I love technology and try and get the latest and greatest. I had my eye on the macbook series, I was scavenging around the internet to find that best price. I didn't really trust 3rd party websites, I am always cautious when it comes to purchasing online. So basically my choices where eBay.com.au or Apple.com.au.

Everyday i decided to check both stores to see what deals I could get, making offers to sellers on eBay and checking any specials on the apple website. I did this for a number of days. I didn't really have a lot of money to spare, so every buck counted.

My bargain hunting led me to offer ridiculous prices to sellers on eBay in the hope I could snag one, for days it wasn't working. They where either not replying or just simply saying no. I discovered this macbook pro on a 3 day listing ( starting was $1000) , I thought the seller would be trying to get a quick deal so I messaged him an offer of $1000, if I could get this it would be great. The macbook pro was worth over $2000. At this point the listing had no bids, when he messaged me back accepting my offer. It was to late, his listing had a bid.

I was devastated, I replayed simply telling him that his listing exceeds my offer. He emailed me back informing me he needed the money. As long as I could pay quickly he would cancel his original listing, I was a bit sceptical because he had no feedback. So I told him to create another listing, a buy it now for $1000 (plus $27 for postage), he messaged me the link to the item. I didn't want anyone else grabbing my bargain. But then realised his auction was going for $1,400 so I told him dont worry about this transaction. I told him hes getting more from the auction. He emailed me saying he will inform eBay if I dont pay.

I told him payment has been sent, he replied saying paypal is clearing my payment. This was a lie because the dollar sign was next to the item, meaning the item was successfully paid for and it said completed in my paypal account.
I told him to keep checking, then I realised he didn't cancel his original listing. It was at $1,700. I started to worry, this was a lot of money. I didn't want to loose it. I continued to email him but he didn't reply. His listing ended for $1,850. Two days past and still no confirmation of postage or anything. I was getting annoyed, I talked to eBay live chat and they told me I could get his home phone to call him and they told me how to do this.

I obtained his number and tried calling at least 15 times within 2 days. After not getting any sort of reply, I decided to contact Paypal about getting a refund, luckily I was totally covered by paypal's buyer protection. But I had to wait a full week before they could process my claim.

-BE CAREFUL-

-Cody-

Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/CodyJamesnet

My website: http://CodyJames.net

Tags: apple, beware, ebay, holocaust, macbook, pro, scam

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Comment by twister7boy on February 7, 2010 at 9:40am: oh paypal through ebay is great. i just keep all info exchanged between the buyer and i.
i bought from a supper seller once and nothing. a few days ago he just quit shipping out orders and talking to everybody. but kept posting new listings. you never can tell fully. i bought my mac from there with new seller to ebay no problems at all. paypal rules though ebay. i like most because other see what you bought and ask you the differences between similar products. peace. gregg

Comment by cody on January 18, 2010 at 5:45pm: @Glenn I agree, its good though because every seller must accept paypal AND at the bottom of the page on a listed item. Under accepted payments it has a peice of text saying something like "Paypal buyer protection, you could be protected for 20,000 dollars" something like that.

But I also agree, ive dealt with many people with 0 feedback before. I have like over 300 feedback and ive never had a problem selling and buying until now. But I was smart enough to check paypal's TOS and use paypal.

Comment by Glenn on January 18, 2010 at 10:07am: @Wandering I :

Of course, if no one deals with anyone that has no feedbacks, then no one who is new to EBay can get a start. What needs to be done (and what EBay should inform new sellers and buyers of) is to use only secure and protected methods of payment until the new user develops the feedback.

The (very) few times I bought something off of EBay, I always checked the feedback for the sellers, but I was never informed of the secure methods of payment or other methods that were available to make sure I wasn't getting scammed. Of course, this was a number of years back, too.

Comment by cody on January 14, 2010 at 2:00pm: @System001: I am glad you dont, the point of this article was not to get sympathy but to warn people to be careful, And your statement is invalid. eBay makes you wait before you can put a claim in I believe its one week. In the article I stated that I contacted them and they said to ring him, maybe I didnt make that clear. Honestly I have a PC and a Mac, I love them both. I didnt want this to happen XD, but I dont think he was out to scam because paypal informed me he hadnt touched the money. I cant say the same for the buyer for the auction. I know I should of been more careful but I dont want to think as everyone I meet online as a bad person just because I dont know them. I treat people the same as I would offline.

@Cookenstein - Yeh I have had some bad moments in eBay besides this one,but no where near the same value. I am glad I was refunded. Becareful maybe I should of stated this in the article but I read paypal's ToS for Australia (not sure if its same for rest of the world) they dont cover cars,business's, electronically downloaded goods. Cars is the main one there, I assume their would be lots of car sales fraud but I cant be sure.

Thanks for your comments guys!

Comment by ChuckysChild on January 14, 2010 at 7:04am: i personally do not feel sorry for you in any way. as soon as you saw that the mac was still setting at 1000 at 3 days you should have contacted ebay so they could investigate. plus not to start a mac versus pc war, but for 1000 you could easily get a windows laptop that would blow the macbook out of the water. personally you got what you asked for. which was to be the victim of fraud.

Comment by cody on January 14, 2010 at 6:39am: @Nick Ayre: Honestly since he insisted on getting the transaction completed, it seemed more that he was legit. If it was me (I wouldnt do this) but if it was me and they where having doubts I wouldnt demand the payment, it could cause dramas with buyer that could get taken to eBay. You wouldnt want to get noticed.
Yeh I wasnt about to do a deal outside of eBay or paypal for that matter ;). Buyer protection ftw.

@James Young: Yeh generally its a good idea to pay by paypal, but it really depends how much you trust this person, I read feedback before I purchase. Still it was foolish off me to even go through with this deal. The thrill of a great bargain got the better off me lol.

Thanks for your comments guys. Dont make the same mistake I did.

Comment by James Young on January 14, 2010 at 4:20am: Rule 2: If someone asks you to send the money via bank transfer, don't deal with them.

Comment by Nick Ayre on January 14, 2010 at 2:03am: Ok I knew it was BS when he created a new listing. The person has zero feed back so lets take benefit of the doubt and say well they are new seller wanting to get some money for this laptop so the cheap price is a possibility as well. But right from when he created the new listing and said he was going to report you to ebay I would bail out. I do have to say it was smart for you to get him to create a new listing but it's very sus and it's just not worth it.

Comment by cody on January 13, 2010 at 8:23pm: I agree, he replied fast so I thought I would give them the benefit of the doubt. Its cool now, I got a refund and bought a macbook from apple.com.au. I aint buying from someone with no feedback again lol. I am lucky though, he wanted me to pay by bank deposit. If I had off I wouldnt of got a refund. Paypal only gives refunds if you use paypal XD .

Comment by Wandering I on January 13, 2010 at 8:17pm: First rule of Ebay................if they have ZERO feedbacks.......don't even deal with them.

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