Victim of an Ebay scam

bartsimpson

I've just sold my PSP on ebay, the high bidder I've just found out lives in the US (I stated that I would only deliver the item within the UK), and wants me to send it to their grandson in Nigeria.

At the mere mention of Nigeria, alarm bells started going off so I googled Nigerian ebay scam and it appears this happens a lot. I am according to some similar victims about to receive a fake paypal confirmation email from the high bidder, at which point they hope I send the item to them.

I am so f**ked off with this - I really wanted to get this sold for the optimum price before Xmas - now I presumably have to wait for their fake email to prove that they are attempting a scam before I can report it to ebay.

If this drags out for another couple of days I will not be able to deliver before xmas and the price I would have got for the item will drop considerably.

Does anyone have any advice on what I can do in this situation, because I am at my wits end and very, very angry at the moment!!!

Thanks in advance for any help with this

Jay-Jay_4

Look on the bright side, at least you're clever enough to have figured it out and you haven't been conned.

You're not obliged to sell it to him as you stated UK bidders only. You can offer it to the next highest bidder.

impy78

Well, they will help you to re-sell it - they usually do.

A It is not their verfied address, advise that you will only send the item to a verfied address IN THE UK asstated in the auction.
They will almost certainly refuse to pay by paypal (or any other means other than transfer) Advise them you do not accept bank transfer.


Could you put up a link to the auction, please, or list the payment options that you have put on the auction.

bartsimpson

impy78 wrote:

They will almost certainly refuse to pay by paypal (or any other means other than transfer) Advise them you do not accept bank transfer.


Could you put up a link to the auction, please, or list the payment options that you have put on the auction.

They have offered to pay via paypal, but this is what people on other forums have warned of - they send you a fake confirmation email in the hope that you wont bother to check your paypal account.

I've just offered it as a 'second chance offer' to the next highest bidder, so I suppose I'll have to see what happens?

jennie-flower

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link to ebay's forums but this thread might be of some use to anyone that's had their auctions wrecked by nigerian scammers. I refer to it regularly. Please let me know if I'm not supposed to post this here!

http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?threadID=1100052295&tstart=0&mod=1166395427894

tomstickland

Yes, it'll be a scam. Contact the next highest bidder and see if they'll take it.

mrmilo69

could you tell me their ebay username as the exact same thing just happened to me, it could be the same person. The person in question for me had a username of zanfactor. They were also based in the USA but asked to be sent to nigeria

Daz

bartsimpson wrote:

I am so f**ked off with this - I really wanted to get this sold for the optimum price before Xmas - now I presumably have to wait for their fake email to prove that they are attempting a scam before I can report it to ebay.

Well..... I might get told off for this! But I had a similar situation about a month ago. An obvious scammer did a buy it now on a mobile phone I was selling for a friend. My friend wanted the phone sold pretty sharpish, so I decided to simply re-list it. It sold 2 days later. Although I've done the report, I've not heard from the timewasting scammer since, and the genuine buyer paid up really quickly, so my friend is happy.

So, if you know there's not a chance in hell that you will ever be actually sending your item to this person, re-list tomorrow (using the anti-scammer filters this time!) and let ebay deal with the scammer.

bartsimpson

Thanks for all the advice.

my next q is, why do all these scams originate from Nigeria? Is it just a country full of bent criminals?

frivolous_fay

Nigerians who make a lot of money by scamming westerners do have quite a bit of kudos with their countrymen.

The 419 fraud is the big one... that's where people are defrauded for up to thousands of pounds by pretending they have large amounts of money to dispose of, often posing as a pastor in a Nigerian church... on ebay they tend to offer more money than your asking price, and ask you to send it to their 'cousin' in Nigeria... the money never materialises, or bounces, or they persuade their victims to send items before they have actually been paid.

smartie1976

When you set up your auction you need to set the "countries I ship to" preferences to UK only.

That'll stop any "US" or other country scammers.
Won't stop people who register as UK and ask to be shipped abroad though.