-Japan residents.
Scams
- Obviously fake raw English cards
- Many high-end Japanese graded cards for suspiciously well below market price.
My experience
I was interested in some of their cards until I noticed that they instantly delete comments from domestic accounts.
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the prices are too good to be true so it`s too good to be true
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Do we still have the e4 ebay blacklist?
The E4 blacklist was removed as many of the names are either inactive or irrelevant.
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do you think it’s worth it to make a scammers list? If so what formats have been effective in the past?
You’re thinking too much about how it can be useful and not enough about how much of a headache it is to maintain a list of guilty-until-proven-innocent persona non grata
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I edited my post earlier because I didn’t want to come off too strong, but e4 isn’t interested in making and maintaining another list. As Pfm mentioned, it’s a major headache and we aren’t the pokepolice. Typically it’s best to just make a thread or post in a megathread if there is an instance of a scam.
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got it, thank you for the advice all
Just felt like I wanted to do something since I run into scammers all the time and it makes me sad that they are targeting the community
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Let’s put it this way. I still experience the fallout from the old blacklist - as recently as last month. This is despite it basically not existing for as long as I’ve been staff on here.
That said, I’m not against an informal list of mercari/yj usernames to avoid. I feel like it’s a lot more black-and-white plus these people are separated by a language barrier
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what kind of fallout comes of that?
Imagine meeting people in person who were banned/on the blacklist and introducing yourself as the admin of efour. It has happened multiple times
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This is every introverted keyboard warrior’s nightmare.
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How about a whitelist of sellers with established, positive reputations? I suppose most scams happen on the buyer-side though. Just a thought.
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I admin’d the blacklist for awhile, but a lot of the people on it were there even before I joined. The vast majority of people on it were nonpaying buyers or people who would do refund fraud on eBay. This was great in 2017 when the market was much smaller and keeping up with the E4 Blacklist might actually stop you from dealing with a good number of unpleasant people. However, in today’s market it’s nowhere near feasible to put every nonpaying buyer on a list. Refund fraud is by no means pleasant but a few calls to eBay will sort it out.
Much rarer were instances of nefarious behavior by individuals or sellers that was important to alert the community to. And boy, did we deal with some shady people. However, there comes a point when you have to consider whether someone should be blacklisted for life for something they did 8 years ago. In my opinion the most serious offenders are the notorious shill bidders, but at this point you also probably need to accept shill bidding happens on a significant amount of auctions, whether by the seller themselves or by interested parties with no desire to pay for the card itself.
As Scott2 have mentioned, dealing with these issues essentially puts us into the realm of community police, which is a role we have no interest in playing. However, I do think a thread of suspicious mercari/YJ sellers would be helpful if for no other reason than to point out to the (often inexperienced) community exactly what a lot of the common scams look like.
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I have no idea what happens over on ebay, but I did think that the mercari/YA reports would be useful for people new to the fourum
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A list is somewhat futile IMO. The type of person to fall for these scams cannot see the forest through the trees. To make matters worse, new scammers will show up a week or two down the line. To be brutally honest, if you’re (not directed at anyone) unable to identify these scam listings, you should stay away from the more popular items on there. Low feedback or a price much lower than market value no longer cut it.
Here’s a couple examples:
https://jp.mercari.com/en/user/profile/963741184
https://jp.mercari.com/en/user/profile/540382811
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Makes things awkward but I usually relieve the tension by stating Im banning myself from further conversation.
But maybe internet and real life are more entangled than I like to believe since I still view it as separate realms with minimal crossover.
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I see. Then a cohesive guide to common Japanese scams would be the more efficient solution
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I agree it would be helpful, keep in mind that team rocket is always looking for ways to innovate and make these scams more believable.
Ddk had some great tips on a previous thread:
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