Almost Got Me.

It was too good to be true.
  
A pawn shop owner in Ontario, Canada was closing down and liquidating his inventory on eBay. Among the items was a 2012 Moots Vamoots RSL. He was leaving the country, so he wanted to liquidate as much as possible. The price was half of what they normally go for.
  
My first thought? Stolen.
  
His seller reputation was solid. He has thousands of transactions with no negatives in the last couple years. Hmmm...
  
He accepted PayPal, which theoretically gave me double buyer protection when combined with eBay. Hmmm...
  
That's a really nice bike. I can replace a lot of plastic bikes and be completely happy with the race performance of that Moots. Maybe it's time. Hmmm...
  
I jumped, and he promptly sent me an email describing how to wire the payment outside of eBay to a bank in Italy. It's all legit, and you'll get an email from eBay telling you so in a few minutes. Wait, what about PayPal and that protective stuff? Hmmm...
   
The eBay email arrived from a regular eBay address, assuring me further that this was all legit and I was completely protected. If you want proof, just click here to connect with our representatives. Hmmm...
  
I didn't click there. I checked my eBay account. Nope, no record of the transaction. I called the number on eBay's website to customer service.
  
"Scam?"

"Yep, scam."
  
"Thought so."

I flagged all of the ads on this hacked account for Moots, and within five minutes they were deleted. I got on a couple hours later, and they were all relisted under a new hacked account. I flagged them again, and eventually they disappeared. Hopefully for good.
  
Just in case, I wired the money. Don't want to miss out on a good deal on a Moots.
  
Hmmm...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Luke Simpson

Narrowed Focus

Perhaps Where I need to Be.