Bill
Carrollton,#2General Comment
Mon, March 15, 2010
I had a laptop for sale on ebay. Somebody won it. They wanted it real fast. So I gave them a price to get it to them within 2 days. The buyer was ok with it and said he would send me the money via paypal. So I waited until I saw the money in the account. It never showed, what I got was a letter much like the one you got, they wanted a tracking number before the money was to be put into the account. PAYPAL HAS NO SUCH POLICY.however I noticed that the return address was not paypal. So I CALLED paypal and sent them a copy of the email as well as a copy to ebay. This so called buyer even went so far as to claim that paypal and ebay would sue me if I didnt ship the laptop off and that the FBI would be paying me a visit. Now I noticed that all the emails were fake, That was easy as this idiot miss spelled every other word, and didnt even copy the ebay/paypal backgrounds right. This went on for almost a month. they(ebay and paypal) didnt make me pay a fee at all. And as it turns out a coon from nigeria had hacked a ebay sellers/buyer's name and tried to rip me off. So as a warning to everybody that reads this before you deal check the return address to make sure it is paypal or ebay, All you have to do is click on reply and see who it is going to. I have been useing the internet for at least 16 years and I have seen every scam out there. It is up to you to check this stuff out. less than 3 seconds to hit reply and see were it is going. You should always send a copy of all emails to: [email protected] and or [email protected]
That is how you cover your a*s if you just dont know what is going on. I would rather piss a buyer or seller off than get scamed it is best for us all if I have to check them out and even have them check me out.
Thats how you do it in the real world.
Edgeman
Chico,#3Consumer Comment
Sun, February 28, 2010
Three years ago I tried to sell a camera on eBay. The winning bidder sent me emails from two different sources. The first email was from his "actual" email address and he wrote that the camera must ship immediately and that he had just sent the money through Paypal.
The second email was made up to look as if it came through Paypal but it clearly hadn't come from them. The email gave a very similar story to the one related in the OP. I just ignored it.
The third and final email came from the winning bidder who tried to get me to rush and ship the camera and stated that Paypal would give me the money as soon as I entered a tracking number.
I'm sorry that this happened to you. Did you ship it to a location within the united States? If so, did you contact the police in that city?
Other than that, the best thing that you can do is to contact the Secret Service's Financial Crimes Unit.
Best of luck to you.
Nc
Grayslake,#4Consumer Comment
Sun, February 28, 2010
So sorry to read about your story. They fooled you by sending you the fake Paypal email. If you had logged into your Paypal account, you would have seen that the money had never been deposited into your account. (It never takes 24 hours to receive a deposit.)
Unfortunately, Craigslist has become full of scammers-from fake payments to people taking deposits for apartments they don't own.
I really hope it works out for you!