Longklaw.com

Once every few months I use eBay to sell stuff that I don’t want. It’s probably never more than 5 or 6 items at any time. I use the money to help pay for more junk that I don’t need.

One of the items I decided to sell recently was an old 40 GB hard drive. The auction was set to end on Sunday, March 20. A couple of days before the auction ended, one bidder asked if it would be ok to send payment on Monday, April 4, because they wouldn’t have the money until Friday, April 1. Being the nice guy that I am, I said ok because I didn’t see the harm in waiting a couple of weeks. I personally don’t think you should bid on an item if you don’t already have the money, but that’s just me. I was hoping that bidder wouldn’t win, but he/she did. The following is a summary of what happened later that I created using the emails that have gone back and forth. I will refer to the winner as a he because I am not really sure

March 20 (Sunday): The auction ends. The winner sends an email saying he will get the money on April 1 and asks for the grand total and a mailing address to send the payment to. I use eBay’s invoice feature because it sends the winner an email and automatically inserts the grand total (cost of item + shipping) and mailing address that I have on record.

March 29 (Tuesday): I get an email from the winner saying that he would send the payment on Sunday, April 3, and gave me the address that I should send the item to.

April 12 (Tuesday): After not hearing anything, I sent an email asking the winner if he had sent the payment or if he was no longer interested in the item. The winner replies saying that he sent payment on March 30. He wants to know what is going on.

April 13 (Wednesday): I reply saying that I never received payment. I ask what form the payment was in and ask him to attempt to trace the payment.

April 21 (Thursday): After hearing nothing, I once again ask the winner if he is still interested in the item. I inform him that I intend to put the item back up for sell in a few days. He replies by saying that he sent a money order and that it was cashed. He wants to know what is going on. He really needed the item and thinks he is going to get screwed.

April 22 (Friday): I reply saying that I never received a money order. I ask him what he wants to do. He replies saying that he is very upset. He wants me to tell him what to do. He really needed the item and is upset that he won’t get it because someone stole his money.

I don’t think I’ve even seen a money order in years. I do not intend to send him the hard drive without getting anything. I’m starting to get more suspicious of people, so I wonder if this is some kind of scam to get items without paying for them. There have been some inconsistencies from him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s intentionally being deceitful. I guess that from now I will only accept payments by Paypal. I try to be nice and give people different methods of payment, but I think there is less room for error if I only use Paypal. This is the first time that a buyer has used a method other than Paypal to buy something from me in years. It could be that this person is just a new eBay user (he had no feedback) and just doesn’t know how people usually do things. I just hope he doesn’t think that I’m trying to screw him out of money. This could be a situation that doesn’t turn out well for either of us.

Update: 4/24/2005
I checked the winner’s feedback. He won an auction for a power supply around the same time as he won my auction. He never paid for that either.