<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by JonNYC:
Good.
As an aside, there seems to be a ton of fraudulent activity on eBay lately. Just this week, two auctions I was bidding on, for an extremely high-end espresso machine, were terminated early by eBay security. In each case, I had contacted the seller (two different sellers who I'm pretty sure were the same person-- selling very similar units) and the seller(s) responded, very unprofessionally and imploring me to use Western Union (which you should never do with an unknown party) to immediately pay them and they would end the auction early. One seller provided an address in Manhattan which doesn't exist the other was so spooky and evasive that I e-mailed eBay about them-- and eBay e-mailed my simultaneously (our e-mails "crossed in the mail".)
In one case the person was new, with no feedback (which is why I contacted them.) In the other the person had a nice amount of positive feedback-- but all as a buyer, all for postcards and the like at about $3- $5 a piece. Building up a little "credit" as it were. This was his first sale and the item would go for close to $1500 or so.
I personally have never had a bad eBay experience but lately I hear some real horror stories.
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Jon,
I was PREVIOUSLY like you. I've been on Ebay since day 1. I had nothing but great experiences. Then one day last December I bought a "brand new Dell X200 laptop computer" for $1500 that included everything new in the box. It arrived and sure enough it was perfect. Then 2 days later something happened and it wouldn't work. I called Dell and turns out the laptop was "stolen in transit" to the original owner. Dell had me give them the name of the purchaser and Ebay ID.
I called the seller, whom by the way had a high # of positive feedbacks. (I'm no Ebay rookie). Anyway, he sounded worried but told me to return the item and he would credit my paypal.com account. 2 Days after returning it he did in fact issue a credit. The San Francisco Police department called me a day later and had me give all this information. I'm not sure if the seller even was the guilty party but it was clear the units were stolen. Moral of the story. Be careful on Ebay no matter how long you've been conducting transactions.