wow i dodge the bullet on that one

[samnoels]

short story: Yesterday i bidded on a ppc 6700 and then ended up being outbidded by a few more people so once the price went past my threshold amount, i gave up on the acution. the phone sold for 150 i think. well i get a message today in my inbox by the original seller who wrote this:

Hi _____________,I am the seller of the Sprint PPC-6700 With Goodies!! - item # 170194048773, and I've just been contacted by the eBay staff who informed me that the winner of this item got rejected due to security reasons (either failed to follow through on the purchase commitment or outright refused to do so). Your last auctioned bid of US $75.00 prior to being outbided is taken into consideration as eBay policy automatically proclaims you to be the winner by default. Nevertheless,I need your agreement on this so I may contact eBay to confirm your winning position otherwise I'll relist the item. If you're interested please confirm by forwarding this message to e-mail and include your name, address and ebay ID. Thank you.

automatically i get doubtful because the seller didn't attempt to contact me through ebay, but instead headed straight to my inbox. and then asked for my address, name and ebay ID. but what's more suspicious is that i wasn't notified by ebay themselves about my winning the item by default. :confused:

something is fishy. nonetheless, i didn't respond to the email and when i went back and looked up the listing this is the message that i get:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=item%20# 170194048773

wow, had the seller actually contacted me through ebay, i may have given it a shot. almost got scammed. almost.

and how did the seller get my email address? i thought that ebay kept those secured? :irked:

[Scoobmd]

Glad that you were smart and ignored the email.
Interesting that he/she got your real email though.

Also- what was the feedback on the seller?

[samnoels]

to be honest, I don't remember the feedback score, but I don't bid on anything less than 99%, I even skimmed through the feedback comments and made sure to look to see if (she) has any feedback as a buyer. I take these precautions all the times.

But the email thing worries me, really. i'm going to look through this a little further and see how ebay allows for our email address to show. Especially since I haven't initiated any form of communication with the seller.

[missdiva]

They use programs to extract ebay member emails. Happens all the time. Can't do a thing about it. If your email is the same or very similar to your ebay id, change it - if they're identical you will get tons of spam. But even if its totally different they just use their programs and sell each other lists of emails and ebay ids. Ignore every email that even resembles that, and if its a real SCO, make sure its linked to a real listing and comes through 'ebay messages'.

[ahfrederick]

That's pretty scary if you ask me. Sad. Good thing you wern't scammed.

[kcurrin]

Glad you knew that something was up! Scammers are getting smarter everyday, and it's getting harder to avoid them.

[ar15kaizoku]

They just tried the same thing with me for a Surefire flashlight.

Unless it comes from eBay I just report it as spam.

[Wayne 1]

I'm happy you escaped without getting cheated. I buy only from 100% positive feedback Ebayers with lots of LONG term feedback. They have alot to lose by screwing around and are MUCH less likely to pull something.

[DaRtH CrAtHeN]

+1 on not getting caught up in the scam. It is sad that you people try to take advantage anyway they can. Just sad. :td:

[ar15kaizoku]

I'm happy you escaped without getting cheated. I buy only from 100% positive feedback Ebayers with lots of LONG term feedback. They have alot to lose by screwing around and are MUCH less likely to pull something.

That can work, but then there are people like me who are completely honest but were given negative feedback by bad buyers.

When I lived in Japan I sold car parts. I ALWAYS advertised that parts were as-is. Someone installed a part wrong and it caused problems. They left me negative feedback.

Another time I was boxing up an item for shipping and my girlfriend dropped it and it broke. I apologized and refunded the buyer's money immediately. He left negative feedback.

So now I'm stuck with less than 100% feedback because of what other people did over 4 years ago.

[samnoels]

thanks guys. yeah that was something. but i love ebay though:D

[sopasesos]

besides checking for positive feedback, and long-term membership... also take into consideration if the seller has been active recently. check when the last feedback was... accounts have been known to be hacked. so there may be situations where the account itself has positive feedback... but it's not the original member who's actually posting the item. use extreme caution.

[Wayne 1]

besides checking for positive feedback, and long-term membership... also take into consideration if the seller has been active recently. check when the last feedback was... accounts have been known to be hacked. so there may be situations where the account itself has positive feedback... but it's not the original member who's actually posting the item. use extreme caution.


Good point, so much for Ebay security.:ohcrap:

Many times I'll run a member search on an Ebayer I won an auction on and call'em on the phone. It's just another way to verify identity PRIOR to sending any money!

[otacon]

I buy all my phones on Ebay but I only buy from sellers that have a ton of feedback and that's their primary business. I might pay a few extra dollars but I've never been burned.

The only type of legit email would be if it was a 2nd chance offer if the winner couldn't/refused to pay. Don't click on any links in those emails either... even though it might say it's taking you ebay.com I promise you it's not... simple redirect... I've seen some VERY convincing ebay/paypal log-in pages... they even have a security certificate in some cases.

[thetoad]

Both Ebay and paypal should make it a policy not to send email with links. They both have internal mailboxes so they should just send email that say

"You have a message waiting for in your paypal/ebay secure inbox from XYZ with subject ABC. Please Login to paypal/ebay to check it".

[corrupt81]

And always use paypal, since you can easily dispute it if the seller tries to scam you. (Learned that the hard way when I sent a $500 money order for a Playstation 3 and never got it. Mine as well have put $500 cash in an envelope and dropped it on a random street somewhere.)

Being out half a grand due a scamming seller who needs to be locked up, I'm really cautious about who I buy from and will NEVER, ever, send out a money order again, regardless of the seller's excuse for not accepting paypal.

[Wayne 1]

Lots of advice in this thread........pay'em with a CC and Paypal for maximum protection. Banks (cc's) have helped me out several times with fraudulant companies, etc.;)

[missdiva]

its not pp thats the protection - its your credit card. if you pay through a balance or bank acct you're SOL in many cases.

also, many merchants take cc's not through pp...just be sure the page you enter in your # is secure and keep a close eye on your statements. a lot of sellers are fed up w/ PP and switched over to their own merchant account..

[grlnxtdr681]

I had the same thing happen to us. but the situation was reversed. We has won the item, and we got that same exact email. We reported the email to spoof@paypal.com. You can always forward those type of things to that address so it can be investigated. Also, to make sure that the page is secure, the address bar is supposed to be green. If it's not, you are on a phishing site.
Hope this helps!