AuctionCut

I was browsing some items photos just to get some information of someone's ebay store and suddenly I saw "PAY NOW" button which said that I committed to buy the item!!! I never clicked any "BUY IT NOW" or "BID" buttons! I am sure! So I emailed the seller to cancel the bid and kept on browsing their store clicking on "VIEW ITEM" links of their items and again, on some links nothing happened, but on some links once I clicked "View Item" link I was sent to a page which stated the same again:
I saw "PAY NOW" button which said that I committed to buy the item!!!
Then I realised I was logged in and then I logged out and deleted all cookies and cleared all files from my PC. But even if I was logged in it should have never forced me to bid like that against my will! I guess it's a new Ebay's scam, or an error, not a fishing or a fake link, but a true EBAY.COM that scams you into bidding on goods on EBAY.COM while clicking on VIEW ITEM links. I am revealing this scam by Ebay itself right here so everyone is careful.

It is highly unlikey that what you say about Ebay is true, they get NO benefit from doing this..

Perhaps, so maybe it was a bug, but a weird bug and once it happens, someone has to make sure it does not happen again. And it DID happen to me. I may go and test it again to see if it happens again. It could be both ebay and IE6.

I don't want to sound like a jerk, really, but there is absolutely no way this happened as described. Perhaps you were distracted or something.

You just have difficulty trusting people, aren't you? I was not distracted. If it was not weird I would have never bothered to waste my time. Enough said, if you don't believe I can't help.

By the way, - I did it again and it "worked". Here's what I did:

1. I went to ebay dot com

2. Logged in

3. Went to http://stores.ebay.com/Coinsell_Coupon- ... idZ2QQtZkm

4. Clicked on several "view item" links like this one: http://cgi.ebay.com/Wholesale-100-pcs-o ... dZViewItem

5. Clicked on a couple more view item links and "BACK" button on a browser a few times clicked again on "view item" link and got a page with:

"Wholesale:100 pcs of China Rice Coupon #34,UNC"
You are signed in This item is being tracked in My eBay
You committed to buy (Click 'Pay Now' to complete your purchase)
PAY NOW (button)

That's it. Try yourselves.

Call me if something.

I spent a good 20 minutes trying to recreate the problem, but without success. In theory it would be possible for a scammer to make this happen, perhaps with a sneaky redirect after all with had plenty of security scares in the past but you've said it was a genuine ebay page - not a phishing page.

Have you contacted eBay about this and what have they said?

"...you've said it was a genuine ebay page - not a phishing page."

Did you see the links I posted? Do they look phishy to you? I know well what a phish looks like, I never click on anything without looking into the source (and reporting).

No, I did not contact ebay. I don't see it necessary. They protect fraudsters, they banned me while I tried to disclose a very dangerous frauster that operated on ebay (and still operates). I was banned instead. The fraudster now is under investigation by a lawyer. Ebay has done nothing, we took care of him ourselves. Ebay has been using my domain as their search keyword. Do you think I'll contact a thief to tell him that his hat is on fire?

Keep on trying, use different browsers, OS'es, computers. I don't know. I have proof and I can re-create it on my computer. Perhaps ebay or someone loaded something on my pc so I get fooled into biding. Who knows. I have to little time to investigate, but I will if I find more time.

What browser did you use, and what settings do you have on the browser?

I used IE6 and Windows XP.

I just have to make sure to be signed off (logged off) before browsing ebay, which is inconvenient at times, but safer. In fact I did not test it on other browsers or OS. I will test if necessary.

If this happened the way you say, I am positive it would have happened to more people then you. It by passes all the checks and balances that are in ebay and paypal for purchasing items. Do you know if it has happened to anybody else besides your self? This would lend to credibility.