Excuse me as I vent….but three weeks ago, as many of you have read, I began trying to sell my beloved camera on eBay. Unfortunately, as soon as I completed my listing and clicked “list item” my account was suspended. Interestingly, I didn’t know my account was suspended until I went to search for the listing and couldn’t find it so I contacted eBay via e-mail. I received a response from eBay Security that asked me to log into Live Help.
Live Help told me that as soon as I listed my item someone (unknown to me) accessed my account and listed several auction items. Because of this, they asked me to prove that I was
the rightful owner of the account and that I am me. I’ve never had to prove I am me before. Most people just take my word for it, after all, how many people really want to be me, right? Anyway, they asked me to send them government issued ID. They asked for only one but I sent them my expired driver’s license (for the safety of others I no longer drive ;-), my passport and a copy of my apartment lease. They said these weren’t good enough that I had to send them a copy of my utility bill. Grrrrr. My utilities are included in the rent! They said until I could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was me that my account would remain suspended. I have a feeling that even if I’d sent them a utility bill eBay security would still want DNA.
Trust me; I’m not upset with eBay or their security. During the past 3 weeks I’ve found that their security is excellent but when I tell them I’m me, send a driver’s license, passport and copy of my lease, drawn up and signed by an attorney…trust me…I’m me! I’m stressed, irritated and pissed that someone out there (in NIGERIA) has turned my normally tranquil life upside down.
Because I really need to sell my camera before I upgrade I decided to sell on the Latin America eBay, MercadoLibre. Granted, my Spanish is less than fluent but with freetranslation dot com I was able to get my camera listed. Oh, joy!
What was better than getting my camera listed was that within hours I had someone that wanted to buy it for more than the auctioned price. They told me that they would pay me a fair amount over the beginning bid. This was very cool. How many of us would prefer to just sell our item straight out than wait a week for everyone to bid on it? Plus, I’m not a Turbo Lister with eBay. I’m just a normal person that uses eBay to check values and buy & sell once in a while. I don’t have a real, Internet, or eBay store…I just buy and sell what I need or want.
My husband told me to be careful because something about the e-mail on MercadoLibre was weird. He even told me that he suspected where the e-mail came from. The ‘lady’ told me to ship the item to her nephew they were visiting on holiday as soon as possible. It was to be a gift for him. She told me that she had already contacted PayPal and that they would hold my payment until I sent them the confirmation that the camera had been shipped. She was very nice and explained that this was for her protection, as well as mine. I went on to tell the lady that before I could do anything I needed the mailing address to estimate the shipping costs. It was when she sent me the shipping address…that the other shoe dropped. The address was NIGERIA.
Please, please, please…if you get nothing out of this post but this…please, do not ever respond to, mail, to or talk to anyone from NIGERIA. The country is nothing but trouble for the entire world. I am serious as a heart attack. Every scam, every spam, ever plea for money and now eBay…starts in NIGERIA.
Needless to say, I sent a short, not-nice e-mail to the person and reported them to PayPal and MercadoLibre (the Latin American Ebay).
Please let me say that I am not proficient in eBay (or MercadoLibre) or the art of eBay and there’s so much information on the eBay website its difficult to comprehend it all just to sell a few items here and there. There was never a thought in my head that MercadoLibre/Ebay would still not get their percentage of the sale.
Yes, you’d think my story stopped here, wouldn’t you? Nope. There’s more….
Yes, I’m still suspended from eBay and my item never did sell on MercadoLibre but I did create another account on eBay. It meant that I wouldn’t have a selling or buying track record but I’d hoped that people would find me honest and ask questions if they needed to. Well, guess what…within hours of listing my camera under my new user name I received an e-mail from someone offering to buy my camera for a little over the opening bid…again. This time, I reported the e-mail right away and didn’t respond. See, I do learn ;-).
Sadly, my camera didn’t sell. I was asking a great price for it but there’s too many ‘merchants’ out there willing to give away the store that I probably didn’t have a chance. However, when the auction for my camera was over yesterday I went ahead and relisted it for a lower, rock-bottom price that I could afford. If you’re inclined to take a look, it’s item # 170228088392. You’ll never guess in a million years, what happened just after the listing went live. Well, maybe you will. I got another e-mail from another eBay username asking to sell my camera for an amount just over the opening bid.
Now, I ask you, how stupid are these people in NIGERIA? They use a different eBay username but the same e-mail addresses to correspond to? They tried to scam me 3 previous times on the same camera with identical listings and think I am so stupid I don’t know by now what they’re up to?
Before I let go of this situation, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a few of the tell-tale signs of a scam with eBay or PayPal. They are mentioned all over both sites but until a scam slaps us in the face we don’t think about it.
- Know eBay’s policy on contacting someone outside of the eBay network.
- Only contact a seller or buyer within eBay’s e-mail network, no exception.
- Know PayPal’s payment and money transfer policies.
- Know PayPal’s method of contacting you.
- Know how PayPal addresses you as a client, including spacing, font size and font type on their stationary.
- PayPal will NEVER contact you at an address other than the one you tell them to, no exception.
- NEVER - EVER send money or products without payment IN ADVANCE.
Thankfully, eBay and PayPal have their security methods set up for a reason. Don’t find out the hard way what they are.
Sadly, I’m wondering just how many people have been scammed by this country. We have world wars over religion, politics, and money…why don’t we, as a world, do something about this one country that is out to scam the rest of us?
Please, people in Nigeria…get a life…better yet…get a job!
~ Diana
