Rant! - Nigerian Scammers Infiltrate Ebay

[stephent3]

Im going to go insane.

I could deal with the random letters coming from Nigeria claiming I had somehow been given $10 million from some weird trust fund that I had never heard of, and asking to send over all my bank details.

I laughed at the bad grammer and the random words which they used to try make it sound more 'professional' (yeah right!). I also amused myself in the fact that they would use a letterhead which had a 5x5 resolution and was stretched all over and randomly placed, and you would have thought that when they are giving me £10 million they could afford more expensive paper, or at least some white paper.

BUT! when they start bidding on my items on ebay and asking me to send them to ther friends in Nigeria they have gone TOO FAR!
The thing that annoys me most is that they still make it so obvious who they are:

Mine had changed their user id twice in the last month, with the last change on the day of their first bid!

They send email messages pretending to be ebay and paypal. ermmm, mate when I log onto my account to transfer fund to my bank so i can pay to deliver the item I'll see that you've not paid, thanks.

Plus wouldnt it be easier for you to get me to send it to ur dodgy mates in the UK and then forward it to Nigeria urself, that would make it look less dodgy and the fact that I have already said I won't ship outside the UK should make you think again, I never knew international delivery cost only £2. Cock.


hmmmmm

Rant over,

Stephent3

[Leepox]

the best thing you can do is ignore em scammers

[stephent3]

pretty hard to ignore when they just keep coming back and bidding on my auctions!

[Stigggeh]

YEP... UK only bidders and UK only post. (and verified paypal address' only) is a start.

i think you can actually filter out most of them by only allowing UK bids

[chrisg22]

YEP... UK only bidders and UK only post. (and verified paypal address' only) is a start.

i think you can actually filter out most of them by only allowing UK bids

Yeah that would probably be your best bet at stopping them. They are all just a bunch of idiots, you should email them offering them a laptop and make them pay for the delivery on their end, just stick a brick in a box and mail it.

[Parm]

I had a rant about this last year when the exact same stuff was happening to me: http://www.parmmann.com/2006/09/12/why-i-dislike-ebay/

As suggested here, there are a few countermeasures against these problems. I'd definately recommend making your auctions available only to people in your country, who don't have a negative feedback score and who do have a registered paypal account.

[redsky009]

YEP... UK only bidders and UK only post. (and verified paypal address' only) is a start.

i think you can actually filter out most of them by only allowing UK bids

Problem is most of them hijack UK or European accounts anyway so it looks like they have good feedback, people really need to be smarter when it comes to protecting your eBay username/password