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i wanted to share with you all a "horror story" from a seller's point of view about a recent transaction through Ebay. I recently had my old Alienware laptop on Ebay for sale. Despite having to take a bath on it's value, I had several offers come my way to take it off my hands. I finally settled with someone who made an offer that was acceptable and followed through with sending the laptop out to them after receiving an email stating that funds were transferred. This is where things go really wrong. After sending the laptop, I informed the member of shipment and sent the UPS tracking number. Their first response was that the shipment would not arrive in time for their "relative" to pick it up, supposedly the person was only visiting the states and they were due to leave the very same day that the shipment would arrive. I tried to assure them that it was possible that the laptop would arrive early and then at this point, this is where things get freaky. I get a series of emails through Ebay claiming that I disregarded their request to send the package in such a manner that it would arrive a day earlier (which I never got) and then explanations of this persons location. Now, the freaky thing was that every email I received, needed to be translated from German, despite the fact that I was dealing with an Italian guy who lived in Mexico. I decided to revisit the email I got stating I received funds and then double check this through Paypal...no monies received. in fact there was no activity showing up about this transaction at all. This is when I smarted up and contacted PayPal, who informed me that when a payment is sent to me, they send the email to my email address on file. The email I got came to my other address that is not on file...yep, i got scammed. In any case, I called UPS and placed a return to sender request, to stop the package from being delivered, and not a moment too soon. I found out later that the package was sitting in the destination location, ready to be delivered...close call. I then called Ebay and explained the situation and they told me to cancel the order, which I did. Now it's Wednesday and I am still waiting for the laptop to come back. The real kicker is that when i shipped the laptop, the shipping cost was more than what Ebay quoted the "buyer" so i had to eat that extra cost and now on top of that, I'll have to pay for shipping the laptop back. Still, that's nothing compared to losing my laptop to a thief. Point to all of this: when selling items on Ebay, double and triple check validity of messages before proceeding. There are spoof emails circulating all over the net these days so be very careful. I was dumb and almost paid the price. :( -Jim