One bit of good news is that you will probably get your money back. Paypal in on your side and if the store is closed and you can't contact the seller it shouldn't take too long.

Pictures are sometimes "borrowed" from other sources. I have some Laelia anceps pictures that show up on a regular basis and OrchidSpecies.com has a big notice on its front page about not using their pictures. It is too bad, and those of us who make it a point to use pictures from the particular plant or a division are hurt by the practice.

My feeling is that while I wouldn't buy a flat screen TV on EBay, there probably is very little intentional scamming in the orchid section.

Thanks Richardol.

If you are correct that you were scammed, I'm sure you'll get your money back.

I hope you do get your money back, I didn't. I never buy anything from Ebay anymore. But I do use Ebay to locate sellers in my area and will contact them directly. I won't send money to someone I never met to buy something I haven't seen. Once I see the product, the actual one I am getting, then I will pay the money.

And that's a shame on those thieves who use a good system to cheat honest people out of hard-earned money. I know you'd rather have had the plants in the pictures, but it's very likely that Ebay seller never even saw a real orchid. Cheryl

Thanks everyone. I'm just a student who unfortunately addict to orchid too soon ;). Instead of buying clothes,I save for orchids so I feel angry with people that are not honest on Ebay.
Thanks again

I'll have to jump in and say that I've been particularly lucky, but I'm usually very picky about who I buy from on ebay. It has to be something extremely unusual before I will get anything from someone with feedback only in the teens (but it has to be 100% positive). Likewise if they have thousands of feedbacks and they have a sudden track record of bad sales I will avoid them. Thanks to some mention on here, there are more than a couple of people I will avoid and likewise thanks to people on here there are several that I always check out.

Take all that for what it's worth.

L8r,
Don

Here is a link that might be useful: JustPlainOrchids website (non-commercial website)

I do hope you get your money back. I remember the items being sold by the eBay seller you mentioned --- mainly divisions of species catts that are rarely offered (definitely grabs the attention of every serious collector). This seller was using the same set of pictures of the 'divided' plants to represent the items for sale wherein it looked to me like Brassovola Nodosa hybrid (e.g. Bc Maikai) having longish/slim pbulbs and a compact size. Furthermore, several items being listed as C. Lady Spots looks bogus because the name is not found in RHS database and the flower picture was similar to C. Trianaei 'Stewart' or 'Clement Moore' :( What's more fishy is that when looking at the positive feedback prior to the time the seller started selling orchids, it was built up from scratch within 15 days buying miscellaneous cheap items in eBay that cost less than $10.

I have been lucky thus far-

I ALMOST got scammed by this person- new user name was orchid_gallery or something, had some interesting things on sale and silly me decided to bid on two things

What I noticed as suspicious, some of the pictures were borrowed, all feedback was as a buyer in timeframe of a week, also I found that this person had one or two friends who continually one-uped the bids on ALL the plants that were listed, this person said her name was jenny and was going through a divorce, so she needed to clear her collection. But the pictures of the plants were not cohesive.
I asked her to send an invoice, she sent one via google check out like 2 days ago, I told her I would only be paying via paypal- as of this evening she is no longer a listed member on ebay.

I guess the rule is, if its suspicious and the deal is too good to be true it is . better safe than sorry!

I hope you get your money back, if you paid with CC, try to call them and see if you can file a claim and get your money back that way!

Cookie m,
orchid_gallery was the name this person used before 'orchid guild'and I read her listing from the beginning that she lost her job and struggle with morgate payments. After a few listings, the message changed with different description, I should have paid attention to this :C .
She did offer me to pay through another check out rather than Paypal. What a Scam!!!
Anyway, Paypal showed the email of the seller and her name was a Spanish name.
Good new! Paypal said that they will credit back my money, I just have to wait a few days for the statement processing.

Ps. PLEASE keep every emails and receipts if you bid on Ebay. You never know what might happen to you and Be careful!

Thanks everyone!