There aren't that many scammers on eBay - but the ones that are there tend to be greedy. This means that they will always try to pull their scams on high value items like cars and computers so that they can make a lot of money quickly. Since buyers usually buy these items very rarely, they may not know about the various scams.
Car scams:
With cars, you'll usually find scammers trying to get you to send them money upfront for whatever reason. For some reason, some people are so reluctant to pay 50% or 25% money before delivery using a relatively insecure payment method, especially for a car. They believe that the seller will obviously deliver because they will want the other half of the money.
But there was never a car! Car images are not hard to find and experienced cheaters will have a whole library of images of different cars. The seller just got your $5000 for nothing and you can leave them all the negative feedback you like. They'll just go and open another eBay account and find their next fool.
While not outright a scam, you may find that a car shows up but just doesn't match the description - it's been oversold, in the tradition of used car dealers through the ages. If this happens to you, you should open a dispute on eBay and say that your item was not as described - you may get a partial refund.
Computer fraud:
If you bid on a computer auction but don't win, the seller may send you an email asking if you'd like to buy the same computer they just sold through their own website.
This is a bad idea! You have no guarantee the item will ever arrive, and you haven't given them your money - you've also given them your credit card details.
There are sellers with nothing but positive feedback who use this scam a lot - and since you won't be able to leave them any feedback on the transaction, their reputation will stay that way. If you complain to ebay that you bought an item off site and were scammed, they will tell you to get lost and not do it again.
How to beat scams:
There are many ways to defeat fraud. First, whenever you buy something expensive, be sure to thoroughly check the reputation of your seller. Make sure they have sold similar high value items before and not just sold a $10 chain to get an artificially high feedback rating. If you want to be even more cautious, insist that the money be deposited into an escrow service (eBay recommends escrow.com - don't use any other service if you're not sure).
To be honest, it's generally a pretty bad idea to use eBay to buy things like cars and computers to begin with - you can get them anywhere and the discounts aren't that big anymore. Better to use eBay for those rare, special items you can't find anywhere else. The following email will give you some tips for buying collectibles.
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