Very good reading. Peace until next time.
WaltDe

Yup. I had to list a DVD player 3 times before it was finally bought by a non-scammer. And I had to block one bid on my third attempt (you can block buyers). The bid that I blocked looked like a scam and upon further investigation I found that it most certainly was (their max bid was $444 for a player that sells for $120). Now I’m debating whether or not to list a laptop on eBay. The eBay security leaves something to be desired.

Not sure if you’ll get this, but I’m in this exact situation right now and was looking for some advice as to how I should report the person who won? I think the second chance person is legit, as we have emailed back and forth on questions about the laptop, so I feel like it’s legit. Anyhow, this sucks, and I totally feel your pain right now.

Hey Jake. My advice is to require a phone number and call to speak with them personally. I found this to weed out most scammers. Also, if you have any direct emails from the bidder, check their email headers and do a geographical lookup on the originating IP address. If the bidder says they’re from Ohio, but the headers say Nigeria, then that can be an indication that they are lying to you.

My 3rd auction for this particular laptop wound up being dubious as well - not sure if the winner was a scammer but they started mentioning needing to use some alternate payment method or whatever and I just gave up on ebay at that point. I don’t know how the retail guys are even doing it these days.

I think ebay has taken steps to protect the buyer from fraud and scammers have just adapted to ripping off sellers now instead because with a stolen paypal account it’s easy for them. Laptops are as good as cash.

If I ever choose to sell on ebay again what I will do is refuse to ship to anybody that isn’t a confirmed PayPal account and even still I’ll wait about a week or so after payment is sent. Sucks for the honest buyers out there, but it is just way to easy to get scammed. eBay and PayPal aren’t doing anything to protect the sellers.

Good luck with your laptop - don’t be afraid to cancel the auction if you smell a rat! Better than loosing hundreds of dollars.

I’m going through the same thing on ebay….I’m on my 3rd. attempt. What’s a gal to do? These scammers are ruining it for everyone!!!

Hey Julie, I feel your pain. I decided that if I sell a laptop again I’m going to use craig’s list or the local want ads and require the buyer to meet me in person with cash. Probably won’t get as much money, but selling laptops on eBay is a real crap-shoot.

To add to my previous comments, I might suggest selling on ebay using their recommended escrow service. Unfortunately there are a number of scammers that use fake escrow services and as such it may scare off some buyers who are suspicous of using escrow at all. However, you could link to ebay’s page at http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/payment-escrow.html and insist that you will only sell the item using ebay’s recommended escrow service. In the case of PayPal, they happily accept money from stolen accounts and credit cards and the seller gets shafted when the charge is reversed. This is perfect for the scammers because it takes a few days for the charges to be reversed - exactly the amount of time that most people would have shipped out the laptop. I am pretty sure by nature of an escrow service, they cannot take the money back.