this is the world we live in

a couple weeks ago chris and I put our old cell phones up for sale on eBay. within 12 hours they both sold. which was super exciting! and then when chris called our former service provider, we were told they needed to be "unlocked" before someone else got them.

which stunk. so we had to wait and go through this whole rigamarole since we had just recently cancelled. that was literally two weeks ago.

one of the buyers needed the phone right away, so I informed him of the delay, and we worked everything out. he had already paid through paypal, so I refunded his money. no hard feelings, no harm done.

the first buyer, however, wanted the phone as a gift for her sister's birthday coming up soon. which is nice. she sent me an e-mail with her sister's address, which was in ikeja, lagos, nigeria, and she wanted me to send it directly to her sister. I'm cool with that, since she has to pay the shipping charges. but because of this whole unlock code issue, I e-mail the buyer because there's going to be a delay. I hear nothing back.

then I get an e-mail supposedly from paypal stating that the money was paid, but in order to protect both the seller and buyer, I need to ship the item, then provide the tracking number to this particular e-mail address that's kind of holding the money, then the payment will be provided to me.

I actually got this email about a week ago. I finally got the unlock codes last night, so I was preparing the shipment. that's when I took a closer look at the e-mail from "paypal" regarding the payment. I noticed the e-mail I was supposed to send the tracking number to wasn't even a paypal.com address. the header of the e-mail showed paypal images, and addressed me as "Dear seller."

so I start feeling a little uneasy. I go to paypal's website to check out this service that protects the seller and buyer this e-mail spoke about. I couldn't find anything remotely like it anywhere on the site. then I start reading about how to identify fake/scam/phish e-mails. one of the identifiers is that paypal ALWAYS addresses you in an e-mail by first and last name -- not "Dear seller" like the one I got. so it tells me to forward the e-mail to paypal and they'll investigate whether it's from them or not.

yeah, it wasn't from them. I was totally being scammed.

unbelievable.


when I go to ebay to do whatever needs to be done, I see that the buyer is no longer a registered user on eBay. that's not suspicious, eh? so I report what I need to report and then relist the phones. this was last night.



you will not believe what happened next.


this morning I have an e-mail saying that one of the phones sold! woohoo! then I also have an e-mail from the buyer. she would like the phone sent to her daughter, for her daughter's birthday next week. and guess where her daughter lives?! you guessed it, ikeja, lagos, nigeria. the supposed recipient's name is different, but she wants it shipped to the same city, state and country.

it's also the EXACT same phone that the first scammer wanted.

can you believe it? since I'm merely extremely suspicious at this point, I sent an invoice for payment (rather than just sending her information she requested in a private e-mail), and also reported my suspicion to ebay.

now I'm going to take a deep breath and have a coffee.