An eBay Cautionary Tale

[VC10]

Yesterday an auction for a B & O Serenata phone I was selling came to an end. The lucky winner was a Laura Smith of Chicago. Iwas a little suspicious of this person as she had only registered on eBay yesterday and had a '0' rating.

I googled the phone she had on her invoice addy, that turned out to be the Illinois Governors office number. I then Googled Earthed her address and that was the approach road to the Chicago Planetarium.A road devoid of any housing development. Laura also emailed me requesting I send the phone to Lagos Nifgeria

Naturallally I reported this to eBay who suspended the account and refunded my charges. Since then I have had a few more emails as follows.

1. The following is a notice from eBay Trust & Safety regarding:

Item Number - 250375377059
Item Title - Bang and Olufsen Serenata Mobile Phone.

Our records show that you were a seller of this item.We recently made a mistake by removing all of Mrs Laura Smith active listings and mistakenly suspended and cancelled the buyer's trading privileges.We have since appologised to the buyer.

We like to let you know that Mrs Laura Smith is the rightful owner of the account.So it is just alright that we update our database to adjust to the change in the buyer's informations before the new informations can be accredited,that was why we notified you initially to maintain safety on all sides.We are sorry for any inconvinience this might have caused you.We have now confirmed that Mrs Laura Smith is the REAL owner of the account,so we employ you to continue the transaction with her and make sure that you post out the item that she has paid you via paypal to the address she notified to you.Transactions for items listed on eBay are not to be completed outside of the eBay marketplace, because these transactions are covered by the Buyer/seller Protection services offered by eBay only .

Our goal is to ensure that your ebay experience is safe so that you can buy/sell confidently.It is on a rare occassion that things go wrong with transactions on ebay, but we're here to help you protect your interest in the event it does.
Regards,

eBay Trust & Safety Department.

2. From Paypal
We have received messages from Mrs Laura Smith about the payments notification message that you have received concerning your money for an item: Bang and Olufsen Serenata Mobile Phone.

Due to the numerous amount of complains gotten from buyers that after payments has been made, they do not get their item been sent out, we have decided to place your money on Pending to the time you confirm the shipment to us and then we credit your Paypal Account immediately.

We also want to advise you that you should not provide the Buyer, Mrs Laura Smith with the tracking number or reference number until the money has been credited into your PayPal Account, once you carry out the shipments, please send the tracking number to us so that we can credit your Paypal Account immediately, then you can provide it to the Buyer, Mrs Laura Smith.

If you can carry out the postage today, we will credit your Paypal Account immediately, once we get and confirm the shipments which would be carried out through Royalmail International Signed For as concluded by you and the Buyer, Mrs Laura Smith.

Here is the delivery address below:
ADEWALE EMMANUEL
20 AKINBIYI STREET,
IKEJA
LAGOS STATE
NIGERIA
23401



I suppose they chose me as although I have bought numerous item from eBay I have never sold anything before so they assumed I would be a bit green.

[TSR2]

A top tip, when selling anything on ebay, state clearly in your terms that you will only ship to a verified address. I will only ship to UK verified addresses and although some people don't like that, its tough, they are my conditions of sale. ;-)

[AllanL]

Are you ure that those emails came from ebay and paypal, and not Mrs Smith/Cross-dresser of Lagos?

The first one looks decidedly suss in the use of the english language in the second paragraph - even to an enjinear. :roll:

ebay mobile phone scams involving Nigeria are as notorious as the 491 scams!

[TSR2]

Agree with Allan, they don't look like real emails at all. When cotacting Ebay or Paypal, always do so via their website. Never reply to emails which "seem" to come from Ebay or Paypal. I get at least a dozen emails reporting to be from ebay every week and my spam software bins them for me as they are all fake.

[VC10]

Are you ure that those emails came from ebay and paypal, and not Mrs Smith/Cross-dresser of Lagos?

The first one looks decidedly suss in the use of the english language in the second paragraph - even to an enjinear. :roll:

ebay mobile phone scams involving Nigeria are as notorious as the 491 scams!

I am sure that they do NOT come from eBay/Paypal, but you can see how gullible people can be sucked in.

[Filonian]

Off topic, apologies, but the following happened to me: -

About a month ago I received a telephone call from someone purporting to be from a tax office to inform me that I was entitled to a rebate due to a mistake in my tax code, and needingto know which bank account I wanted it to be paid into.

When I refused to impart my bank account details, said person grumbled that this meant sending a letter.

I said, you will have to send me a letter anyway, to notify my corrected code, so just put the cheque in that.

To date, nothing. A call to my tax office has revealed that no call was logged out from there to me.

Before I was asked for my details, I was suspicious anyway, who the hell is still working in a tax office at 17.30?

Just thought I would drop this in as a warning, though I am sure you all wise enough not to fall for it.

Graham

[ianhind]

Similar tale in the Money Section of last Saturday's Daily Telegraph of someone being hoaxed by apparent eBay e-mails.

They sent a £2000 saxophone to Nigeria as a result - no comeback after investigation since nothing was genuine.

[nigelb]

Although the ebay notices are a little better than most scam attempts, the first clue in all of these is the poor use of the English language and awkwardness of the composition. You would think these scam artists would employ someone that could write concise English sentences. Thank heavens they don't.

Nigel²

[SkippyBing]

I don't know, the English seems pretty good compared to some of the stuff the youth of today come out with. Benefits of a proper British education system, the Nigerians I meant.
I used to see the same sort of English in Bangladesh in the papers, they used sentence construction and words that had long since gone out of vogue in the UK but I'm guessing they hadn't bought any new text books for a few decades.