Fred,
These are likely scams...
Agreed. See the latest below from one seller to whom I wrote for "pre-approval". Since the auction was declared invalid by someone (presumably eBay), there's no way to describe all the listing information, but supposedly the PowerBook G4 1 gig/1 gig was a gift, the guy already had a desktop, so he was trying to peddle it from his location in Texas, yet his responding email states he's in Romania and ARIN puts his ISP in California. They don't take PayPal nor Western Union's BidPay, but they accept (insist on, actually) only instant transfers through Western Union. These guys are none too bright; this guy can't even get the facts of his location straight. An earlier guy couldn't decide if it was he or his wife who was writing the email.
At 1:15 AM -0400 8/4/03, Paulo wrote:
I'm sorry for delay but I had problems with my internet provider. I'm glad now and ready to discuss with you.
I have a serious buyer for the laptop and I can't put you on the pre-approved bidder list.If you are still interested I have another laptop new and sealed too. I will sell the laptop to you directly for $1800 US, final price with shipping and insurance included.
I'm in Europe, Romania right now. I own a bussiness here. As a payment method I prefer Western Union because is very fast. I have a Paypal account but is in US and I have to wait several days for the money to arrive here.
If you're interested please reply ASAP.
Yeah, right. Almost another bait-and-switch operation except they keep the bait which doesn't exist.
<http://www.macintouch.com/fraudreports7.html> but it's worth reading ALL of them, starting at a year ago at <http://www.macintouch.com/fraudreports.html>
Too many to read all of them, but it sounds like the same people from the same locations are involved. The problem is separating legitimate sellers from the bogus scam artists. It didn't take more than one email from them to me to demonstrate they were playing scam games. Unfortunately, I may have put my email address onto a spammer's list. But, the "pre-approval" seems to be a good tip-off in eBay options; I haven't come across any pre-approval requirements for legitimate auctions, even in my own field of buying and selling rare coins EXCEPT for live auctions, but that process is completely different.
These types of 'too good to be true' eBay 'deals' have been a frequent topic, with the conclusion being that 'If it's too good to be true, then it probably is!'
From what I've seen, it's more like "If it's too good to be true, it CERTAINLY is.".
--
3333333 de Fred
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