If anyone has been wanting an iPAQ 5455, please check out my eBay auction. The day has come…I am selling it, and I will replace it with another Pocket PC. I am not quite sure which one, yet. Any suggestions? :0)
09/10/03 – Update; Well, I sold the iPAQ and was fine with sending it to Manila, because the high bidder was willing to pay the $70 FedEx. I boxed it, sent it, and was informed today that the PayPal account used to make the payment was not the guy's who had paid me. Nothing like a little bit of fraud to ruin a girl's day. Thankfully, the iPAQ has not been delivered yet (it is en route, though), so we are in the process of trying (no guarantees) to catch it and have it sent right back to me. The gentleman at FedEx that is assisting me said he is getting at least one call a day about people who are being defrauded by bad guys in the Philippines and the surrounding countries. Evidently, these crooks are getting people's PayPal account numbers and going on eBay shopping sprees.
Now, I realize that just as an incredibly small number of Americans are “blood-thirsty killers”, there is probably an even smaller number of people in the Philippines that are “PayPal Shysters”, so I am certainly not trying to tar a large group of people with the same brush. I am just very upset with one guy – Rey Martinez, which I am sure is not even his real name.
Well boys and girls, what have we learned here today?
1. Zero feedback people are scary when you are selling a big ticket item – they should be avoided at all costs. Just because they pay, doesn't mean you will get your money.
2. Paypal money should actually be transferred into your account and you should wait a good 4 business days before shipping out a high dollar item. Give PayPal plenty of time to let you know if a stolen account was used to pay for your goods.
3. End your eBay auctions on a weekday – preferably a Monday or Tuesday so that there is plenty of work-week left to make sure the (in my case) almost immediate payment is good.
4. And finally…no shipping to foreign countries unless you personally know the person.
At the very least, I am going to have to eat $140 for FedEx delivery both ways. But hopefully I will get my iPAQ back. What may happen is that if FedEx isn't able to catch my iPAQ and keep it from being delivered (or picked up by the eBay shyster at the FedEx place), then I will have to eat the $450 for my iPAQ as well as the $70 I paid for delivery.
Hopefully this never happens to any of you – maybe we can all learn from my experience. :0)
