Think I'm being scammed?

duner

I won a couple of auctions from a guy that doesn't appear to have ever sold anything on ebay. His feedback is 30 @96.7%. His auction accepts money orders and paypal. Originally I wasn't going to bid because the auction stated insurance not offered, but I emailed him and he said if I wanted insurance he would provide it. Either way, obviously I'm not going to send this guy a money order....but then I get this ebay user message from him:

"hello thanks for winning my wayne chrebet helmet. if you plan on paying through paypal please do not paypal eric xxx's acct it does not exist. please paypal me at xxx@yahoo.com.i dont know why e-bay has that on my acct thanks."

So I go and try to pay the alternate and get a paypal error message that basically states buyer/seller emails don't match and it won't allow me to proceed.

Using paypal isn't a cosmic adventure....and the only time I've ever been scammed on ebay was another ebayer playing stupid about his paypal acct. Obviously there's several red flags here....anyone seen anything similar to this?

Southsider

Yes, that's a MAJOR red flag. All the scammed ebay accounts have stuff like that in their listings, "Don't use ebay to contact me, email xsasrpoj132@yahoo.com." I would not pay, if I were you.

kingraider75

Why would you buy from someone with 96% feedback?? That's really low.

jimq112

<< <i>Why would you buy from someone with 96% feedback?? That's really low. >>



If you do 30 deals and get one retaliatory negative you're at 96%.

Also sometimes people sell things like cars/car parts and you really do get a lot of unwarranted negatives when you do that. I was helping a guy sell new car stereos, we sent every one insured and sent all but one or 2 the day payment arrived. Because he was always dealing with non-paying kids he got negatives every month.

All that said, if the helmet is something you really want then use ebay to get the guy's # and call him, see what's up and if it sounds ok use a postal money order. If it doesn't sound ok don't buy it.

I'm sensitive about people that criticize a "low" feedback number without seeing why. My # is 98.2 and I've never had a deal go bad from my side. I'm not afraid of giving a deserved negative and you always get them back.

Just my .02, I think you look sometimes at the "why".

tennesseebanker

When I once changed my e-mail address and didnt change it in the auction I had to email all my buyers and tell them to pay me at my new e-mail address through pay-pal. But what this guy is telling you seems strange. He had to of had that email at one time for it to be on his e-bay account, Ebay just didnt put it there. He may have hi-jacked someones account, but I dont know why he would bother doing that to someone with 30 feedbacks and not just set one up. SOuds strange, good luck....

duner

The only reason I bid was because I collect signed college mini helmets, and he had psa/dna signed by players that went to random schools....which rarely ever show up.

There's clearly something going on with this guy. Fortunately I have access to several data bases that give allow me to do public records searches and essentially stalk people....so far he won't give me a name, and will only provide me what appears to be a cell phone number because no permanent address will register to it. The biggest red flag is he wants me to send the money to a verified account...but it has be through the "send money" function, and listed as "other goods" via paypal.....which negates any paypal protection.

Fortunately I created a secondary account a while back so I could make high risk/high reward bids....without having to ever worry about my feedback.

I'm just going to start messing with this guy.

poppie

See if Ebay will verify his story. notification@ebay.com