Their location is Steger, IL, only a few miles east of me.

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I am not convinced they're an outright scam (steal money -> no product), but IMO, something still seems pretty shady. Maybe it's the tiny abandoned run-down storefront in this low-income high-crime industrial town.

Might be worth asking them in a live chat why they have a Steger address in a building that's too small to house the massive inventory they're advertising.

There are a couple of fly-by-night "wholesale appliance" stores around the area too. You can get a "brand new" $3,000 refrigerator with a "minor" scratch/dent for only $500. The "scam" is that you really don't know where this appliance came from, it looks like it literally fell off a truck, and there is no real warranty despite claims to the contrary. This ITNA place reminds me of that sort of thing.

Exactly. And why list a run-down storefront as your address when you don't do anything there?

True, but IMO, there are better ways to present oneself to the world as a legitimate business.

I love their home page... Christmas in March!

Cash flow problems? Sounds like the business is using yesterday's down-payments to cover today's costs, and little money left for refunds. Wouldn't surprise me if that's the reason they couldn't acquire the machine for you in the first place.

But wow... no excuse. To be rude or to want to keep 10% after delaying delivery, after already promising full refund if they can't make April 1 deadline, is balls.

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As an aside: I wonder how the whole Stern thing works. Usually a business buys inventory at wholesale prices and sells at a price closer to retail in order to make a profit. If these guys are not a Stern dealer, then how are they getting new Stern machines at a price that leaves room for any profit?

Buyer beware... "Buy it Now" is built into the eBay buttons... it's not URL in the listing description. Red flag when there are specific instructions about how to complete the process.

I saw this exact same thing on a listing for silver bars worth $10,000 being sold for $7,000. The seller had a well-established 24,000, 100% eBay rating. The description contained special "buy it now" instructions to a bogus eBay sub-domain URL, as you've described it.

I initially assumed it was a scam for the seller to bypass eBay's final value fees. However, what you are describing (hacked eBay accounts) makes more sense. I reported it and the seller's account along with 34,000 items were taken down very quickly. Even the high number of items for sale seemed suspicious... obviously a posting bot.

Go back one page: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/beware-of-scam-game-seller-websites/page/10#post-7461769

This is incredibly unclear. Which one is the scam, or both?

How do the local Facebook scams work? I assume for long distance, just get paid and they don't ship. But for local buyers, what do they do? Ask for electronic payment in advance and give a fake pickup location?

Just to be clear, my posting did not claim they were a scam.

Yep... I'd claim never.

Everyone has a smartphone (with camera) or access to somebody with one... okay, not everyone, but practically everyone when we're talking about selling a pinball machine.

I can't even imagine who would go through the trouble to search for the old digital photos when taking new photos is so easy to do. And even if the scenario happened, a buyer would want to see current condition, not condition the last time it was bought.

I never said that was lazy, or ever used that word. Quite the opposite. It takes more work to save and recycle the old photos and information, which is why I claimed it "never" (practically) happens.

Yes, look like legitimate account was taken over. In my experience, eBay is very responsive to scam reports. Looks like they've already reverted it back to the original listing.

If it was that easy to get websites taken down then nobody's website would last very long.

What is your real Facebook page? When I try to report them as impersonating a business, Facebook is asking for the link to the legitimate business page.

EDIT: I selected the "pretending to be something" option, then I selected "a business" and entered "pinwerks". The problem is that the fake page has triple the followers as the real one, so I don't think Facebook is going to be moving quickly on this one, IMO.

Real page: facebook.com/pinwerks