eBay Story

So, I've been meaning to post about a crazy eBay story that happened to Dave and I a few weeks ago. We were selling our PlayStation 2 so that Dave can buy a Nintendo Wii. Yeah, because that's what we need. Anyhow, back to my story.

We've been buying/selling stuff on eBay since 2002. So we're pretty familiar with the process.

I woke up early on Saturday the 15th to get ready for a wedding shower. I went and checked eBay and saw that someone had bought the PlayStation. This was great. The guy who bought it emailed my Yahoo account. Here's his email.

Hi Seller,
Am glad to get back to you in regards to the payment for the eBay item. I am so happy to be the winning bidder of this item. Well i bought this item as a gift for my son who is currently studying foreign language in west Africa and i am so sorry for not getting you aware before. I have sent the payment via PayPal and i have received the confirmation that you have been sent the confirmation of the payment. Moreover, i included the shipping cost of the item to the payment, so just get me informed immediately the item is shipped first thing in the morning and make sure the item is shipped via USPS Global Express Mail EMS. My son's address is:
Name: O.F.Martins
Address: Transformer Road Oluyole Estate
City: IbadanState: Oyo State
Country: NigeriaPost Code: 23402P
hone #: +2348063014998

Thats the shipping address and i want you to get back to me as soon as you ship out the item and thanks for the concept of the business...

I was a little surprised by the email because he was SO BOSSY...and he was telling me to ship the PlayStation to Nigeria! NIGERIA!! Hello, the eBay listing said we would only ship in the United States!! So I printed the email so I could read it to Dave who was in bed sick. Before I logged off the computer though, I looked at my Yahoo account, and there was a PayPal email indicating that the eBay buyer had paid an extra $100 to account for the shipping to Nigeria.

So I went and told Dave. He was not happy about the whole thing and used a few superlatives to express his irritation. I just said, whatever, the guy paid an extra $100. If it costs more then that, I'm not going to ship it. Dave was fine with that.

So, after we packed up the PlayStation and printed out an address label, Dave was getting ready to bring it to the car. I ran back in the house for one more thing....and said "You know what, I'm going to login to my PayPal account and verify that the payment came through because of this whole Nigeria business". I logged into PayPal, and sure as shit, the money wasn't there. Wasn't pending, wasn't nothing! No where to be seen was this almost $200 dollars. So, I printed the PayPal email to read it in more detail. That's when I noticed it didn't look right.

Here is an excerpt from the email that was in fine print at the very bottom:
NOTE: This PayPal® payment has been deducted from the buyer's account and has been " APPROVED" but will not be credited to your account until the shipment reference/tracking number is sent to us for shipment verification so as to secure both inequalities (Buyer & Seller) from online fraudulent activities.

Below are the necessary information requested before your account will be credited.You will have to email us the tracking number to the PayPal Customer Care at: paypal@accountsverification.net .

As soon as we receive the shipment tracking number from you, you will receive a " CONFIRMATION EMAIL" concerning the accreditation of the funds into your PayPal Account and we shall get the funds credited into your PayPal Account within 24 hours.

I also noticed that the email was sent from:
"service@paypal.com" paypal@accountsverification.net

I called PayPal and they said it was a scam.
1. They never require a tracking number for shipment to be given before payment is received
2.The email came from a non-PayPal website (accountsverification.net)
3.A legitimate PayPal email would be addressed to me, by my full name, NOT my email address.

We almost shipped our PlayStation to Nigeria at the cost of $100+ in shipping!!!

Can you believe that? Nuts. Dave called eBay to tell them, and they told him that the eBay user name that was being used, has had this problem. Someone has hijacked a "good" eBayers account using a third party software and is doing all of these scams. So, if you ever sell something to an "Eric Diehl" or "ericdieheric" then watch your wallet!

Lesson learned for us. Fortunately, we didn't ship anything, or lose any money. Take it as a lesson learned. Make sure your emails from PayPal are really from PayPal.com. Otherwise, if you click on one of the links in the fraud email, you may expose your personal banking information. Lucky for us we didn't click on any of the links.