I was on ebay and I saw this great deal on this bike I really want to
get but it seem questionable. the ebay site is
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-2005-Giant-Trance-2-Mountain-Bike_W0QQitemZ4781829875QQcategoryZ31609QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
and I e-mailed them and got a reply to go to this website www.vitobicycle.com 
I was wondering if it was safe for me to purchase the trance 2 that I want?

Dear hellfighter,

I advise not to do any business with VITO Bicycle. They are, without
any doubt, a scam. I came to that conclusion for the following
reasons:


1.
The Montana Secretary of State's database of registered business
entities does not list any company of the name "Vito Bicycle Ltd."


2.
Whoever registered the domain "vitobicycle.com" used invalid contact
data for the registration:

Registrant:
   Michael  Fiorenza (FN427) vitobicycle@yahoo.com
   NA
   NA,    NA    00000
   United States
   Phone: (563)4458279 x

This is not the behaviour of a reputable company. This is the
behaviour of fraudsters who don't want to be tracked by their victims.
Reputable companies have no reason to conceal their identity.


3.
Also, the domain has been registered only on 10 October 2005, and will
expire already on 10 October 2006. This is typical for Internet frauds
with scam businesses: A "disposable" domain that will simply be
abandoned once it is not of use any longer. It is very interesting
that the domain was registered only a few days before the eBay
activities of "Vito Bicycle" started. This "business" is not older
than its website.


4.
This leads to another point. On their website, they claim: "The Vito
Bicycle Store has enjoyed 33 years of continued success as one of the
finest bicycle stores in Helena Area". But for 33 successful years in
business, this store has left not much traces. A Google search leads
to no results, and they are not even listed in the telephone
directory. This clearly identifies the 33 years and the alleged
reputation of the store as a lie.


For the above reasons, I come to the conclusion that Vito Bicycle is
not a real company, but a scam.


Regards,
Scriptor



Sources:

Montana Secretary of State: Business Entity Search
http://app.mt.gov/bes/

Allwhois Domain Name Database
http://www.allwhois.com/cgi-bin/allwhois.cgi

Switchboard Telephone Directory
http://www.switchboard.com/

I contacted eBay and informed them that the seller of these bikes was
violating several of their policies. The auctions have been pulled.

Any seller that wants you to work outside of eBay's structure is
supicious, especially when they offer items at a 75% off the usual
selling price or a host of other "almost too good to be true" things.

This is a scam for sure!!

I saw these ads to day and thought they looked like fraud too. But
this one had a twist, the seller had been a member of ebay for almost
a year, but with no sales. Usually these seller sign up on ebay the
same day as they list hundereds of bikes for a 75% discount.

I reported them as a fraud to ebay, but I wrote them anyway and got
the same kind of email reply. I checked out the web page - it looks
pretty good - they went to a lot of effort on this scam. But like you
say, its not in the yellow pages, there's no listing of it on the net
or anything, except this posting. Plus the ads have already been
pulled from ebay, within hours of my fraud report.

These bicycle scams show up almost every day with hundereds of bikes
at steep discounts, but sellers who just signed up - there were at
least two today. Report them to ebay security -look at the bottom of
the listing page for the link. The listing will disappear suddenly.