[AT] OT: Eye opening ebay experience - a heads up

[Phil M. Vorwerk]

 Just wanted to share this with everyone; I had something rather unsettling
happen this weekend.

I sold one of my Goldwings on ebay last week, and the auction closed Sunday
evening.  The bidding got spirited towards the end, and I was pretty pleased
with the result.  The winning bidder contacted me promptly, sent the deposit
I had requested, and we made arrangements for him to pick up the bike next
week.

Last night I received an email from the second highest bidder, asking if it
was really true that I was offering the bike on a "second chance offer" that
ebay has available.  Fortunately, he had asked a question about the bike
during the auction, and he had my email address from my response.  Since the
email addresses didn't match, he sent the response back to my address, along
with a copy of the email that he had received.  I told him forward
everything to ebay investigations, since this was obviously a hoax.

>From what I understand this is becoming more of a problem.  I figure there
are a couple of things that I have learned from this.  First, be very wary
of second chance offers.  Make double sure that any second chance offer is
legit.  The other thing I won't do any more as a seller is answer questions
without keeping my email address private.  These con artists will only get
more savvy as time goes by, and if one would ask a question and obtain the
seller's email address, he could use it to spoof the return address and make
it look more legitimate.  Fortunately the scam looked suspicious enough that
the intended victim decided to try to check it out further.  Had he fallen
for it, he could have easily been out the $500.00 deposit, minimum.

I contacted the other bidders on my bike to warn them what happened; just
wanted to give you guys a general heads up in case you hadn't heard of this.
I've purchased things on second chance offers in the past, but this gives me
pause...

Phil Vorwerk
Courtland, MN

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