Having been a computer guy for many years, I’ve had surprisingly little interaction with eBay. I’ve just never had much use for it, as I don’t generally sell things and prefer to buy things new. A seasoned eBay user is, I would imagine, accustomed to all the regular scams and such that are perpetrated on the unassuming Aunt Fae’s of the Internet – but I’m not. At least, not before yesterday.
So, in an effort to drum up some extra cash, I’m currently attempting to sell my iPod on eBay. After completing all of the listing details and such, my listing went up sometime in the late evening yesterday. Not really having much of a clue as to what I should sell for, I also didn’t know what to expect in terms of bids (a whole slew of them right out of the chute, none at all, etc.). When I received the following email this morning, I felt a mixture of joy and hesitation:
Hello,
I am willing to purchase this item from you and I’ll be paying you $450.00 for the item to include shipping & insurance charges to Abroad.Payment would be through PayPal as indicated in the auction as i would want you to indicate your interest in selling this item to me.I would want you to email me directly at different_email@foo.com with your PayPal email address or send me a PayPal payment request to the email address specified so that i can credit your account asap Thanks and hope to hear from you soon
Contact details removed
My first thought was “wow, sweet!” – but that lasted all of 10 seconds as I started to think the whole thing through. While the offer seemed a bit strange, it didn’t really strike me as illegitimate because he was offering to pay me right away. The only plausible rip-off scenario I could come up with was that he was going to have me send it somewhere that would incur a healthy shipping charge and I would make far less than I was hoping to from the sale (which, in retrospect, didn’t make much sense either, since he wouldn’t be getting the money I paid to UPS or whoever ended up actually transporting it).
I thought to myself “well, maybe this isn’t a scam…”. So I asked the guy for the city and country where he would be wanting it shipped, thinking that would either confirm or deny my initial suspicion. He was very vague (telling me that it would be sent to “his store”, but nothing more), so I explained my reservations a bit further:
The reason I’m asking is that $450 is, frankly, quite a bit more than I was expecting. I’m not opposed to doing what you ask, I just want to make sure I’m not going to end up losing money on the shipping + insurance.
So, if you could tell me the city and country you want it shipped, then we can talk about the details.
Then, the guy replies (very quickly) with what appeared to be a street address (but bore very little resemblance to a US street address) that ended with “Nigeria”. “Well”, I thought, “that answers that”. I quickly reply and tell him that I’m not interested and thanks a bunch.
His next message just says “why?”, to which I reply that the whole thing just sounds fishy and he should understand that, from my point of view, it smells like a scam. He then replies with the following:
ok,can you get it mail to my store in united kingdom?
That pretty much sealed the deal for me. My response:
Why would you pay $450 for a used ipod when you could buy a new one for half that in the UK?
Nope, sorry, not interested.
That was a couple hours ago and I haven’t heard back from him since.
It’s worth noting that, in almost all of his emails, he asked for my paypal address “asap” so that he could send me payment. Now, again, not being a battle-worn eBay champion, I’m not terribly familiar with most of the garden-variety paypal scams out there, but looking back and seeing just how anxious he was to send me the cheddar has made me all the more sure of my conclusion.
For all I know, this is a common eBay scam that the whole world (save me, of course) knows about and ignores. But I thought it worthwhile to describe what happened to me in case anybody else is approached with a similar offer.
Yay for not getting hoodwinked!
Written by Brett Kelly
Misc