If any users here had bid (UK ebay) on laserdiscs listed by mikem9755 that went quite high recently please take care if you receive a second chance offer on any of them. There were quite a few including.....


Pioneer Peter Gabriel: All About US (1993) [PLMPA 00911] PAL LASER DISC Rare Qty: 1, £77.11

Whitney Houston: Welcome Home Heroes (1991) [PA-91-401] NTSC LASER DISC Qty: 1, £36.00

Now That's What I Call Music Video: vol.01 (1983) [PML NOW 1] PAL LASER DISC Qty: 1, £87.00

Now That's What I Call Music Video: vol.02 (1984) [PML NOW 2] PAL LASER DISC Qty: 1, £77.50


This has been mentioned in another thread but to cut to the quick the holder of ebay account mikem9755 had (still has?) full access to a "friends" ebay account.

The account is jagsmanuk on UK ebay.

The holder of the mikem9755 account listed laserdiscs & players for sale on jagsmanuk & used his own mikem9755 account to shill bid on his own discs on the aforementioned jagsmanuk account.

He is back, after quite a period of time using the mikem9755 account to bid on items only, now selling again on his own mikem9755 account.

After many many emails & ebay messages the only way to get any response was to bid so high on his discs that even the greediest shill bid (or non shill bid) would not win - I "won" quite a few. All messages were ignored except one email asking me not to send any further messages/questions via the ebay members message service, I sent a total of seven further messages via ebay & no reply to any until today & that was only after leaving negative feedback on his ebay mikem9755 account. Mike phoned today & asked if I would leave no more negative feedback & he would (after months of being ignored) meet to discuss a few things including his cross account bidding/selling activity. If this actually happens I will update.

He is registered on ebay as based in Ayrshire but that is not correct, he resides in Paisley (as does the registered holder of the jagsmanuk account) so he can be rather hard to track down.

He is a very active seller listing 50 to 100 items regularly & not all discs are shill bid up but a large number are.

I am pretty sure that none of us have any problems when discs prices go high when bidding against other genuine buyers but not if you are bidding against the seller using another account to "bid up" their own items.

Sorry folks, not much fun to say the very least.

Those prices do seem excessively high.

Whilst the Now That's What I Call Music series are popular to collect the PAL versions are often rotted so don't generally fetch huge sums of money. The Peter Gabriel and Whitney titles are as common as mud so are only worth a few pounds at most.

After eight messages to the holder of the mikem9755 account, some very terse, I have now had a response & he has agreed to discuss a number of issues.

The holder of the jagsmanuk account did get back to me much more promptly asking me deal with the holder of the mikem0755 account only & not to make contact with him again through the ebay members message service,, no questions were answered.

If or when I hear back from the holder of the mikem9755 account holder I will update.

Cheers for now.

Maybe it's time to report them to eBay for fraud?

Julien

We should ask for a cut from the profit. If they don't agree then we can report them.

The holder of the mikem9755 account has finally made contact via ebay & he promised to go over quite a number of issues but has made many promises in the past, all unfulfilled.

If he keeps to his word this time & I actually hear from him I will update - if I hear nothing I will update.

Cheers for now.

Much to my surprise the holder of the mikem9755 account did actually make contact, sorry to say though it was not particularly productive.

I did finally find out one of the reasons for the change in attitude he had to me latterly & was a bit odd. Quite a while ago now I had bid on some box sets that he had listed on the jagsmanuk account he was/is using to bid buy & sell on. I "won" four sets at a total of £28 & a few pence. He would usually drop disc purchases off with me or I would collect them from him but for whatever reason that was not acceptable & they could only be posted out. After much toing & froing they finally arrived, all damaged. They were the sets in the listing pictures but each set was badly dented on one corner & this was clearly not an accident. I got in touch with him & that is when things went rather strange, lots of lies & fabrications & "stories" that did not add up. I did ask what had happened & why he had acted in such a manner around the time of the aforementioned sale & he told me that he felt that he had been "kicked in the balls" by me. I of course asked why he felt that I had kicked him in the balls & he told me that he had paid over £100 for six boxed sets on an auction on ebay & had listed them all separately on the jagsmanuk account, lost around 50% of what he had outlaid for them & felt that he was "giving lasers away for nothing" again. So it appears that he feels that if he lists items on ebay & loses money on them then it is the bidders/buyers/customers fault that he lost out on a sale. I did ask if the damage was done by him before sending them out & the only reply I got was more nonsense. No real answers to any of the questions, lots of ums & ahhs . There has been no further response from the registered holder of the jagsmanuk account to date either.

Sorry folks but the holder of the mikem9755 account had/has full access to his "friends" jagsmanuk account. He has used one account to sell on & the other (his mikem9755 account) to manipulate the final sales value of his items. Going by the feedback left in the past between the aforementioned accounts this practice started quite a while ago & many hundreds of discs & a number of players have been listed since then.

I am not going to let this go now & in the meantime I would urge caution if you are considering bidding on any items listed on the mikem9755 & or the jagsmanuk account(s) & place any bid at only what you would be happy to pay & not the 'win at all cost just to be sure' high bid as you may not actually be bidding against a genuine bidder/buyer.

A great pity as he does sometimes list nice items & I thought he was a nice bloke but I have no one to blame but myself - totally misjudged him & I do feel a bit foolish now as I fell for one of his sob stories.

Bid safely folks.

Just checked my emails & have received this.....

Date:
Jun 21 2015, 11:14 AM
Re: Wednesday visit

Good Morning John ,
I have sent you a feed back revision request , If you could remove the negative feedback left to get my attention that would be great , Catch you on Wednesday next week .
Regards Mike

Just checked ebay & there is a feedback revision request.....

mikem9755 is requesting that you revise the original Feedback you left for 221778501040
Reason for request: The seller was able to resolve a problem you had with this transaction.
Message from the seller: I have got in touch with the buyer and issue is being resolved

Given the circumstances this is a bit rich to say the very least- "catch you on Wednesday next week" & no contact today but with all the broken promises in the past that was no surprise at all.

He states to ebay "I have got in touch with the buyer and issue is being resolved" which is utter nonsense as absolutely nothing is being resolved.

I really don't want to be a bit of a snitch if you know what I mean but I think the only thing to do now is contact ebay customer services.

He plays a good game - I'll give him that

Yes he does & it gets more bizarre, now getting weird emails & a strange message via ebay.

I can do no more, up to ebay now & if anyone has bought any discs from the mikem9755 or jagsmanuk accounts & you have any doubts at all regarding any purchases please let ebay have the details - any information may be helpful.

In the meantime I would strongly urge caution with any bids you may intend to place on the aforementioned accounts but it does look the mikem9755 account is the one being used as the "selling" account at the moment.

He has just over 100 separate listings on mikem9755 for LDs at the moment.

Take care.

I've had experience buying from jagsmanuk.

I won an auction, paid the same day and then ... nothing.

Beginning eight days after auction end, I started sending all the necessary reminders through eBay. They specify a process: first a Request, then a Case with required periods of time between each one. Once it's possible to open a Case, one can claim a refund but if one doesn't within 3 days, it becomes impossible to do so.

After complete silence throughout, on the very day that enough time had passed for a Case to be opened, I got a conciliatory message from him saying that he'd been in hospital and that his dispatches were "even slower than normal". He went on to say that he had now dispatched the parcel and that he'd included another disc gratis. There was a tracking number, but it was showing nothing on the courier's website.

Now, because of the timing, I assumed that this was merely a tactic to delay me for 3 days - just long enough so that I couldn't claim a refund through eBay and they wouldn't pursue him in turn. So I claimed the refund from eBay immediately and they paid it within hours.

But lo and behold, the following day the tracking number came good and the parcel arrived the day after that. I paid jagsmanuk a second time through paypal and that was that.

So ultimately my experience was positive and I got a free LD. Whether the sob story was true I have no idea.

I've had a similar experience with mikem9755, I bought a disc from him and paid promptly, then nothing. Two weeks later he send me a message claiming to have had a "family drama" and that he had posted the disc that day and included a free sealed disc as well. It all arrived soon after in good condition.

This might just be a case of a seller being a bit lazy with postage times.

Both the above sound very familiar & like the situation Mike was in around a year & a half or so ago. If the story he told me back then was true he had got "snowed under & fallen behind" with customers orders that required sending out, quite a few were waiting for over 6 weeks. Around this time his ebay account had restrictions placed on it & he could not sell on the mikem9755 account (again if what he told me was true) as a number of customers wanted the discs they had bought but quite a few wanted refunds & he did not have the funds to cover the requested refunds. Checking his feedback it appears he is again now sending parcels out quite late & is including an "extra" disc in some - the same looks to have happened on the jagsmanuk account & that may be the reason for switching to the mikem9755 account again but it has not taken him long to fall behind yet again.

He spends a lot of time buying collections & will travel the length of the country picking up collections bought on ebay, some trips he has come back with a number of players & many hundreds of discs (on some occasions well over a thousand discs). This takes time & money as a van is hired (car for smaller pick-ups) plus fuel & subsistence would often take the pick-up costs to in excess of £350 easily. Sorting through the lots, checking the players, listing the items & holding down a full time job gave him little time for anything else but he appeared to be happy.

On one visit though (after one of his longer trips picking up collections) he appeared a bit down & when I asked if he was okay he let it all pour out, family issues, work pressure, money problems & I actually felt quite sorry for him (perhaps a mistake??). It seemed everything was getting to him & that was when he told me that he was also "sick of giving good lasers away for nothing". He pointed out that after all the costs were added up he could be losing money. I had picked up some nice discs & sets from him as he often had items ending in the morning or afternoon & if selling items they are not the best times to have auctions ending. I pointed out to him that if he had his auctions ending at a more appropriate time, not to start the better items at 99p or £1, add at least one picture that was clear (he used to list many items with poor out of focus pictures) & the usual other things that may help him achieve a more realistic price for the nicer items. I had picked up quite a few nice discs/sets over time & that did not appear to be an issue but the last discs I had bought via jagsmanuk (quite a while ago & not the ones just recently "bought" on mikem9755 to prove a point) were when things went very strange. It was after much toing & froing they all eventually arrived damaged & he began to ignore all communication. Again after much chasing I caught up with him & he told me that he felt that I had kicked him "in the balls" as the discs I had bought had cost him more to buy than the auctions achieved & he was "giving lasers away for nothing again". I pointed out to him that bidders/buyers are not aware of the price he has paid & in any case that is of no concern to buyers as he chooses the start price & it is an auction, we as bidders/buyers do not know the original cost of the discs. He pointed out that the work colleague who was giving him full access to the jagsmanuk account was due 10% of the total sales on the aforementioned account & that was leaving him less than he expected when everything was added up. Around this time things got really strange & he then totally ignored all forms of communication.

Perhaps the registered holder of the jagsmanuk account did not know that his friend would use the account to shill bid on items listed but who would hand full access (clearance passwords etcetera) to anyone else without keeping an eye on what is happening on the account. I did ask him if he was aware of what was happening on his account, he replied yes & that he listed all the items from his home on the jagsmanuk account - it was when I told him that I was with Mike as he was listing on the jagsmanuk account while I was with him in his flat that he asked me to make no further contact with him & to deal with Mike only. The cross account activity was blatant.

Sending out an "extra" disc if parcels go out late is quite a regular practice with Mike on both the accounts, happened rather sooner than expected on the mikem9755 account as he has only recently started using it to sell on again. The excuses for late dispatch (if you get a response) can be rather dramatic, in hospital, very ill, even more ill, ebay issues, paypal issues, parcel sent out & it came back but it will be send out again, a bereavement, sick relatives, car issues (he does not have a car)..... the health issues & sick relatives ones are rather warped but perhaps that is just me.

The LD community is not that large, most users here will bid/buy on ebay but does anyone want to be bidding against the seller - genuine buyers fair enough but (& sorry to put it like this) to have the total p**s taken by a shill bidder is not on.

If I hear anything from Mike & if or when ebay get back I will update, in the meantime please bid with care.

After a bit of chasing I finally got a phone number for ebay.

They have told me that they "take note" of all reports to them but cannot comment or reply to any "investigations" they may make which is fair enough.

All I can tell you is that I have heard nothing at all from Mike mikem9755 which is no surprise at all - with 2 outstanding invoices totalling in excess of £700 ( 1 on jagsmanuk for around £350 & 1 on mikem9755 for over £350 ) I would have expected at least an NPB notice from him. If he had sent out the non-paying-bidder notice his ebay fees would be voided but he has stated that I owe him £70 for said fees, I told him to report the "non payment" to ebay but he did not. He did ask me to remove the negative feedback & he would then send money to my paypal account if I did this, the feedback stands & I refused the payment (bribe???) offered.

To Mike..... you use the lddb site regularly when you are listing on ebay for details on the discs you list & some of your regular customers also use the site & at least 1 has left a comment via his positive feedback to you after another of his multi-disc purchases to "ignore the negative" feedbacks so you are fully aware of what is happening - why not come on here to confirm or deny the points ie: your shill bidding activity. I think quite a number of your ebay customers would like to know if they have actually been bidding against you, the seller.

The discs listed by Mike of late are all ending at much more realistic prices & his usual practice of starting all listings at a pound or 2 looks to have finished, anything a bit nicer than the norm start at higher prices now. He is listing a Grace Jones LD with a starting bid of £21.99 which is a first - perhaps his cross account shill bidding has stopped or his "friend" has taken back total control of his own account.

Most sellers I am sure transact by the rules & play fair but this guy has taken the p*ss for quite a long time & I am now on his "blocked bidder" list so can bid no more on his auctions.

All I can say now is what I have said in the past & that is take great care bidding on ebay (specifically the mikem9755 & jagsmanuk accounts) & please only bid what you are happy to pay & not the win at all costs killer bid, it may be a seller & not a genuine bidder/buyer you may be bidding against.

Cheers for now folks.