**The Scam of Macbook Pro Listings: A Cautionary Tale**

When searching for a MacBook Pro on eBay, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of finding a great deal. However, there's a common tactic used by sellers that can lead to buyer beware. This tactic involves using outdated terminology to make listings appear more appealing, but ultimately result in buyers getting ripped off.

**The Anatomy of a Deceptive Listing**

Take this listing, for example: 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro 1TB SSD Hybrid Pre-Retina 6GB RAM OS X 10.2015. At first glance, it may seem like a great deal on an older MacBook Pro with a solid-state drive and plenty of RAM. But scratch the surface, and you'll find that there's more to this listing than meets the eye.

**The Red Flag: "OS X 10.2015"**

Sellers often use outdated terminology to make their listings appear newer and more desirable. In this case, the seller claims that the laptop comes with OS X 10.2015. However, this is a clever ruse. The term "OS X 10.2015" refers not to the operating system version, but rather to the year it was released (2015). What the seller means by this is that the laptop can run the most recent OS available at the time of its release, which in this case is OS X El Capitan.

**The Real Deal: "Mac OS 10.2015"**

When we look closer, we see that the operating system listed as "OS X 10.2015" is actually "Mac OS 10.2015". This is a common tactic used by sellers to make their listings appear more attractive. However, it's clear that this laptop is not from 2015 at all. In fact, it's likely from 2009 or earlier.

**The Truth Revealed: Intel Core 2 Duo and 1TB Hard Drive**

As we continue to explore the listing, we find that the laptop comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 1TB hard drive. This is not a powerful combination by modern standards, and it's clear that this laptop was not designed for heavy use.

**A Final Word: Buyer Beware**

This listing is just one example of how scammers can use outdated terminology to deceive buyers. When searching for a MacBook Pro on eBay or elsewhere, it's essential to be vigilant and do your research. Look for clues such as the processor type, hard drive size, and operating system version. These can give you a good idea of when the laptop was released and what kind of performance you can expect.

**The Pictures: A Red Flag**

One final note is that the pictures accompanying this listing are of poor quality. The seller has chosen to include a photo with a giant dent in the side, which raises serious questions about the condition of the laptop. This lack of transparency is just another example of how scammers can use misleading tactics to get what they want.

**The Seller's Notes: A Clear Indication of Deception**

In the seller's notes, we find another clever tactic used to deceive buyers. The seller claims that the laptop comes preloaded with OS X 10.2015 El Capitan. However, as we've established, this is simply not true. This listing is a prime example of how scammers can use outdated terminology and misleading tactics to get away with selling fake or older laptops.

**The Bottom Line: Be Cautious When Buying Online**

When buying online, it's essential to be cautious and do your research. Take the time to examine the listings carefully, looking for clues such as processor type, hard drive size, and operating system version. Don't be afraid to ask questions or seek clarification if you're unsure about any aspect of a listing. Your wallet will thank you in the end.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, this listing is just one example of how scammers can use outdated terminology and misleading tactics to deceive buyers. By being vigilant and doing your research, you can avoid falling victim to these scams. Remember to always look for clues such as processor type, hard drive size, and operating system version, and don't be afraid to ask questions or seek clarification if you're unsure about any aspect of a listing.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall right what's going on guys so i just want to have sort of an informal chat with you guys about these super deceptive ebay listings so i've talked about them in the past and i've talked mainly about why they're deceptive but today i want to focus more on seeing through the deception right so there's a lot of fluff there's a lot of nonsense in these listings so let's try and get past all that and try to figure out what computers these people are actually selling so one of the most popular things to do is sell these older pre-retina macbook pros and try to pass them off as newer machines as more expensive machines so i've pulled out about five of these listings that we're going to go through and talk about the tricks that these ebay sellers employ to trick you into thinking that these are newer but more importantly we're going to try and figure out what year what computers they're actually selling because they make it very hard for you so jumping in on this listing you can see starting from the title we have macbook pro 13 pre-retina i5 8 gigabytes of ram one terabyte ssd hybe so the first thing this ssd hibe is first of all very deceptive because what this actually is is a solid state hybrid drive and basically what that is is a one terabyte mechanical hard drive usually just a 5400 rpm spinning drive and then it has about eight or 16 gigabytes of solid state memory that's used to kind of accelerate it so these are these are pretty solid drives i won't i won't lie they're better than a normal hard drive they're faster than a normal hard drive but they're nowhere near ssd and the reason that i have a problem with the way that they've done this is the correct denotation is sshd that tells you that it's a solid state hybrid drive putting one terabyte ssd and then this makes one terabyte ssd show up so this could fool people into thinking that they're buying something that has a one terabyte ssd which it doesn't so that's our first piece of information basically as far as the pictures go we're gonna kind of just ignore them because these pictures are meaningless already the first thing i'll point out is that in this cover photo you can see we have the old f4 function key from before launch pad was introduced and then on the second photo you can see we have the newer style so the pictures aren't even all of the same computer and considering that this is a bulk listing this really doesn't tell us anything at all so let's go down and try and pull some information out of the item specifics all of this stuff is garbage the upgraded from early model year to current model year specs that's meaningless if we look down here the first thing that you'll notice that's a little bit weird is intel core so on this listing i'm fairly confident that we have an i5 considering that they have that listed right down here as well as up in the title but on a lot of listings where they don't say that there's a core i5 they'll they'll use terminology like this uh to try and make a core 2 duo sound modern so basically you can bet that if you're looking at a listing and it says core i5 everywhere then you've got a core i5 on your hands but if they're kind of quiet about that if they don't really talk about it they say dual core or they say an intel core or a dual core processor you can probably guess that they're trying to cover up the fact that the machine has a core 2 duo now the first thing that we're going to look at here is the processor speed to try and figure out what year we're working with 2.4 gigahertz so that's either a mid 2010 with a core 2 duo or a late 2011 base model with a core i5 i'm going to assume because they have i5 plastered everywhere that we're talking about a 2011 but of course these things can all change so if you look down through this you know bunch of random nonsense down here you'll see a 2.3 gigahertz core intel i5 turbo processor up to 3 gigahertz so first of all ignore these turbo speeds that's just to try and make you think that they're faster this is a 2.3 gigahertz i5 that's an early 2011. so what you're actually buying here for 531 dollars is a used seven-year-old almost eight-year-old macbook pro with eight gigabytes of ram and a one terabyte spinning drive with a little bit of ssd storage in there for good and for that you're expected to pay 531 dollars that is absurd so let's move on to the next listing i'll try to go through these a little bit quicker so here's one from fleetwood macbooks and first of all you can see here 3.0 gigahertz i5 that is just hilarious that's why i opened this listing they've quoted the turbo clock speeds that is like one of the most deceptive things that you can do it's just ridiculous now if you look at again one terabyte ssd the last listing they at least had the courtesy they had the courtesy to put in hybe for hybrid after that but this these people just have ssd that is unbelievably deceptive if you look in this photo you can see what is very clearly a spinning mechanical hybrid ssd drive over there that is not an ssd so one of the other things this is interesting we actually have what looks like some sort of information here 1600 megahertz ddr3 2.4 i5 that's a late 2011 intel hd graphics 3000 so we'll see if that's actually what they're selling here but that is what we should be getting so let's scroll down take a look over here you can see 2.4 gigahertz three gigahertz turbo super scummy for them to put uh the turbo speed in the title as the clock speed of the processor you can see sshd it is in fact a hybrid drive it is not a solid state drive once again they say core instead of core i5 i don't know why it would it would actually be better for them if they put a core i5 down there whatever scroll down again all right so they actually listed the exact processor model that's interesting that's a lie virtual quad core processor you basically got to look past all of that they'll say that there's that the ram and the hard drive are new and somehow that's supposed to be better really doesn't matter once again we are buying what appears to be a late 2011 macbook pro with eight gigs of ram and a one terabyte hybrid drive that's the almost identical computer to the last one we looked at and once again it's 540 with 20 shipping that is absurd okay so let's look at another common thing that you'll see in these listings os 2017 or in the case of this listing you'll have os x 2015 that is a tactic that is used to make these listings show up with newer computers so let's look at this one this is a this is a good final listing over here so we have 15-inch apple macbook pro 1 terabyte ssd hybrid pre-retina 6 gigabyte ram os 10 2015 very very strange terminology here let's dissect that a little bit once again one terabyte ssd hybrid i have no problem with that but the fact that they write one terabyte ssd is deceiving when it's actually an sshd you got to get that stuff right six gigabytes of ram is weird i don't know why they wouldn't do eight but the big one here is os 10 2015. so basically the reason that sellers will do this is here let me look up 2015 macbook pro you'd think i'd get a macbook pro from 2015 but look at that this listing is the first one that comes up right below it we have all right so that one is an actual retina there's a couple of actual retinas here's one os 10 2015 this is not from 2015 at all there's another one if you go down you can see i mean just just look looking from the thumbnails you can see the infrared sensors that that tell you that these are pre-retina macbook pros there's just a ton of these that dominate these search results and if we actually look at this computer you can see very clearly that this is nowhere near a 2015 macbook pro so most of the times when you see os 10 2015 they're talking about the version of os 10 that it comes with it makes you think that you're buying a computer from 2015 when in fact you're getting the mac os from 2015 which in this case is el capitan usually they'll do that because that's the most recent os that they can run so most of these os 10 2015 macbook pros are in fact from 2009 or even earlier because they can only go up to mac os el capitan so as we can see here looking through these pictures really not too much that's going to tell us these are some pretty awful pictures i mean look at why did they pick this computer with a giant dent in the side i mean these are just horrible horrible pictures anyway let's scroll down here and take a look you can see first of all intel core 2 duo so that tells you since this is a 15 inch that means that the most recent this can be is a 2009 because in 2010 they switched over to core i5s and i7s on the 15 inch macbook pros so 2.4 gigahertz core 2 duo and sure enough over here operating system mac os el capitan which is from 2015. that's how they get around that and again you can see up in the seller notes preloaded with os 10 2015 el capitan that's how they justify putting that in the title and there it is again over here mac os x 2015 el capitan really really not great and also i work in ilife 2015 that just does not exist so as you can see what you're actually buying here for 570 plus 25 shipping is a 2009 macbook pro with six gigabytes of ram a core 2 duo and a one terabyte hard drive this is why you need to make sure that you are looking very very carefully at these computers at these listings because it's very easy to skim over these and just kind of see oh it's a macbook pro ssd hybrid that's good 2015 boom add to cart it's very simple to do that but you also really need to look through these listings to make sure that you know what you're getting into because they will almost always tell you the information about the computer it's required for them to put in these specifications of the computer you know just from ebay policies so it really is important that you go through and you make sure you know what you're buying and that will help you determine whether or not what you are buying is in fact a scam a rip-off or what have you so thank you guys so much for watching this video i hope you enjoyed it and as usual make sure to follow me on twitter at lukemiani don't forget to subscribe and feel free to join my subreddit if you have any questions if you have a listing that you'd like to run past me and my group of people that do this stuff all the time so feel free to go head over there if you have any questions and i'll see you guys in the next video youall right what's going on guys so i just want to have sort of an informal chat with you guys about these super deceptive ebay listings so i've talked about them in the past and i've talked mainly about why they're deceptive but today i want to focus more on seeing through the deception right so there's a lot of fluff there's a lot of nonsense in these listings so let's try and get past all that and try to figure out what computers these people are actually selling so one of the most popular things to do is sell these older pre-retina macbook pros and try to pass them off as newer machines as more expensive machines so i've pulled out about five of these listings that we're going to go through and talk about the tricks that these ebay sellers employ to trick you into thinking that these are newer but more importantly we're going to try and figure out what year what computers they're actually selling because they make it very hard for you so jumping in on this listing you can see starting from the title we have macbook pro 13 pre-retina i5 8 gigabytes of ram one terabyte ssd hybe so the first thing this ssd hibe is first of all very deceptive because what this actually is is a solid state hybrid drive and basically what that is is a one terabyte mechanical hard drive usually just a 5400 rpm spinning drive and then it has about eight or 16 gigabytes of solid state memory that's used to kind of accelerate it so these are these are pretty solid drives i won't i won't lie they're better than a normal hard drive they're faster than a normal hard drive but they're nowhere near ssd and the reason that i have a problem with the way that they've done this is the correct denotation is sshd that tells you that it's a solid state hybrid drive putting one terabyte ssd and then this makes one terabyte ssd show up so this could fool people into thinking that they're buying something that has a one terabyte ssd which it doesn't so that's our first piece of information basically as far as the pictures go we're gonna kind of just ignore them because these pictures are meaningless already the first thing i'll point out is that in this cover photo you can see we have the old f4 function key from before launch pad was introduced and then on the second photo you can see we have the newer style so the pictures aren't even all of the same computer and considering that this is a bulk listing this really doesn't tell us anything at all so let's go down and try and pull some information out of the item specifics all of this stuff is garbage the upgraded from early model year to current model year specs that's meaningless if we look down here the first thing that you'll notice that's a little bit weird is intel core so on this listing i'm fairly confident that we have an i5 considering that they have that listed right down here as well as up in the title but on a lot of listings where they don't say that there's a core i5 they'll they'll use terminology like this uh to try and make a core 2 duo sound modern so basically you can bet that if you're looking at a listing and it says core i5 everywhere then you've got a core i5 on your hands but if they're kind of quiet about that if they don't really talk about it they say dual core or they say an intel core or a dual core processor you can probably guess that they're trying to cover up the fact that the machine has a core 2 duo now the first thing that we're going to look at here is the processor speed to try and figure out what year we're working with 2.4 gigahertz so that's either a mid 2010 with a core 2 duo or a late 2011 base model with a core i5 i'm going to assume because they have i5 plastered everywhere that we're talking about a 2011 but of course these things can all change so if you look down through this you know bunch of random nonsense down here you'll see a 2.3 gigahertz core intel i5 turbo processor up to 3 gigahertz so first of all ignore these turbo speeds that's just to try and make you think that they're faster this is a 2.3 gigahertz i5 that's an early 2011. so what you're actually buying here for 531 dollars is a used seven-year-old almost eight-year-old macbook pro with eight gigabytes of ram and a one terabyte spinning drive with a little bit of ssd storage in there for good and for that you're expected to pay 531 dollars that is absurd so let's move on to the next listing i'll try to go through these a little bit quicker so here's one from fleetwood macbooks and first of all you can see here 3.0 gigahertz i5 that is just hilarious that's why i opened this listing they've quoted the turbo clock speeds that is like one of the most deceptive things that you can do it's just ridiculous now if you look at again one terabyte ssd the last listing they at least had the courtesy they had the courtesy to put in hybe for hybrid after that but this these people just have ssd that is unbelievably deceptive if you look in this photo you can see what is very clearly a spinning mechanical hybrid ssd drive over there that is not an ssd so one of the other things this is interesting we actually have what looks like some sort of information here 1600 megahertz ddr3 2.4 i5 that's a late 2011 intel hd graphics 3000 so we'll see if that's actually what they're selling here but that is what we should be getting so let's scroll down take a look over here you can see 2.4 gigahertz three gigahertz turbo super scummy for them to put uh the turbo speed in the title as the clock speed of the processor you can see sshd it is in fact a hybrid drive it is not a solid state drive once again they say core instead of core i5 i don't know why it would it would actually be better for them if they put a core i5 down there whatever scroll down again all right so they actually listed the exact processor model that's interesting that's a lie virtual quad core processor you basically got to look past all of that they'll say that there's that the ram and the hard drive are new and somehow that's supposed to be better really doesn't matter once again we are buying what appears to be a late 2011 macbook pro with eight gigs of ram and a one terabyte hybrid drive that's the almost identical computer to the last one we looked at and once again it's 540 with 20 shipping that is absurd okay so let's look at another common thing that you'll see in these listings os 2017 or in the case of this listing you'll have os x 2015 that is a tactic that is used to make these listings show up with newer computers so let's look at this one this is a this is a good final listing over here so we have 15-inch apple macbook pro 1 terabyte ssd hybrid pre-retina 6 gigabyte ram os 10 2015 very very strange terminology here let's dissect that a little bit once again one terabyte ssd hybrid i have no problem with that but the fact that they write one terabyte ssd is deceiving when it's actually an sshd you got to get that stuff right six gigabytes of ram is weird i don't know why they wouldn't do eight but the big one here is os 10 2015. so basically the reason that sellers will do this is here let me look up 2015 macbook pro you'd think i'd get a macbook pro from 2015 but look at that this listing is the first one that comes up right below it we have all right so that one is an actual retina there's a couple of actual retinas here's one os 10 2015 this is not from 2015 at all there's another one if you go down you can see i mean just just look looking from the thumbnails you can see the infrared sensors that that tell you that these are pre-retina macbook pros there's just a ton of these that dominate these search results and if we actually look at this computer you can see very clearly that this is nowhere near a 2015 macbook pro so most of the times when you see os 10 2015 they're talking about the version of os 10 that it comes with it makes you think that you're buying a computer from 2015 when in fact you're getting the mac os from 2015 which in this case is el capitan usually they'll do that because that's the most recent os that they can run so most of these os 10 2015 macbook pros are in fact from 2009 or even earlier because they can only go up to mac os el capitan so as we can see here looking through these pictures really not too much that's going to tell us these are some pretty awful pictures i mean look at why did they pick this computer with a giant dent in the side i mean these are just horrible horrible pictures anyway let's scroll down here and take a look you can see first of all intel core 2 duo so that tells you since this is a 15 inch that means that the most recent this can be is a 2009 because in 2010 they switched over to core i5s and i7s on the 15 inch macbook pros so 2.4 gigahertz core 2 duo and sure enough over here operating system mac os el capitan which is from 2015. that's how they get around that and again you can see up in the seller notes preloaded with os 10 2015 el capitan that's how they justify putting that in the title and there it is again over here mac os x 2015 el capitan really really not great and also i work in ilife 2015 that just does not exist so as you can see what you're actually buying here for 570 plus 25 shipping is a 2009 macbook pro with six gigabytes of ram a core 2 duo and a one terabyte hard drive this is why you need to make sure that you are looking very very carefully at these computers at these listings because it's very easy to skim over these and just kind of see oh it's a macbook pro ssd hybrid that's good 2015 boom add to cart it's very simple to do that but you also really need to look through these listings to make sure that you know what you're getting into because they will almost always tell you the information about the computer it's required for them to put in these specifications of the computer you know just from ebay policies so it really is important that you go through and you make sure you know what you're buying and that will help you determine whether or not what you are buying is in fact a scam a rip-off or what have you so thank you guys so much for watching this video i hope you enjoyed it and as usual make sure to follow me on twitter at lukemiani don't forget to subscribe and feel free to join my subreddit if you have any questions if you have a listing that you'd like to run past me and my group of people that do this stuff all the time so feel free to go head over there if you have any questions and i'll see you guys in the next video you\n"