The EBay Predator: Be Aware of Seller Scams

Oh, how a person hates to admit they fell for a scam. But I did. As much as I hate to lose face and admit my foolishness, I feel I must share my story with others, so they don't also fall prey to these vultures over Ebay.

My mom had given me a very nice camera she purchased, used, for a song. After owning it for six months, a repair was needed. An expensive repair. It became needed again two months after the repair's warranty was up. I took this is as a sign. I did not need such a fancy camera, one that I did not understand and couldn't use many of the functions it performed.

I put the camera up on Ebay. I was very honest with its need of repair. Some people are skilled at fixing things. Let such a person benefit, as long as I recoup the cash it would take to get a new camera. As it was, my camera, used, could fetch about five hundred bucks on other websites. I checked it out before setting a price, of course.

Enter my first bad experience with selling on Ebay. I was emailed by someone who said they would buy my camera, but for ten dollars less than the lowest price available. I told them to bid, and if they won, I would honor this price.

They bid, and I agreed. They failed to pay. They had asked for photos of the camera, and since I had sprung for a new one, I obliged. I sent many photos of the camera at different angles.

No payment, no communication. I finally asked if they intended to pay, since Ebay has a 45 day window and we were already at 14 days.

The person in question informed me that they wanted priority shipping, not parcel post, as I indicated in the revised bill. I replied back that priority shipping was ten dollars ago, and parcel post it would be.

I then receive a letter telling me that the camera was not "like new" as I stated, and this would hurt their resale of the camera, as that is what they intended to do with it after they fixed it. They felt they had been cheated, but if I lowered the price by ten dollars they would purchase the camera. Otherwise, they wanted a mutual agreement to end the sale (they made this sound easy and logical).