Reading all about Ladybotany on the Anthurium forum, it is alleged that the same person is back on ebay selling rare Salvia seeds, and many others. This time under the name of 5eeds. Spill bidding seems to have occurred. The surname of Tufan is the same. The connection with Aruba seems like a give-away. Be warned about this seller!
This is the eBay link to all the supposed "seeds" being offered by this seller 5eeds: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZ5eeds. Although there have been no complaints filed with eBay, the previous situation with sellers from Ankara, Turkey offering "rare seeds" at low prices and not delivering should be considered. In this case, there are "orchid" seeds being offered that would be very difficult to collect and ship. Just use caution before bidding. Especially since eBay has taken down a "similar" seller twice who used a shell bidder in the same location as this one appears to be doing.
5eeds is indeed back with 748 offerings! That is certainly an unusual number of offers for a new seller. The main thing I see of concern is the "orchid seeds" being offered. Do you have any idea how small an orchid seed is? The offers are for 10 seeds. The seller would need to count 10 seeds under a microscope and the buyer would need a good microscope to verify if they received them! I have no idea if the seller is legitimate, but I'd love to know how they collected and counted orchid seeds! And better yet, how do you ship them?
5eeds total offerings suddenly dropped from 748 to under 200 today. No explanation. But what at least appears to be another selling name for this seller, ladybotany, is also back! The one thing strange I noticed today is 5eeds is offering seeds for an Anthurium species which is reported by naturalists in South America to be quite common for a very high price selling them one seed at a time. And the really interesting thing is the photo of the "species" on the offer is not a match to the actual plant. Use your own judgement, but caution would certainly be advised for either seller.
I see many, many ebay listings for Acer seeds with misleading information that seems to promise a red maple bonsai. The photo often used is a red leafed cultivar in a bonsai dish, real or virtual I do not know. The quantity of seed offerings is huge and the novice gardener is lead to think that they will grow easily and be identical to the mother plant. The best approach to buying on Ebay, is buyer beware and check out vendor ratings first. Sam
What kind of gains such scammers make on such forums ( I do not mean on eBay which may be substantial). There was similar news on another forum where the scammer offers fruit tree cuttings for exchange/trade but never completes his side of the bargain after receiving the cuttings from the other side thus taking advantage of the forum comeradship. One way is to expose the shipping addresses of the scammer after making all efforts to assure that it was a scam and not other genuine reason for failure of the bargain.
Several former officers of the International Aroid Society began to notice this scam seller was always based in Ankara, Turkey. They used a lot of different screen names, but everything was offered out of Turkey. They things that were of interest were the seller offered to ship anywhere in the world for just a couple of dollars! And the feedback saying things arrived in great conditions would frequently be posted on the same day, one one day after, the auction ended. We couldn't figure out how anything could get to Turkey to an island off the Venezuelan coast for $2 in one day! Then some of us began to go back through the records of other known seed scammers. Seemed the same buyer in Aruba left amazingly glorious feedback often, but always one or two days after the auction ended. Some of these people are slick, but they are also anxious to make it sound like they are performing "miracles" and doing it cheaply. They do that because to work well, they must collect your money fast! The chances of being discovered are great, so time is short. Then we began to notice every single photo was stolen from a known website! That alone is illegal and a violation of eBay rules. And those websites often turned out to belong to members of the International Aroid Society! And to make it even worse, the photographs of the "seeds" did not look anything like genuine seeds! Some had no idea what an Anthurium seed looked like, but many members of the IAS did! One group of "seeds" was used to illustrate many different plant species, some extremely rare. And that photo looked like slices of potato, not a plant. One species was known to be extinct yet the seller supposedly had "seeds" they would sell for a couple of dollars. Some of us would have paid hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for real seeds of that species! Some of these people just don't do their homework! So you have to do it or you will loose your money!
I received a note today from a lady who said she took a chance and bought some "orchid" and "salvia" seeds from the seller using the name 5eeds. She said some of her "rare" "salvia" seeds were actually blindweed. I have no idea what blindweed even is, but if you are considering buying from this seller from Ankara, Turkey, who apparently is the same as Ladybotany, just be cautious. You may receive seeds, but perhaps not the ones you thought. In all cases that I am aware of, orchid seeds are so tiny (microscopic), I have no idea how any seller could offer you a package of 10 seeds. 5eeds has quite a few "orchid" and "vanda" seeds for sale.
I received the same....seeds were Bindweed, not Blindweed, a very invasive wild convolvulus. Think this seller may have been removed form Ebay, but beware of anything from Ankara, Turkey. I got a refund.
If you bought these weeds from 5eeds, the seller is still on eBay with nearly 600 offerings as of this morning. The number of negatives is mounting so this one will likely soon fall as well. But my guess, and it is just a guess, the account won't come down until eBay can't collect the listing fees for all these auctions.
Yes, 5eeds is indeed back! More negatives will be sent very soon. Doesn't seem to be getting many bids, except for some idiot who thinks that Salvia divinorum sets seeds!
Seems logical to me! But I guess eBay does have a financial interest in all the listings. If they are charging $1 each to list 600 auctions they are going to bill the seller's card $600! And they do that if the seller sells nothing! In this case it makes no sense since the "seeds" are selling for less than $2 plus postage. If they have to pay eBay half of that it would be tough to make a profit. UNLESS they don't intend to ship anything in which case they also get to keep the $1.50 postage. The problem is the seller is using PayPal and any buyer can get their money back with PayPal. I just don't think the seller has considered all the ways they can possibly loose money on this one. But what do I know? When they were selling Anthurium seeds and the bidders were running up the bids the chance of making money was better. I can't really figure this one out.
