So, I put a laptop for sale on the bay with some trepidation as I know that electronics auction are rife with scammers - and I've been affected in the past (super high fake bids on my items so that they don't sell).
So, to avoid that I put the following rules in my auction details:
- anyone with under 20 successful transactions to pay by bank transfer only (other via paypal)
- payment should be completed within 24h
So this guy wins the auction and I get an immediate payment via paypal. I check the details and the name on the paypal address is different than his email name. Also his email is from an eastern european webmail provider.
Not particularly worrying of course - I was going to ship to the registered address anyway. However, looking at his feedback I saw that he had 11 transactions, all done over the past 3-5 days, for items worth around £5 (some miniature dolls, cables etc.). That got me worried.
So, I emailed him back explaining that I only accept bank transfer for bidders with under 20 transactions as per my auction detail, and refunded him the paypal money.
He then comes back and says that he is new to this and doesn't know how to do a bank transfer, asking for instructions.
I send him the instructions and wait. One day passes so I contact him again to ask if he is still interested in the item, and that if he is he should complete the payment within 24h or I will have to re-auction the item.
To which he replies that he is still new to all this and doesn't know how to do it, and he is also out of town for the next 3 days so he won't take it after all.
So what do you think? Did I avoid being scammed or could he be legit bidder? The only thing I cannot reconcile about it being a scam is how could he get the laptop since I was going to send it to the paypal verified address, but then maybe he is working with the paypal owner who can then go on and claim he was hacked etc.
So, to avoid that I put the following rules in my auction details:
- anyone with under 20 successful transactions to pay by bank transfer only (other via paypal)
- payment should be completed within 24h
So this guy wins the auction and I get an immediate payment via paypal. I check the details and the name on the paypal address is different than his email name. Also his email is from an eastern european webmail provider.
Not particularly worrying of course - I was going to ship to the registered address anyway. However, looking at his feedback I saw that he had 11 transactions, all done over the past 3-5 days, for items worth around £5 (some miniature dolls, cables etc.). That got me worried.
So, I emailed him back explaining that I only accept bank transfer for bidders with under 20 transactions as per my auction detail, and refunded him the paypal money.
He then comes back and says that he is new to this and doesn't know how to do a bank transfer, asking for instructions.
I send him the instructions and wait. One day passes so I contact him again to ask if he is still interested in the item, and that if he is he should complete the payment within 24h or I will have to re-auction the item.
To which he replies that he is still new to all this and doesn't know how to do it, and he is also out of town for the next 3 days so he won't take it after all.
So what do you think? Did I avoid being scammed or could he be legit bidder? The only thing I cannot reconcile about it being a scam is how could he get the laptop since I was going to send it to the paypal verified address, but then maybe he is working with the paypal owner who can then go on and claim he was hacked etc.
