Here's one: I recently put my 5DII up for sale on eBay, setting up a seven-day auction plus including a 'Buy it now' price that I figured was too high for anyone to take seriously.
Lo and behold, the very next morning I received a message saying my item had sold at the 'Buy it now' price.
The buyer messaged me and asked me to 'confirm the condition of the item', which I did, and then I sent him the eBay invoice. The note said the shipping address was in Indiana.
He responded by saying he'd notify me when payment for 'the item' was through. That evening, I received a message 'from eBay' saying in very poor grammar that 'payment been approved'. The visual look of the email was very well done, and anyone in a hurry might have considered it legitimate, but it was from an @secretary.net address. Shortly after that notice, the buyer told me the payment was through and to 'post the item' to a Nigeria address.
Well, it didn't take a genius to realize something was afoul (namely that I received no payment or attempt of payment), so I contacted eBay customer service, sent them the spoof 'payment been approved' email and set in motion the process of scrapping the transaction and starting again.
I used the eBay message system to send two notes to the supposed buyer that called him out and told him to pay up legitimately or to cancel the transaction.
His response was to email me directly, ask 'what's going on' and to ship the item so that I could put the tracking number into PayPal and subsequently receive the payment.
Thank god I didn't just fall off the turnip truck.
Kudos to eBay customer service. They jumped all over fixing the problem and expedited the resolution so that it was fixed in less than 24 hours. Their usual cancellation process takes several days. Needless to say, the fraudster is no longer registered with eBay and my camera is still safely in my little paws, awaiting a legitimate buyer.
Interested? And, no, I won't ship to Nigeria via Indiana.
Topic: Payment been approved (Read 1243 times)