Someone Got Ripped-Off on eBay Again!

[turbofish38]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2451761989

Whats wrong you say? The VIN listed is for a 2bbl Regal. This car has been retagged. Nobody would have gone through the trouble of rebodying a GN and not transferring over the VIN tag. I even sent an e-mail to eBay informing them but they(eBay) make it impossible for you to tell them whats wrong. All you can do is alert them that something is not right with the listing! I did e-mail the buyer and tell him. I cant believe anybody would even pay $5500 for a car like this with out checking it out. Maybe it has a legit history to it somewhere but I doubt it. They may have retagged it but its original VIN is still on the left side frame rail. Here is a question for the police officers who post on this board, "Is there a way I can inform the authorities to a possible retagged stolen vehicle with out sounding like I am over reacting to something that might be legit(maybe the owner knew it is retagged but didn't say so,and has the paperwork to back this up) and what should I do if I run into another one in the future?"
I hate reading about stolen cars over in the stolen car forum but I hate it even more when some idiot takes advantage of someone else. Heres another idea, over in the b4black forum we have an "interesting things on eBay" thread and I was thinking that maybe if anybody spots anything they condider suspicious on any of the auction websites than they could post a link in this forum to alert anyone who cares to look. I know we already do a lot of posting making fun of other things on eBay but I dont think we do enough as far as this goes. Maybe I'm wrong. Lets hear what you think?

Eric Fisher

 

[TurboJunky]

You can make a call/complaint to the local PD where this car is being sold from. If they're large enough to have an Auto Theft unit you'd speak to them. If not, you could TRY the county sheriff or state police.

I'm not much into VIN's but someone's already stated it's a non-turbo VIN? I see it has a hot-air engine with an 87 GN interior (gray pullstraps). There are other easy and sneaky ways to check the vehicle's authenticy in person but I can't outline them here. The rubber seals around the doors look very rough for a 26,000 mile car. I sold my 1st GN with 78,000 miles and they didn't look nearly that bad.

 

[turbofish38]

Yeah the first thing that caught my eye was the mismatched VIN since part of my job nowadays is deciphering VIN's and than I justed started to pick apart the car from the photos. The thing that got me all bent out of shape was the fact I couldn't file a complaint with eBay. I could not get a hold of them! Maybe if this car sold for $1000 it wouldn't have been that big of a deal but $5500 and the buyer was a eBay veteran. To me it was clear the seller was hiding something, maybe it was just the way the seller said "theft recovery" to cover their azz. You know whats really funny is I e-mailed the seller to tell him he got ripped off and he hasn't replied back. I even worded it(insulted him basically) so that he would reply back. The more I think about it the more I think something else is going on. Just for the heck of it I'm keeping track off this is see where it goes.

Eric

 

[Geoff87]

Print out the auction page, and fax it, along with the VIN decoding to the local authorities, media, State Dept of Motor Vehicles/etc. . That should light a fire somewhere.....

What State is that auction in?

 

[Geoff87]

Virginia.....

Area Code: 540
Prefix: 809
Location: Fredericksburg
Other Info: CLEC - Sprint

 

[Geoff87]

Print out the auction page, and fax it, along with the VIN decoding to the local authorities, media, State Dept of Motor Vehicles/etc. . That should light a fire somewhere.....

What State is that auction in?