sad auction story AND On being ripped off AND sad auction story #2

From: Robert Stek <r.stek_at_snet.net>
Date: Thu Aug 17 18:55:10 2000

Interestingly enough I was one of the bidders for the Sorcerer who lost out
to Jim (I was on vacation and didn't have my "regular" access to eBay,
etc.), so there but for the grace of God go I.... (and I only lost out by a
few bucks, too!)

On 8-11 I won a bid for a used HP 360lx (payment was paypal only - in
retrospect, the first clue. The second was that this was an eBay newbie
with 0 feedback). Since I had been monitoring the bid closely I knew I had
won and did not wait for the email from eBay stating "Congrats ... contact
each other, etc.") The seller's id was an obvious email address
(jl_06_02_at_yahoo.com) and I went directly to paypal, found that the seller
did have that email address registered with them, so I sent off the winning
bid plus the requested $5 shipping. The paypal account was an "unverified"
account (i.e., paypal had not yet received a bank account number for direct
deposit, rather they would issue a paypal check to the account holder). As
I usually do, I then verified by looking at the history that (1)indeed my
credit card had been charged, and that (2) notification of payment had been
sent to jl_06_02_at_yahoo.com. Fine, so far.

Later the next day I received from paypal a "request for payment" from jl;
the amount was just for the winning bid and did not include the $5 shipping.
I figured that ol' jl hadn't read his email yet to see the confirmation from
paypal that I had already paid. So I therefore replied to jl with a cut n'
pasted copy of the duplicate confirmation I had received via email from
paypal which stated that the amount of the bid plus $5 had been paid. I
also went to paypal.com and saw his request in my account, so I cancelled
it; my original payment transactions were still there.

Later I received an email from jl (same email address as we had started off
with) saying "What? You were supposed to pay my request." I then emailed a
reply back explaining more clearly what had happened, and requesting that jl
check again with paypal and he would see that the transaction had already
gone through, and to get back to me if there were any problems.

On 8-14 I emailed jl again, requesting an update on what had happened: did
he get the money, was he shipping the package, etc. Later in the day I get
a message back from the yahoo email server stating that the message could
not be delivered. Now I began to get worried. I logged into yahoo and did
a search for jl_06_02 - the search came back empty. I logged onto eBay
into their dispute resolution section, and giving my logon and pwd and the
item # (404256646 for those nosey enough to look for themselves), I was able
to obtain the "real" name, address, and phone # of jl_06_02_at_yahoo.com with
instructions to contact the person directly before claiming fraud.

I placed a phone call to said # and eventually spoke to a nice lady who
denied offering the item for bid, and stated that she indeed had just
recently become an ebay member but that her email address was different, but
that her street address, name (was Jxxx Lxxxxx) and phone number were
correct. She also became concerned that someone was using her name and #
this way, and denied being contacted by paypal.

I also went back to paypal to review my history again. The first item - the
charge to my credit card was still there and complete (and I also verified
with my cc company that a charge had been made), but the other two
transactions - the receipt of payment to jl and the cancellation of jl's
request - no longer had valid links to the information. Instead I got an
error message "internal server error" rather than the confirmations I had
seen a day or two previously!

Oh what a tangle web we weave....

I both emailed and called paypal who told me that their fraud unit would
contact me. I emailed both eBay and yahoo - neither of which has responded
yet (other than ebay keeping track of the dispute resolution process). I
just asked yahoo to confirm that they recently had a member with that email
address, though I did also explain the entire situation.

I now send out a call for rank amateur speculation from the members of this
list. My current theory is that someone at paypal, acting alone or in
concert with someone at eBay may be trying some fraudulent scheme - that is
based solely on the "internal server error" because immediately after the
transaction, the information was there. Who would have a better chance of
access to PayPal transactions other than someone at PayPal? Either someone
at eBay or one of the real Jxxx Lxxxxx's 3 previous ebay transactions would
have access to her real name, address and phone number - the same way I did.
Anyone wishing to posit a more benign explanation is free to do so. (One of
my favorite sayings, however, is "never attribute to malice that which can
be explained by incompetence.")

(BTW, I am on digest, so I won't see any responses until after the next
digest unless you cc me.)

Bob Stek
Saver of Lost Sols
Received on Thu Aug 17 2000 - 18:55:10 BST