This quick post is specifically for people that are new to papercrafts, so read on. Majority (97%) of the paper models you see on this site are free, and all of them are downloadable from the internet, there are a few that are not and I do mention it if you need to buy them. I like things that are free, so it saddens me to see people getting tricked in to paying for stuff that is readily available to them at no cost whatsoever, all they have to do is Google it. We'll just show an example of a scammer trying to cash in on free papercraft patterns from the net
This post came about when I received an email from reader vehbelfets, she requested for me to check out a link to an eBay seller who's selling papercrafts to see if it was a good deal. So I followed the link to check it out and this is what I saw.
I captured a screenshot just in case the seller decides to close the items early. We're not going to mention the sellers name but we'll just refer to them as Company KXM. They described themselves as an international online-based e-trading company (yeah right), and they're selling a lot of papercraft models (that are free for downloading on the net) alongside some legit items?
I browsed through their eBay listings and clicked on item number: 150207003516, well use this for our example. It's 21 Neon Genesis Evangelion papercrafts in ebook format, what's wrong with that? I noticed that majority of the paper models are from the Webdude, which we've featured here on our site many times and as we all know, the Webdude's models are always free - as in, go to his site and download it there for free.
The KXM company also tries to protect themselves by stating that they are "not" the owner of the the goods that are being sold on their eBay page but instead acts only on behalf of the "real" seller, again, yeah right.
There are a lot more others like this on eBay and other popular online auction sites, so beware of their presence. What's the point of all this? I just wanted to advice you to do your homework before parting ways with your greens. But if some of you want to pay for something free, then good luck to that.
And what about vehbelfets? I've told her that the listings are no good and pointed her to the right place.
A reader just brought it up to my attention, that's how I found out. The webdude, whose models were being sold, was aware of the situation. I'm not sure if eBay took action on the seller and I'm guessing they won't, since they make money off of it - I hope I'm wrong though.
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