File under: eBay

I recently listed an item for sale on eBay. I was going through my excess electronics and found an item I can sell for a decent price. As I listed the product, little did I know that I’d have a great tale to share with my readers. So here we go.

During the week of the auction I received dozens of fake emails requesting side deals. Example:

Hello,
I am interested in the purchase of your ____ on ebay .It is to be shipped internationally so i am willing to pay the sum of [___] for it.I Will like it sent to my daughter in West Africa(is it suitable for documentation purposes?) and I will be making the payment via MONEY ORDER by Travelex payments.Kindly get back to me with your name address and two valid email addresses if you are interested and i will proceed with sending the payment immediately.You can send me an email on [___@___]

Several hours prior to the end of the auction, I noticed that the new high bidder was from the UK. He looked reputable (based on feedback) but I had clearly stated that this was a US only auction. I quickly sent him a note telling him of this limitation. just before the end of the auction, I received a legitimate email from eBay entitled “Notice: Administrative Bid Cancellation” informing me that this bidder was actually a fraudulently used account.

Great — so it’s fraud. And what does eBay do about it? NOTHING!

They don’t cancel the auction, they don’t cancel the fraudulent bids, they don’t allow me to re-list the auction, instead they tell me it’s fraud and let me deal with it through a dispute mechanism.

Here is where it gets unfair. Had the fraudulent bidder not won the auction, then the rightful winner would have, in a sense, overpaid because the final price was inflated by fraudulent bids. Interestingly enough, eBay ends up making more money if the product sells for a higher value.

So now I’m trying to follow the instructions from the email to file a dispute and, of course, the instructions are incorrect and vague. At that point I’m told that I either have to wait one week to resolve this dispute or get the other person (a fraudulent account) to agree that the deal is off.

Then the fun begins. Are you ready for some great fake Nigerian emails? First is a fake notice that the account was not a fake after all:

Then the fake PayPal payment (I blocked out all important info except for our Nigerian friend’s address):

Finally, the alleged “buyer” sends me an email in which he misspells his first and last name in a couple of different ways, asking me to send him the item.

So here I am with this library of fake emails on a failed transaction and who is to blame? eBay. They figured out that fraud occurred and did nothing about it by allowing this criminal to win this item. I tried to contact eBay and so far all I was able to get was an online chat session with a CST (presumably in India) who could not do a thing to help.

I sit here wondering how much of eBay is fraud and can it be trusted? They have the largest and probably most useful online auction service but it’s clear to me that it’s a cesspool of scams. I’m really worried about how much of this goes unnoticed or how many users fall for this.

Update: My Nigerian hasn’t given up yet. Today I received this:

Followed by this:

Update II: Our long national nightmare is over: