Mobile Phone Purchase - Scam? What do do?

patwa_2

Hello all.

I would be grateful if someone could advise me about this.

I bought the following item item on eBay:
Nokia N91 Mobile Phone

The buyer wants me to pay by Western Union. I am aware about how dodgy this could potentially be, but was wondering a couple of things:

I have not sent payment yet due to illness. If I were to send payment now and then it turned out that the item was not shipped, would I be eligible for any assistance with resolving the matter through eBay, from eBay?

Likewise, would Nationwide, and by proxy Visa Credit Card Services cover the transaction as a fraudulent payment – payment towards goods and services that were not provided?

If I decided not to go ahead, what is the likelihood of the seller filling a Non-Paying-Bidder alert against me? If this happened, and I continued to refuse to pay due to a potential scam, what action could I expect against me?

Would you say it is better to wait another week or so before doing anything, or should I just go ahead and buy the same model of phone now, but from a different seller at a more expensive price?

Honestly life is just so stressful these days and this really is the last thing I need so I’d like to have some idea of what to do one wy or the other.

Cheers and take care.

Hussein.

Browntoa

j98hjhj(private) No longer registered with eBay

SCAM

soolin

You are about to be scammed. Just for a start ebay have banned the use of Western Union purely because it is the favoured method of payment for scammers...

oh, just seen the seller is NARU'd now, so walk away and breathe a sigh of relief that you delayed payment.

Soo

soolin

patwa for future reference be careful with low feedback users selling phones, also be careful, or avoid entirely buying where you can't use paypal backed by a credit card.

This particular buyer should have rang warning bells, very few sales registered in Sweden but item in China? You should have run a mile.

Incidentally, just as an aside you only have one itme in your shop, do you realise you are paying £6 a month to keep your shop open? I hate to see ebay getting money for nothing.

soolin

Sorry--final post, patwa your message box is full can you please clear some posts so that I can pm you.


Thank you,

Hintza

This is a great example to use as a learning aid on how to spot scammers:-

1. Feedback private

2. If feedback was not private and you were able to check the seller had a rating of 10 positive feedbacks you will discover that this will be a ring of different feedbacks with many not now registered. They set up a about 10-13 such accounts and cross feedback each other.

3. 10 positive feedbacks enhances your selling account on EBay and feedback around 10-15 should be treated with caution.

4. His first real feedback was a negative (there will be more buyers who will now wish they had left a neg faster)

5. Seller location Sweden (fine on its own but see 6)

6. Item location China. Why not the same place (but could be dropshipping) so that is another anomaly.

7. No payments specified...followed up by a demand for Western Union.

8. Stock photo (however when selling new stuff I use stock photos)

9. Price too cheap (if it looks too good it probably is) however assuning seller was legitimate and item was coming from China you would have VAT, duty and charges of +/- 20% to add to the all in price.

Would newbies please look at this auction carefully so you can start to read the tell tale signs.

If I have missed anything maybe the old hands could add to my list.

patwa_2

Hi. Thanks for that.

I didn't realise eBay had banned Western Union. If I had I would never have wasted the time calling them up and checking rates, etc.

Yes, I was suspicious about the China thing, but I also thought about dropshipping so just passed it off.

I admit I never considered the possibility of the seller just waiting to get to 10 to enhance his account.

I know about my shop. I'm just starting out, and frankly I'm not averse to paying for it, have already had some offline sales as a result. When I'm feeling better and life becomes that little bit less stressful I'll be populating it with more items.

What is NARU'd?

I'm going to clear my Inbox now.

Thanks for preventing me from making a mistake. I still ask though, would either Nationwide or Visa have been able to cover me for this, or would eBay's ban on Western Union have desolved that cover?

Cheers and take care.

Hussein.

Hintza

NARU = Not a registered user or No longer a registered user

Western Union is a cash transaction and I very much doubt you would have been covered.

One point to note Western Union is in itself an efficient way of getting money to people in far flung parts of the world and is safe to use for transfering money. The problem arises because you are transfering money to someone (you don'y know) and once they have recieved it it is gone. Your are therefore trusting a stranger to fulfill there part of the bargain.

Road_Hog

Hintza wrote:

If I have missed anything maybe the old hands could add to my list.

When dealing with seller or buyers, if suspicious, ask for an email address from a UK ISP service provider. Scammers tend to like to hide behind Hotmail & Yahoo accounts, if they're johny foreigner they won't have a UK ISP account and to be honest you should be very careful of buying high value items from abroad.

If they're a UK based scammer they won't want to give a UK ISP email as this is traceable.

patwa_2

Thanks. I guess the thing about e-mail addresses holds true for myself too. I have used my Yahoo address or a while now for my Amazon sales, but am now switching to fastmail as they offer IMAP. When I get my new broadband in 3 weeks I'll move over to using their e-mail address.

Thanks again.

Cheers and take care.

Hussein.

Hintza

Road_Hog wrote:

If they're a UK based scammer they won't want to give a UK ISP email as this is traceable.

I have a few accounts and to link them via yahoo or hotmail account you have to jump through a lot more hoops to activate it.

I was at one point going to open up an account for scam busting some thing like "youthievingscumbag" but gave up ..EBay wanted too much info to allow me to run away and hide