Exposing Shady MacBook Sellers on eBay

eBay it's my place of choice for buying used Macs but there's a darker side to buying a Mac that can leave you paying hundreds of dollars for subpar downright misleading computers a few weeks ago I got curious I searched up MacBook Pro and found that the top listings all looked pretty much the same a staged photo all caps title with fire emojis warranties the word turbo and prices that seemed off listing after listing I started to notice patterns and trends that are almost uncanny why do all of these different sellers seem to be doing the same thing they're clearly on to something these sellers have sold thousands of items with near universally positive feedback so how are they doing it well little did I know that probing into this phenomenon would lead to uncovering a massive Nationwide operation with the goal of ripping you off these groups have gotten so big they're now being officially endorsed by eBay with terms such as trusted seller and access to eBay's coveted refurbished program so buckle up because we are going for a wild ride in this video right after a word from today's video sponsor today's video is sponsored by safo the intelligent security system that features a central Hub driven by AI technology their ultimate value package comes with a hub two cameras and two solar panels featuring safe RTC technology safe Mo lets you store up to 6 months of footage directly on the Hub where it's encrypted and to end and processed locally to efficiently differentiate people Vehicles packages and pets from other types of motion this means you get the benefits of a smart home security system without compromising your privacy this powerful system can recognize familiar faces and detect individuals moving between multiple cameras to give you unprecedented Control Plus the solar panels can each generate up to 5 watts of power providing easy angle adjustments for maximum power output and can operate the cameras for up to 3 days with Just 2 to 3 hours of direct sunlight with cameras that record in 4k 8X zoom and an f1.6 aperture lens for 40ft nighttime viewing ip65 water resistance rating apple homekit and Alexa integration and more this is truly the ultimate home security system so to learn more check out the link in the description down below a big thanks to safo for sponsoring and now let's get back to the video These listings have infuriated me for years I've made numerous videos dating all the way back to my college days every year they're evolving and spreading selling thousands of misleading listings to unsuspecting customers they're so effective in fact that small sellers have been pushed aside to demonstrate this I counted every single listing in the top 240 results for the search term MacBook Pro I went through it one by one and made a spreadsheet with every unique seller and how many listings they had and what I found was a total of 81 unique sellers most of which only had a single listing but a few names repeated over and over again top quality Tech had nine listings Highland performance systems had 10 and First Tech Systems had a whopping 21 but Rosco and Associates beat Everyone by Far and Away with a whopping 61 listings in the top 240 this breakdown showed that these large sellers with more than three listings made up a staggering 60% of the top 240 listings for this search term so how have these sellers dominated the space that much how do they get away with listings like this and what's going on behind the scenes I've always harbored suspicous about them but never had proof and then one day I got an email so I won't be revealing their name for privacy reasons but let's call them Johnny apple seed Johnny told me that they used to work at a company called a forac LLC which is based in St Paul Minnesota and what they told me about this business shocked me to my very core all these listings dominating the top search results PID P after page of nonsense what if I told you that these were not separate companies all vying for your attention but in fact were just two companies now this is not exactly brand new information browse Reddit and you'll find posts complaining of these multiple seller groups that have been dominating eBay dating as far back as 2018 when I started making those videos but what not many people have realized is the extent of these companies and just how many store Pages they operate bit bybit Electronics First Tech Systems apple crisp according to Johnny these are all the same company operated by the same team of people a forac LLC similarly Rosco and Associates Highland performance systems Waterford Technologies Illinois Precision group and MacBook Foundation these are all the same company a forax rival operation that meant that 50% of the top 200 40 search results for MacBook Pro were tied to these two companies alone but that's not all because Johnny told me that his former company of fora MAAC used to operate more than a dozen eBay accounts over the years that sell used Macs in the same way some of them are gone completely some show out of stock and some have changed names bit bybit Electronics used to be called Fleetwood MacBooks you can tell because they still use the old domain extension same with apple crisp formerly Mac Express outlet and when I asked why Johnny told me something rather shocking apparently they have been changing their store names in response to my videos exposing some of those very same stores what the heck is it forac keeping tabs on me changing their tactics to try to deceive my own audience well whatever the case may be at this point I was fully obsessed I needed to find out everything that I possibly could now as it turns out not much information is available on AFF forac but I was able to find that they are registered doing business as Mac United a name that sounded eerily familiar to me and then it hit me I've seen that before about 2 years ago I tried to buy the domain luk mean.com because someone beat me to it and could you guess who that's right luk mean.com redirects to Mac United's website site honestly well played you guys buying luk mean.com just to redirect to your scummy eBay listings that's a that's a good one now at this point the conspiracy was growing by the second and Johnny was pulling back the curtain to reveal some of the tactics that they allege went on in these companies Johnny told me about some of the tactics they used to manipulate search results one involves bulk listing something cheap like a charger which would would get a bunch of sales in the first 24 hours and then going in and editing the listing to a Macbook take this listing for example on March 18th the seller modified nearly every single detail from the title to the description to the photos and even the category it's a completely different listing and the result well now on the main sale page it looks like 21 of these MacBooks have been sold I even managed to capture one of these in action over on Rosco and Associates page on June 18th this listing was a charger but just 2 days later it was now a Macbook and yet it still retains the same number of items sold and sure enough the revision history shows every single detail about this listing was changed and that has a really big impact because if I'm a consumer and I click on something and I think hey 19 other people bought this MacBook to me that says this is a safe listing other people trust this I can trust it but we don't actually know if any of those were MacBooks and then there's the warranty most of these storefronts advertise a 1 to threeyear warranty program which makes you feel a lot more comfortable about buying a used Mac but in reality these warranties are only covering the labor cost most of the listings don't disclose this information but I messaged bit bybit electronics and they said that their warranty is in three tiers 0 to 60 days after purchase it's fully covered 60 to 90 days after the purchase parts and labor are covered but shipping is not and after that 90 days the only thing that's covered is Diagnostics and labor no parts and no shipping now to me that seems pretty deceptive cuz when I buy a machine with a one-year warranty I'm not expecting to have to pay $15 to ship my computer in just to get diagnosed and then who knows how much for whatever price they decide to charge for the parts and Johnny told me that sometimes a forac was charging people 3 to 4X the actual cost of the part in these so-called warranty repairs and they also alleged that a forac was even going as far as to scrape the anti-reflective coating off of Retina display Macbook Pros to take them into Apple Stores then get free replacement under Apple's then warranty repair program and then build the customer $200 for that free repair o that is brutal okay let's take a step back because Johnny was pulling back the curtain on a forac but as I was going down this Rabbit Hole I had another one on my hands this rival operation this other company that collectively makes up more than 30% of the top eBay search results we talked about earlier who is Rosco and who are their Associates I recognized something in one of their listings this logo I've seen that before as well it's the logo of Welly group a notorious seller who has been under Fire on Reddit for years I made videos calling out their Shady tactics such as list listing Core 2 Duos from the late 2000s as core I2 to trick people into thinking their listings were for much newer machines now I hadn't seen them in a while so I thought that Welly group had gone away but it turns out they just rebranded it seems like the public scrutiny on their Shady tactics has forced the Welly name to be tamped down in favor of this new Rosco and Associates label but how can we tie all of these different store pages together well take a look at any of their listings and you'll notice the town names are changed but they're all within just a few miles of each other Rockford Illinois Elgen Carpentersville oh and look what's nearby Rosco add in a simple Google search for Welly group and you'll find their public website with the address in the footer registered to a UPS store right smack dab in the middle so we have the beginnings of quite the tale here two rival companies in neighboring states each vying for the attention of people who can be easily deceived into paying way too much for a Macbook it's almost poetic really but after diving into this rabbit hole for longer than I would care to admit I think we all know there's only one way to really get to the bottom of this so I've been obsessing over this for days now and I think you guys know where this is going we're going to have to buy some MacBooks to really get to the bottom of how Shady or downright SC scammy these sellers are and since this investigation has so far focused on the two major companies that seem to be responsible for a lot of these listings I think it's only fair that we buy a Macbook from each of them so I've picked out two listings that look absolutely Dreadful let me run you through them first up we have this 15in pretina laptop already lots of tactics going on there using pretina so that it shows up if you search for a retina machine we've got turbo in the title and right below that you can see the classic 3year warranty the specifications we have a 15.4in high def display 2 to 2.9 GHz quad core Intel turbo processor 16 GB of upgraded Ram 2 tabt of Storage storage what type of storage oh that is very suspicious it does not say anywhere in the listing whether that's a hard drive or a solid state drive I'm going to wait it's a hard drive and then you can see Intel and AMD graphics and Mac OS High Sierra which launched September 25th 2017 so we're running 7-year-old software on this $375 laptop which by the way if you've not been piecing this together a 2.0 GHz quad core with AMD Graphics that's a 2011 MacBook Pro so not only is that 13 years old but these models have have the AMD Graphics that fail catastrophically almost 100% of the time these things are terrible I personally wouldn't even list one for sale now if for whatever reason you do want to buy one of these MacBooks you can easily find them for like 100 bucks so we're going to be paying more than three times what this machine is actually worth all right so let's go ahead and hit add to cart on that one so now let's go to the second listing this is going to be the affordamac listing and the reason I picked this one is because it has the official eBay refurbished seal of approval a highly coveted thing and what we've got here is an Apple MacBook Pro 13-in Retina laptop 3.4 GHz core i7 touch I don't know what that's supposed to mean with a/ terabyte and 16 GB of RAM now interestingly because this is eBay refurbished it comes with a 1-year warranty serviced by All State but just because this listing comes with a more legitimate seeming warranty and is backed by by eBay doesn't mean that it's not a scam because right here at the top it's quoting a 3.4 GHz processor speed and the description doubles down on that they're quoting a quad core turbo core i7 that's a lie it's a dual core processor with hyperthreading and further down it says we have a team of trained Apple certified technicians that have verified tested and upgraded these computers for 2024 and Beyond when I asked Johnny he told me that the only training that the employees here receive is from iFixit guides and there's nothing wrong with using iFixit guides to learn how to repair stuff that's what I did but it's a different story when you're claiming on a listing that is endorsed by eBay as refurbished that you have apple certified technicians when what I'm hearing from an employee is that that is not the case allegedly so let's go ahead and click add to cart once again and now we get to find out how much money I'm about to spend oh no it's $858 so $858 when one of them is worth about a hundred and I just found a 2015 retina MacBook Pro with the exact same specs for $250 also from another large and reputable seller that's okay I'm only paying a 250% markup for these MacBooks so I'm very excited quite frankly let's check back in in a couple of days when these things show up shall we and I'm happy to announce that that day is today because finally the MacBooks have both arrived and honestly I'm weirdly excited about this let's start with our good pal Rosco and Associates that's this MacBook at the very least it does seem well packaged good we've got paper instead of Styrofoam love to see that actually it is a real Apple charger okay so that's that's at least something funny enough it looks like the laptop is actually in a hard shell case M peep the DVD drive M tasty $372 looks like we have a oh my gosh what a page in here instructing on how to download Max fan control what is this simply Max you have to register for the warrant within 30 days dude this is so strange it says important warranty information in order to keep the warranty in good standing we require the MacBook Pro to run a fan control program this Max fan control to regulate inner temperatures if you add or edit any users other than the default you will be required to download and install the program on each user failure to do so will void your warranty that is super sketchy and it's probably because these things have those failed graphics cards they're trying to minimize the internal temperatures so that your graphics card doesn't fail and they don't have to deal with the warranty complaint that is so sketchy now at the very least the condition does look to be pretty good let's go ahead and get this case off of here cuz I want to see what the actual MacBook looks like I'm only seeing a couple of minor scratches and scuffs we've got a few little scrapes around the back here but but hey for a 13-year-old machine it's in it's in pretty good shape all right so let's go ahead and power this thing up oh first of all we have a keyboard cover here again looks like it's in very good condition dude there's a hard drive in this thing I can hear it it's taking forever to boot up just as I suspected that 2 tbte of storage is a hard drive look at that Mac OS High Sierra okay so first first of all always a bit of a red flag when the Mac comes preset up I guess in this case it's because they installed macc's fan control and wouldn't you know it they have the fan speed based on the GPU temperature dude they literally know that these things fail there's no other reason to put this stupid warranty requirement and set the fan based on the GPU temperature they know that these things fail and they're selling them for $375 anyway that really genuinely frustrates me that is a really really shitty thing to do anyway let's check out more about this Mac Oh my God it's freezing just doing the about this Mac screen so we're on a 2.2 GHz core i7 16 gigs of DDR3 with the Radeon HD 6750m and of course we have our 2 tbte SATA disc let's go ahead and check out the system report I'm very curious to see what type of a disc they're using and look at that it is a 5400 RPM hard drive so that didn't even spring for 7200 this thing is really slow let's check out the battery situation uh we've got 470 Cycles that's a decently High cycle count nothing too crazy so it kind of leads me to believe that this could be an actual Apple battery which is a good thing except that now I'm realizing that might make it not covered by the warranty because if it's not something that they upgraded it wouldn't be covered all right let's get under the hood here what do we got all right looks like we are running a Samsung hard drive and so it's time time Tech time Tech Ram oh yeah that's your like Bargain Basement cheapest Ram you can find apart from that though inside of the machine is pretty clean here there's no dust buildup on the fans looks like it was a gently used machine however it is still 13 years old with a known GPU problem so I'm not exactly saying it's a good deal let's be clear okay so let's move on to MacBook number two this one is eBay refurbished right so I'm expecting a lot for my $431 here so it seems to be pretty well packaged here but we've got a really crusty looking mag safe charger here this thing is honestly disgusting so here we've got our warranty card saying it's now active we'll definitely investigate that a little bit but let's check out the actual machine so we've got a 13in MacBook Pro Retina Display and it doesn't appear like we have any of that delamination issue that retina MacBook Pros tend to have so so far pretty good so it's a 13-in early 2015 with the upgraded core i7 16 GB of RAM and yeah we got a 500 GB SSD now I suspect that that is a genuine Apple SSD just because this thing would have come with that in this configuration and sure enough here in the system information we see apple SSD now this is weird uh why does it only have one cycle on the battery so I actually want to check something else does the serial number in the about this Mac match the serial number on the bottom case no it does not so likely what they've done here is take a board out of a machine and put it in uh an enclosure that was in better condition so they're kind of optimizing to build the best machine possible but I am still really confused as to how this battery only has one cycle so let's open this thing up and see what's inside so in here we've got uh-oh that's not an apple battery wamp wamp that's uh that's a knockoff battery so we've got one battery cycle but it's a fake third-party battery and it's a really really cheap one I mean look at this quality of this plastic here you can just is this feels really really cheap let's check underneath the sticker here that battery control board looks super duper budget dude I I don't like that I really don't like that I know that this is a 99-year-old machine and batteries don't last forever but I bought a refurbished MacBook Pro so I would kind of assume that that would come as it would from the factory not with thirdparty knockoff components installed now as far as I can tell there is nothing in eBay's actual terms of service for refurbished listings like this that require sellers to use actual OEM components so it doesn't seem like this is breaching those terms but I think it's a bit vague if you can say refurbished but use you know an AliExpress special battery replacement I would not trust this to run a machine that I was planning on using for an extended period of time especially when I paid $430 for something that I could buy for $250 okay so I've only been using the 13-in MacBook Pro for a couple of minutes but something really weird happened I go to download cinebench 2024 to run a benchmark on it and I noticed that the screen looks kind of speckly I'm like I didn't realize that it got so dusty I go to wipe it off and I realize that's not dust those are pixels the whole screen has these weird Speckles on it it kind of looks like like dead pixels but the pixels are actually still active dude this is super weird I got to get to the bottom of what is going on here so the first thing that I tried to do was reset the pamm on the MacBook Pro by doing command option PR at startup did that a couple of times didn't seem to do anything and I started to notice that the weird Speckles were kind of in line with other lighter parts of the screen so I then wondered like could this be interference with that knockoff third party battery I opened the machine up unplugged the battery booted it up with the battery disconnected completely and the issue is still happening so it really seems like the issue is the actual display panel itself and when I plugged into an external monitor no Speckles so it looks like this display just went wonky and I don't even really know how to pinpoint when it happened I started to kind of question like did I do something but I looked back here is the entire clip of me poking around inside the machine I do not touch the logic board a single time so I really don't know how this could have happened and like I said I was using it for a couple of minutes before I noticed it I don't think it was happening but I didn't notice it start like this is super weird things are really going well so far for this experiment super stoked about the fact that I spent 430 bucks on a broken MacBook but at the very least when I did message the seller about that screen issue they offered to have me send in the device for a screen replacement or a whole device replacement but just today the battery started acting up you see that that is why you don't install a knockoff third party battery this thing was at 70% and it just boom died this thing is a piece of I just need this thing to be gone so I'm going to return it now fortunately they did accept my return of course and so uh it's over there resetting Mac OS and I'm just getting rid of it I I don't want it around anymore so instead right now we're going to focus on the other MacBook Pro and registering for this warranty I want to learn more about it so I went to simply maxw warranty.com just like it says protect your investment with accident protection you may purchase within 30 days of delivery date so I guess it wants us to buy an additional protection package which we're not going to do so we can just register for the mechanical repair coverage oh no I have to make an account God that's so much data I don't want to give them all of my data jokes on them I use the iCloud email forwarding so they don't have my real email address but at least now we get to take a look at the full warranty information the extended warranty which I don't think was mentioned in the eBay listing but let's see what it covers protect with accident protection it covers damage to your device from drops including broken Hardware they cover the labor cost to repair it but then the next thing they say the same thing for display damage and defect it covers manufacturer issues including dead pixels and other display problems but it still covers the labor cost and again mechanical repair this includes any function on the machine covers the labor costs but you still have to pay for shipping after the first year even if it's a hardware failure that seems incredibly misleading at the very bare minimum because for $59 for 2 years or 118 for 3 years side note that doesn't make sense why is it twice as expensive for one additional year they say it comes with all of these coverages but that's only for the labor you still have to pay for the parts and for the shipping what are you even paying for here you're just giving them money to do basically nothing so let's read what the standard warranty that we paid for gets us now remember on the eBay listing the only thing that it says is a one-year warranty on the full machine so if I'm a buyer on eBay to me that means if something happens with this machine they will repair it but straight away we find out that we have to pay for shipping and we find out that the battery is only covered for 180 days last I checked the battery is a part of the machine and they say that they will replace or repair the covered product based on available inventory which is a kind of confusing term I'm not really sure what that means and then there's some exclusions if you return a product for an issues that are found to be false it will result in deductions to the refund up to an including the entire refund amount and all of that is at their discretion because this is not being done through eBay right this is a simply Max piece of paper that came with our purchase Now eBay will cover you for 60 days so if there is something wrong you have the eBay money back guarantee but once that runs out you're basically operating on trust that these guys are actually going to take care of that now I have no reason to think that they wouldn't and it's perfectly reasonable for a company that's offering a third-party warranty to have these caveats so that people don't take advantage of that warranty but there's a lot of if ands and butts here given that our Ebay listing just said oneyear warranty on full machine so this video has been an absolute Whirlwind I really was not expecting it to go in the direction that it did I was not expecting to uncover this many interconnected sellers I was not expecting them to have bought luk mean.com to use for their own good and I certainly was not expecting one of the two MacBooks I bought to be defective let alone the refurbished one I mean you literally couldn't make this up if you tried this video has been absolutely wild and I hope it's been helpful or revealing to you guys about what to watch out for on eBay I think that with just a little bit of Prior experience it is easy to to identify listings that fall into this category and I do want to clarify that the two main groups that we talked about today are not the only people that do this type of stuff it is spreading and it is taking place a lot more than you might think and I also want to make it absolutely crystal clear that I do not want you guys to take matters into your own hand and try to get vigilante justice do not contact them don't spam them don't harass them in any way the visibility of this video and and arming people with knowledge is what really matters at the end of the day the people that are behind this are trying to run a business they employ people that are trying to make a living and I you know as far as I'm aware I don't think any laws have been broken I don't think any terms of service have been breached I object to the way that they run their businesses but at the end of the day it is their right to run their businesses how they see fit so if you're frustrated by the findings that I revealed in this video and you want to help out and do something the best thing that you can do is spread awareness if anyone in your family is shopping for an Apple product on eBay make them aware of what to look out for help people not fall for these types of listings so with all that being said thank you guys so so much for watching this video if you've made it this far honestly I'm impressed this video is way too long but if you found it helpful or entertaining I would really appreciate if you leave a like down below subscribe for more content like this in the future and let me know what was the most surprising part of all of this thank you guys again so so much for watching and I will see you in the next one [Music] [Applause] [Music]

eBay it&#39;s my place of choice for buying used Macs but there&#39;s a darker side to buying a Mac that can leave you paying hundreds of dollars for subpar downright misleading computers a few weeks ago I got curious I searched up MacBook Pro and found that the top listings all looked pretty much the same a staged photo all caps title with fire emojis warranties the word turbo and prices that seemed off listing after listing I started to notice patterns and trends that are almost uncanny why do all of these different sellers seem to be doing the same thing they&#39;re clearly on to something these sellers have sold thousands of items with near universally positive feedback so how are they doing it well little did I know that probing into this phenomenon would lead to uncovering a massive Nationwide operation with the goal of ripping you off these groups have gotten so big they&#39;re now being officially endorsed by eBay with terms such as trusted seller and access to eBay&#39;s coveted refurbished program so buckle up because we are going for a wild ride in this video right after a word from today&#39;s video sponsor today&#39;s video is sponsored by safo the intelligent security system that features a central Hub driven by AI technology their ultimate value package comes with a hub two cameras and two solar panels featuring safe RTC technology safe Mo lets you store up to 6 months of footage directly on the Hub where it&#39;s encrypted and to end and processed locally to efficiently differentiate people Vehicles packages and pets from other types of motion this means you get the benefits of a smart home security system without compromising your privacy this powerful system can recognize familiar faces and detect individuals moving between multiple cameras to give you unprecedented Control Plus the solar panels can each generate up to 5 watts of power providing easy angle adjustments for maximum power output and can operate the cameras for up to 3 days with Just 2 to 3 hours of direct sunlight with cameras that record in 4k 8X zoom and an f1.6 aperture lens for 40ft nighttime viewing ip65 water resistance rating apple homekit and Alexa integration and more this is truly the ultimate home security system so to learn more check out the link in the description down below a big thanks to safo for sponsoring and now let&#39;s get back to the video These listings have infuriated me for years I&#39;ve made numerous videos dating all the way back to my college days every year they&#39;re evolving and spreading selling thousands of misleading listings to unsuspecting customers they&#39;re so effective in fact that small sellers have been pushed aside to demonstrate this I counted every single listing in the top 240 results for the search term MacBook Pro I went through it one by one and made a spreadsheet with every unique seller and how many listings they had and what I found was a total of 81 unique sellers most of which only had a single listing but a few names repeated over and over again top quality Tech had nine listings Highland performance systems had 10 and First Tech Systems had a whopping 21 but Rosco and Associates beat Everyone by Far and Away with a whopping 61 listings in the top 240 this breakdown showed that these large sellers with more than three listings made up a staggering 60% of the top 240 listings for this search term so how have these sellers dominated the space that much how do they get away with listings like this and what&#39;s going on behind the scenes I&#39;ve always harbored suspicous about them but never had proof and then one day I got an email so I won&#39;t be revealing their name for privacy reasons but let&#39;s call them Johnny apple seed Johnny told me that they used to work at a company called a forac LLC which is based in St Paul Minnesota and what they told me about this business shocked me to my very core all these listings dominating the top search results PID P after page of nonsense what if I told you that these were not separate companies all vying for your attention but in fact were just two companies now this is not exactly brand new information browse Reddit and you&#39;ll find posts complaining of these multiple seller groups that have been dominating eBay dating as far back as 2018 when I started making those videos but what not many people have realized is the extent of these companies and just how many store Pages they operate bit bybit Electronics First Tech Systems apple crisp according to Johnny these are all the same company operated by the same team of people a forac LLC similarly Rosco and Associates Highland performance systems Waterford Technologies Illinois Precision group and MacBook Foundation these are all the same company a forax rival operation that meant that 50% of the top 200 40 search results for MacBook Pro were tied to these two companies alone but that&#39;s not all because Johnny told me that his former company of fora MAAC used to operate more than a dozen eBay accounts over the years that sell used Macs in the same way some of them are gone completely some show out of stock and some have changed names bit bybit Electronics used to be called Fleetwood MacBooks you can tell because they still use the old domain extension same with apple crisp formerly Mac Express outlet and when I asked why Johnny told me something rather shocking apparently they have been changing their store names in response to my videos exposing some of those very same stores what the heck is it forac keeping tabs on me changing their tactics to try to deceive my own audience well whatever the case may be at this point I was fully obsessed I needed to find out everything that I possibly could now as it turns out not much information is available on AFF forac but I was able to find that they are registered doing business as Mac United a name that sounded eerily familiar to me and then it hit me I&#39;ve seen that before about 2 years ago I tried to buy the domain luk mean.com because someone beat me to it and could you guess who that&#39;s right luk mean.com redirects to Mac United&#39;s website site honestly well played you guys buying luk mean.com just to redirect to your scummy eBay listings that&#39;s a that&#39;s a good one now at this point the conspiracy was growing by the second and Johnny was pulling back the curtain to reveal some of the tactics that they allege went on in these companies Johnny told me about some of the tactics they used to manipulate search results one involves bulk listing something cheap like a charger which would would get a bunch of sales in the first 24 hours and then going in and editing the listing to a Macbook take this listing for example on March 18th the seller modified nearly every single detail from the title to the description to the photos and even the category it&#39;s a completely different listing and the result well now on the main sale page it looks like 21 of these MacBooks have been sold I even managed to capture one of these in action over on Rosco and Associates page on June 18th this listing was a charger but just 2 days later it was now a Macbook and yet it still retains the same number of items sold and sure enough the revision history shows every single detail about this listing was changed and that has a really big impact because if I&#39;m a consumer and I click on something and I think hey 19 other people bought this MacBook to me that says this is a safe listing other people trust this I can trust it but we don&#39;t actually know if any of those were MacBooks and then there&#39;s the warranty most of these storefronts advertise a 1 to threeyear warranty program which makes you feel a lot more comfortable about buying a used Mac but in reality these warranties are only covering the labor cost most of the listings don&#39;t disclose this information but I messaged bit bybit electronics and they said that their warranty is in three tiers 0 to 60 days after purchase it&#39;s fully covered 60 to 90 days after the purchase parts and labor are covered but shipping is not and after that 90 days the only thing that&#39;s covered is Diagnostics and labor no parts and no shipping now to me that seems pretty deceptive cuz when I buy a machine with a one-year warranty I&#39;m not expecting to have to pay $15 to ship my computer in just to get diagnosed and then who knows how much for whatever price they decide to charge for the parts and Johnny told me that sometimes a forac was charging people 3 to 4X the actual cost of the part in these so-called warranty repairs and they also alleged that a forac was even going as far as to scrape the anti-reflective coating off of Retina display Macbook Pros to take them into Apple Stores then get free replacement under Apple&#39;s then warranty repair program and then build the customer $200 for that free repair o that is brutal okay let&#39;s take a step back because Johnny was pulling back the curtain on a forac but as I was going down this Rabbit Hole I had another one on my hands this rival operation this other company that collectively makes up more than 30% of the top eBay search results we talked about earlier who is Rosco and who are their Associates I recognized something in one of their listings this logo I&#39;ve seen that before as well it&#39;s the logo of Welly group a notorious seller who has been under Fire on Reddit for years I made videos calling out their Shady tactics such as list listing Core 2 Duos from the late 2000s as core I2 to trick people into thinking their listings were for much newer machines now I hadn&#39;t seen them in a while so I thought that Welly group had gone away but it turns out they just rebranded it seems like the public scrutiny on their Shady tactics has forced the Welly name to be tamped down in favor of this new Rosco and Associates label but how can we tie all of these different store pages together well take a look at any of their listings and you&#39;ll notice the town names are changed but they&#39;re all within just a few miles of each other Rockford Illinois Elgen Carpentersville oh and look what&#39;s nearby Rosco add in a simple Google search for Welly group and you&#39;ll find their public website with the address in the footer registered to a UPS store right smack dab in the middle so we have the beginnings of quite the tale here two rival companies in neighboring states each vying for the attention of people who can be easily deceived into paying way too much for a Macbook it&#39;s almost poetic really but after diving into this rabbit hole for longer than I would care to admit I think we all know there&#39;s only one way to really get to the bottom of this so I&#39;ve been obsessing over this for days now and I think you guys know where this is going we&#39;re going to have to buy some MacBooks to really get to the bottom of how Shady or downright SC scammy these sellers are and since this investigation has so far focused on the two major companies that seem to be responsible for a lot of these listings I think it&#39;s only fair that we buy a Macbook from each of them so I&#39;ve picked out two listings that look absolutely Dreadful let me run you through them first up we have this 15in pretina laptop already lots of tactics going on there using pretina so that it shows up if you search for a retina machine we&#39;ve got turbo in the title and right below that you can see the classic 3year warranty the specifications we have a 15.4in high def display 2 to 2.9 GHz quad core Intel turbo processor 16 GB of upgraded Ram 2 tabt of Storage storage what type of storage oh that is very suspicious it does not say anywhere in the listing whether that&#39;s a hard drive or a solid state drive I&#39;m going to wait it&#39;s a hard drive and then you can see Intel and AMD graphics and Mac OS High Sierra which launched September 25th 2017 so we&#39;re running 7-year-old software on this $375 laptop which by the way if you&#39;ve not been piecing this together a 2.0 GHz quad core with AMD Graphics that&#39;s a 2011 MacBook Pro so not only is that 13 years old but these models have have the AMD Graphics that fail catastrophically almost 100% of the time these things are terrible I personally wouldn&#39;t even list one for sale now if for whatever reason you do want to buy one of these MacBooks you can easily find them for like 100 bucks so we&#39;re going to be paying more than three times what this machine is actually worth all right so let&#39;s go ahead and hit add to cart on that one so now let&#39;s go to the second listing this is going to be the affordamac listing and the reason I picked this one is because it has the official eBay refurbished seal of approval a highly coveted thing and what we&#39;ve got here is an Apple MacBook Pro 13-in Retina laptop 3.4 GHz core i7 touch I don&#39;t know what that&#39;s supposed to mean with a/ terabyte and 16 GB of RAM now interestingly because this is eBay refurbished it comes with a 1-year warranty serviced by All State but just because this listing comes with a more legitimate seeming warranty and is backed by by eBay doesn&#39;t mean that it&#39;s not a scam because right here at the top it&#39;s quoting a 3.4 GHz processor speed and the description doubles down on that they&#39;re quoting a quad core turbo core i7 that&#39;s a lie it&#39;s a dual core processor with hyperthreading and further down it says we have a team of trained Apple certified technicians that have verified tested and upgraded these computers for 2024 and Beyond when I asked Johnny he told me that the only training that the employees here receive is from iFixit guides and there&#39;s nothing wrong with using iFixit guides to learn how to repair stuff that&#39;s what I did but it&#39;s a different story when you&#39;re claiming on a listing that is endorsed by eBay as refurbished that you have apple certified technicians when what I&#39;m hearing from an employee is that that is not the case allegedly so let&#39;s go ahead and click add to cart once again and now we get to find out how much money I&#39;m about to spend oh no it&#39;s $858 so $858 when one of them is worth about a hundred and I just found a 2015 retina MacBook Pro with the exact same specs for $250 also from another large and reputable seller that&#39;s okay I&#39;m only paying a 250% markup for these MacBooks so I&#39;m very excited quite frankly let&#39;s check back in in a couple of days when these things show up shall we and I&#39;m happy to announce that that day is today because finally the MacBooks have both arrived and honestly I&#39;m weirdly excited about this let&#39;s start with our good pal Rosco and Associates that&#39;s this MacBook at the very least it does seem well packaged good we&#39;ve got paper instead of Styrofoam love to see that actually it is a real Apple charger okay so that&#39;s that&#39;s at least something funny enough it looks like the laptop is actually in a hard shell case M peep the DVD drive M tasty $372 looks like we have a oh my gosh what a page in here instructing on how to download Max fan control what is this simply Max you have to register for the warrant within 30 days dude this is so strange it says important warranty information in order to keep the warranty in good standing we require the MacBook Pro to run a fan control program this Max fan control to regulate inner temperatures if you add or edit any users other than the default you will be required to download and install the program on each user failure to do so will void your warranty that is super sketchy and it&#39;s probably because these things have those failed graphics cards they&#39;re trying to minimize the internal temperatures so that your graphics card doesn&#39;t fail and they don&#39;t have to deal with the warranty complaint that is so sketchy now at the very least the condition does look to be pretty good let&#39;s go ahead and get this case off of here cuz I want to see what the actual MacBook looks like I&#39;m only seeing a couple of minor scratches and scuffs we&#39;ve got a few little scrapes around the back here but but hey for a 13-year-old machine it&#39;s in it&#39;s in pretty good shape all right so let&#39;s go ahead and power this thing up oh first of all we have a keyboard cover here again looks like it&#39;s in very good condition dude there&#39;s a hard drive in this thing I can hear it it&#39;s taking forever to boot up just as I suspected that 2 tbte of storage is a hard drive look at that Mac OS High Sierra okay so first first of all always a bit of a red flag when the Mac comes preset up I guess in this case it&#39;s because they installed macc&#39;s fan control and wouldn&#39;t you know it they have the fan speed based on the GPU temperature dude they literally know that these things fail there&#39;s no other reason to put this stupid warranty requirement and set the fan based on the GPU temperature they know that these things fail and they&#39;re selling them for $375 anyway that really genuinely frustrates me that is a really really shitty thing to do anyway let&#39;s check out more about this Mac Oh my God it&#39;s freezing just doing the about this Mac screen so we&#39;re on a 2.2 GHz core i7 16 gigs of DDR3 with the Radeon HD 6750m and of course we have our 2 tbte SATA disc let&#39;s go ahead and check out the system report I&#39;m very curious to see what type of a disc they&#39;re using and look at that it is a 5400 RPM hard drive so that didn&#39;t even spring for 7200 this thing is really slow let&#39;s check out the battery situation uh we&#39;ve got 470 Cycles that&#39;s a decently High cycle count nothing too crazy so it kind of leads me to believe that this could be an actual Apple battery which is a good thing except that now I&#39;m realizing that might make it not covered by the warranty because if it&#39;s not something that they upgraded it wouldn&#39;t be covered all right let&#39;s get under the hood here what do we got all right looks like we are running a Samsung hard drive and so it&#39;s time time Tech time Tech Ram oh yeah that&#39;s your like Bargain Basement cheapest Ram you can find apart from that though inside of the machine is pretty clean here there&#39;s no dust buildup on the fans looks like it was a gently used machine however it is still 13 years old with a known GPU problem so I&#39;m not exactly saying it&#39;s a good deal let&#39;s be clear okay so let&#39;s move on to MacBook number two this one is eBay refurbished right so I&#39;m expecting a lot for my $431 here so it seems to be pretty well packaged here but we&#39;ve got a really crusty looking mag safe charger here this thing is honestly disgusting so here we&#39;ve got our warranty card saying it&#39;s now active we&#39;ll definitely investigate that a little bit but let&#39;s check out the actual machine so we&#39;ve got a 13in MacBook Pro Retina Display and it doesn&#39;t appear like we have any of that delamination issue that retina MacBook Pros tend to have so so far pretty good so it&#39;s a 13-in early 2015 with the upgraded core i7 16 GB of RAM and yeah we got a 500 GB SSD now I suspect that that is a genuine Apple SSD just because this thing would have come with that in this configuration and sure enough here in the system information we see apple SSD now this is weird uh why does it only have one cycle on the battery so I actually want to check something else does the serial number in the about this Mac match the serial number on the bottom case no it does not so likely what they&#39;ve done here is take a board out of a machine and put it in uh an enclosure that was in better condition so they&#39;re kind of optimizing to build the best machine possible but I am still really confused as to how this battery only has one cycle so let&#39;s open this thing up and see what&#39;s inside so in here we&#39;ve got uh-oh that&#39;s not an apple battery wamp wamp that&#39;s uh that&#39;s a knockoff battery so we&#39;ve got one battery cycle but it&#39;s a fake third-party battery and it&#39;s a really really cheap one I mean look at this quality of this plastic here you can just is this feels really really cheap let&#39;s check underneath the sticker here that battery control board looks super duper budget dude I I don&#39;t like that I really don&#39;t like that I know that this is a 99-year-old machine and batteries don&#39;t last forever but I bought a refurbished MacBook Pro so I would kind of assume that that would come as it would from the factory not with thirdparty knockoff components installed now as far as I can tell there is nothing in eBay&#39;s actual terms of service for refurbished listings like this that require sellers to use actual OEM components so it doesn&#39;t seem like this is breaching those terms but I think it&#39;s a bit vague if you can say refurbished but use you know an AliExpress special battery replacement I would not trust this to run a machine that I was planning on using for an extended period of time especially when I paid $430 for something that I could buy for $250 okay so I&#39;ve only been using the 13-in MacBook Pro for a couple of minutes but something really weird happened I go to download cinebench 2024 to run a benchmark on it and I noticed that the screen looks kind of speckly I&#39;m like I didn&#39;t realize that it got so dusty I go to wipe it off and I realize that&#39;s not dust those are pixels the whole screen has these weird Speckles on it it kind of looks like like dead pixels but the pixels are actually still active dude this is super weird I got to get to the bottom of what is going on here so the first thing that I tried to do was reset the pamm on the MacBook Pro by doing command option PR at startup did that a couple of times didn&#39;t seem to do anything and I started to notice that the weird Speckles were kind of in line with other lighter parts of the screen so I then wondered like could this be interference with that knockoff third party battery I opened the machine up unplugged the battery booted it up with the battery disconnected completely and the issue is still happening so it really seems like the issue is the actual display panel itself and when I plugged into an external monitor no Speckles so it looks like this display just went wonky and I don&#39;t even really know how to pinpoint when it happened I started to kind of question like did I do something but I looked back here is the entire clip of me poking around inside the machine I do not touch the logic board a single time so I really don&#39;t know how this could have happened and like I said I was using it for a couple of minutes before I noticed it I don&#39;t think it was happening but I didn&#39;t notice it start like this is super weird things are really going well so far for this experiment super stoked about the fact that I spent 430 bucks on a broken MacBook but at the very least when I did message the seller about that screen issue they offered to have me send in the device for a screen replacement or a whole device replacement but just today the battery started acting up you see that that is why you don&#39;t install a knockoff third party battery this thing was at 70% and it just boom died this thing is a piece of I just need this thing to be gone so I&#39;m going to return it now fortunately they did accept my return of course and so uh it&#39;s over there resetting Mac OS and I&#39;m just getting rid of it I I don&#39;t want it around anymore so instead right now we&#39;re going to focus on the other MacBook Pro and registering for this warranty I want to learn more about it so I went to simply maxw warranty.com just like it says protect your investment with accident protection you may purchase within 30 days of delivery date so I guess it wants us to buy an additional protection package which we&#39;re not going to do so we can just register for the mechanical repair coverage oh no I have to make an account God that&#39;s so much data I don&#39;t want to give them all of my data jokes on them I use the iCloud email forwarding so they don&#39;t have my real email address but at least now we get to take a look at the full warranty information the extended warranty which I don&#39;t think was mentioned in the eBay listing but let&#39;s see what it covers protect with accident protection it covers damage to your device from drops including broken Hardware they cover the labor cost to repair it but then the next thing they say the same thing for display damage and defect it covers manufacturer issues including dead pixels and other display problems but it still covers the labor cost and again mechanical repair this includes any function on the machine covers the labor costs but you still have to pay for shipping after the first year even if it&#39;s a hardware failure that seems incredibly misleading at the very bare minimum because for $59 for 2 years or 118 for 3 years side note that doesn&#39;t make sense why is it twice as expensive for one additional year they say it comes with all of these coverages but that&#39;s only for the labor you still have to pay for the parts and for the shipping what are you even paying for here you&#39;re just giving them money to do basically nothing so let&#39;s read what the standard warranty that we paid for gets us now remember on the eBay listing the only thing that it says is a one-year warranty on the full machine so if I&#39;m a buyer on eBay to me that means if something happens with this machine they will repair it but straight away we find out that we have to pay for shipping and we find out that the battery is only covered for 180 days last I checked the battery is a part of the machine and they say that they will replace or repair the covered product based on available inventory which is a kind of confusing term I&#39;m not really sure what that means and then there&#39;s some exclusions if you return a product for an issues that are found to be false it will result in deductions to the refund up to an including the entire refund amount and all of that is at their discretion because this is not being done through eBay right this is a simply Max piece of paper that came with our purchase Now eBay will cover you for 60 days so if there is something wrong you have the eBay money back guarantee but once that runs out you&#39;re basically operating on trust that these guys are actually going to take care of that now I have no reason to think that they wouldn&#39;t and it&#39;s perfectly reasonable for a company that&#39;s offering a third-party warranty to have these caveats so that people don&#39;t take advantage of that warranty but there&#39;s a lot of if ands and butts here given that our Ebay listing just said oneyear warranty on full machine so this video has been an absolute Whirlwind I really was not expecting it to go in the direction that it did I was not expecting to uncover this many interconnected sellers I was not expecting them to have bought luk mean.com to use for their own good and I certainly was not expecting one of the two MacBooks I bought to be defective let alone the refurbished one I mean you literally couldn&#39;t make this up if you tried this video has been absolutely wild and I hope it&#39;s been helpful or revealing to you guys about what to watch out for on eBay I think that with just a little bit of Prior experience it is easy to to identify listings that fall into this category and I do want to clarify that the two main groups that we talked about today are not the only people that do this type of stuff it is spreading and it is taking place a lot more than you might think and I also want to make it absolutely crystal clear that I do not want you guys to take matters into your own hand and try to get vigilante justice do not contact them don&#39;t spam them don&#39;t harass them in any way the visibility of this video and and arming people with knowledge is what really matters at the end of the day the people that are behind this are trying to run a business they employ people that are trying to make a living and I you know as far as I&#39;m aware I don&#39;t think any laws have been broken I don&#39;t think any terms of service have been breached I object to the way that they run their businesses but at the end of the day it is their right to run their businesses how they see fit so if you&#39;re frustrated by the findings that I revealed in this video and you want to help out and do something the best thing that you can do is spread awareness if anyone in your family is shopping for an Apple product on eBay make them aware of what to look out for help people not fall for these types of listings so with all that being said thank you guys so so much for watching this video if you&#39;ve made it this far honestly I&#39;m impressed this video is way too long but if you found it helpful or entertaining I would really appreciate if you leave a like down below subscribe for more content like this in the future and let me know what was the most surprising part of all of this thank you guys again so so much for watching and I will see you in the next one [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Transcript for:Exposing Shady MacBook Sellers on eBay

Transcript for:
Exposing Shady MacBook Sellers on eBay