eBay woes

[malfunction]

Dear Seller,

Thank you for making me the winning buyer of your item Motorola V3i 'RAZR' in black, new and boxed (********), I will like to purchase these Item for my Son's as a Birthday gift .He skool in British America International college skool there in West Africa, i might not be able to be checking my mails often.So i will be offering £220.00 for the item and postage to Nigeria .I want the item posted via Royal Mail International Signed to Him. hope the package will get to him in good condition ..What is the present condition of this item and does it comes in it's original box?.I will be paying you for the item via which i will be paying with POSTAL ORDER, so get back to me with your full name and address where payment will be made to.
MANY THANKS

Sound dodgy or what?

Am not intending to sell to this person as even though they aren't asking for bank details, etc as yet I'm sure there's something going on here. (Auction did say UK only anyway so I guess I'll have to just re-list and wait a few days until I can ask for a fees refund...)

[Stoo]

Well, you've said UK bidders only, so therefore his bid is invalid anyway..

I'd never sell anything overseas on ebay anyway..

[rox0r]

Scammer, report him.

[malfunction]

Thanks guys - have already sent a complaint to ebay:

Hi,

The following item was sold using buy it now and then I am contacted by the buyer, ********, with the following email:

Dear Seller,

Thank you for making me the winning buyer of your item Motorola V3i 'RAZR' in black, new and boxed (********), I will like to purchase these Item for my Son's as a Birthday gift .He skool in British America International college skool there in West Africa, i might not be able to be checking my mails often.So i will be offering £220.00 for the item and postage to Nigeria .I want the item posted via Royal Mail International Signed to Him. hope the package will get to him in good condition ..What is the present condition of this item and does it comes in it's original box?.I will be paying you for the item via which i will be paying with POSTAL ORDER, so get back to me with your full name and address where payment will be made to.
MANY THANKS

I stated in the auction terms that I would post to the UK only. As such - and moreover that the above email sounds like some kind of scam / too good to be true (newly registered member with no feedback offering an extra £70 on the BIN price to send the phone to Nigeria of all places!) I would like a refund on all the insertion and final value fees for this item.

I would also like to know why you listed this item on eBay *India* as I did say in the auction that I would post within the *UK* only (via tick boxes, not free text so you should not have shown this on any site other than eBay UK!)

Regards,

Steve

[autopilot]

Ah, the classic Nigerian phone scam. I have had it countless times.

What would have happened if you had agreed to the sale to him, is this - You would have had an email from a really **** fake website, telling you that 'virtual' postal orders were ready for you. For security reasons, the postal orders would not be released to you until you have dispatched the item and entered the shipping details and parcel number into the website. Sounds silly, but many people have actually been stupid enough to fall for this.

In future, take these few simple steps and it should not happen again;

1) Make sure you go into the extra eBay options and select the option that says 'don't allow people from outside the shipping area to bid' (or whatever it's called). Just because you only list shipping to the UK does not not mean people anywhere in the world can't bid.

2) Select the option that only allows people with PayPal accounts to bid, even if you will accept other methods. The scammers rarely have PayPal accounts.

3) Sellect the option that does not allow people with a feedback rating of less than 1.

If you follow those steps when listing phones (or anything) they physically can't place a bid, the system won't let them. Without this, even if you spot a scammer who had bid, they will mess the acution up for you and cost you money if you have to relist it.

[malfunction]

Thanks Dom - top tips there - can you tell I haven't used ebay that much in recent times? Have set the auction up to block the b*'s now

[jackofalltrades]

awesome tips!

[flcherb]

I Have had a few of these scams sent to me as well i sold two phones last year and one of them was the same as what you had the email and all. Seems that they cant even be bothered to change the emails.

Herb

[akacor]

I had the nigerian scam happen to me last month when i auctioned a dell laptop, ended up havin to pay £6 fees tho it didnt sell as I made numberous complaints to kick him off ebay! What a load of trouble tho. Had a £40 invoice before that!

[Breeze]

Excellent tips dangerous_dom, I never even knew those options were available.