CherryPopper

For quite a while now i've been watching ebay for a new lighting console as they are quite expensive to get brand new, over $10,000 for a good one. So i figured if i just waited a while one might pop up on ebay & sure enough it did.

A Jands Hog 500 Lighting Controller Console High End popped up for sale it was from a venue that was closing down in the US and was in great condition. The pics looked good and the seller even had pics of the slight nic in the wood so it looked like a genuine seller even though he had a 0 rating & was his first time on eBay. Now i'm always cautious on eBay and read through the item description carefully and any extra info like postage etc. It all seemed to be legit even with the 0 seller status.

So i started to bid and ended up winning it for $3,552.00 which is a great price, its not quite in "too good to be true" territory but still on the cheaper end of what you could pay for a used desk. So i got an email asking for payment from the seller & this when things started to get a bit iffy!!

I was at work when the bidding ended as i had used Auction Sniper, its a site that puts in a maximum bid 5 seconds before the auction closes to give you a better chance at winning. So when i got home i had 4 emails from the seller with the "invoice" and another email asking me if i got the "invoice" emails? Now this guy is a first time seller & he's sending official looking invoices like he's a top seller?

Here is a copy of his email

As you can see he's crapping on about getting payment through western union, which is NOT convered by eBay at all and they have warnings all over their site about NOT using services like western union for eBay payment. On the listing he had listed paypal as the preferred option of payment which i was happy to do. He also stated he would cover the shipping & insurance costs which seemed odd.

Now I thought to give him the benefit of doubt and emailed him saying NO to using western union but paypal would be ok & asked him how it would be shipped, how long it would take & what customs info i needed to get the desk into Australia as it was in the US. He emailed me back saying he wasn't on paypal & that we would be 100% covered by eBay with western union & it would take 5 days to get to via ups. This is when i really started to get suspicious and checked the UPS website for a cost & time estimate. The cost would be over $400 USD and even more with any insurance. It would also take around 2 weeks to arrive on the cheapest shipping cost. Now i was really sure he was trying to scam me so i decided to see if he was.

I sent another email to him saying that the costs for shipping where over $400 USD not including insurance and western union is NOT covered by eBay so we will now do it via an escrow service (definition of escrow). This is when i knew it was a scammer as his reply email said he would drop the price by $1000 if i paid him now by paypal. If he was a real seller who in their right mind would drop $1000 off their item just to get payment quicker!!!

It was after that email i submitted the email trail to eBay for investigation and left some feedback in his profile to make sure the other bidders knew he was trying to scam them if he offered them a second chance offer.

After all this had happened i check my email to find that he had not yet given up on me and had forged an official looking eBay email saying that i had to pay or have my account suspended.

The email looked like this

It was after this email i thought screw you scammer lets have some fun now... I replied, 10 times with my OWN official looking eBay email which went something like this

My version of an official eBay email

I'm yet to get a reply but i'm sure he gets the picture