Ebay Woes
I’ve been trying to sell my old Windows Mobile cell phone that I replaced with the iPhone on Ebay for over a month now. My first buyer was a new Ebay user from Baltimore who didn’t pay. Ebay doesn’t make it easy to get a credit for selling fees so it took several weeks to work through that process. Plus, I didn’t want to relist the phone, because I held out hope after speaking to the buyer and receiving an email where he promised to pay that he actually might. Alas he didn’t, so I relisted the phone 10 days ago. This time I decided to broaden the audience so I agreed to ship internationally thinking there might be a market in Europe. Bad mistake. Now my buyer is from Nigeria. After winning the auction, he has sent several fake Ebay and Paypal emails stating he has paid, but Paypal won’t release payment until I ship him the phone.
A search of his UserID shows positive feedback for purchasing a number of 15 cent Star Trek badges. The search also showed that in addition to my cell phone, he won over $30,000 worth of Ebay auctions for other electronics just yesterday. Hmm. When I insisted via email that I wouldn’t send him the phone until the money was in my account, he responded as follows:
“i have made the payment and the money has been deducted from my account.. ok?.. so i will want you to send the item ASAP and send the shipment tracking number to paypal for verification and you can also contact their customers help at paypalcustomershelp@streamingmoney.com for the payment confirmation .. ok.. thanks i wait to hear from you .. “
I responded to him that streamingmoney.com was not a valid Paypal URL and given he had won so many auctions yesterday, he must be a wealthy man so I would patiently await payment.
With such shenanigans plus the other spam I receive posing as questions for products I've listed, Ebay is becoming a real bear to use.