Complaint Review: Yahoo! Auctions Seller: Wastatewoman622

I found an a 3rd generation IPOD on Yahoo! Auctions. I figured that the seller must be legitimate for 2 reasons: 1) Yahoo! is supposedly the safest place to do auctions(according to some news article) and 2) this seller was selling quite a few Mac items and had some good positive feedback for some mini IPODS that she had sold in the past.

After using the BUY NOW option, i contacted the seller to see if she would accept any other form of payment that would be safer for me. She replied with this "We do not accept PayPal or PayDirect because we are looking to open up a merchant account with a bank. " So, i sent her a money order for $197.95. A few days later, I contacted her to see if she had received the money order yet. I never got a reply. A few days after that, I tried to contact her, but her email was no longer valid (this was with the HaZzeLLeYeZ@cs.com address). About a week later, I received a priority letter from her (through regular mail) apologizing for the invalid email addresses.

She apparently had 2 other invalid email addresses: hoagclarkbrown@hotmail.com AND itsmylifeokay@yahoo.com. In the letter, she says to contact her through feedback@techextreme.net to give her the auction information and my information again
so she can send the item out. I continued to contact her every other day through her feedback@techextreme.net-- but no answer. That email address is valid, but she has not replied to any of my emails. My latest email to her stated that if she doesn't contact me within 48 hours, i will report her.

What I'm wondering is, why did se even bother contacting me through regular mail? I think the reason why is because she wanted to prolong the process and hope I forget about it.

I have already tried reporting her to Yahoo! But it won't let me report before 25 days after the auction-- even though Yahoo's Buyer Protection says that you only have to give the item 14 days to come.

Is there any way for me to get my money back? PLEASE HELP!!! Thieves like this woman cannot be getting away with this. She is also selling Mac PowerBooks and Imacs an mini Ipods.

Thuy
milpitas, California
U.S.A.