The best thing you can do in the future is set all your auctions to U.S. shipping only. That way if someone buys something and then wants you to send it out of the country you can say no and EBay supports you. There is a setting also to block buyers with low feedback and such. It's a sucky lesson to learn though. Just take some hard looks at all the EBay settings you can put in place, some are useful.

ehh just target that buyer wait till they sell stuff if they do then pull the same scam on them, but have it shipped to a nearby similar address, not Nigeria, but one that isn't covered.

a fool and his projector...

My friend sent me the link for www.419eater.com the other day and I haven't stopped laughing.

Or in my case, PayPal will still screw you if you sell it to a moron. I sold my old laptop on eBay in 2004, and long story short it was sold to a Russian lady in Brooklyn who I guess didn't really speak much English. When she got the laptop, she said she was expecting a new laptop (despite the listing being under "USED COMPUTERS" category and the actual page said that it was a used one). Then she claimed that the laptop wouldn't turn on and I was scamming her, sending "threatening" emails about ruining my credit and things like that.

We went through eBay arbitration, where I said I'll refund the money except for shipping fees I paid and she would pay return shipping, but she wanted me to refund the laptop, shipping, AND pay for her shipping (which she said was $100, despite the fact that MY shipping fee was about $40). When all this failed, PayPal decided to rule in her favor without giving me any reasons for it, and I was out $1000 and she had the laptop. I had already purchased a replacement laptop at this point, so I was really pissed at this point.

In the end I drove there to pick it up from her husband (3 hr drive from RPI) and pulled all of my money out of PayPal money market account, canceled my PayPal credit card, and never used PayPal again.

@Shutterman: "US Shipping Only" really screws those of us who aren't in the US but also are not in Nigeria - I'm in Canada, and if I had a dime for every asshat who tried to claim that the shipping cost for the item was 100% of the item's purchase price, I wouldn't need to pull Nigerian scams of my own. Granted, my address is verified and I'm a real live person and I wouldn't scam people for fear of the Karma Police, but still. We Canucks like to use the eBay too.

I have a friend who worked in Nigeria on an infrastructure project and he said Amazon wouldn't even ALLOW HIM to get to the checkout screen from a Nigerian IP address.

Isn't there an ebay.ca?

@Crazytree: Sadly, the armies of scammers who scam people all day from Net cafes have ruined it for him. If Nigeria actually gave a damn and cracked down on the fraud, it might be a different story, but until they do, businesses are going to refuse to do business on the grounds that getting the Nigerian (honest) public to start screaming at their government is the only way to fix the problem.

@Kimli: I sometimes ship to Canada (FedEx only) and if I had a dime for every time some jackass Canuck sticks me with the customs fees I'd be rich. FedEx always tries to get the money from the recipient, but I guess most Canadians have figured out that we dumb Americans will just pay it for them.

Every time someone from Canada won something in one of my auctions I got an email asking me to send it as "gift" or "commercial sample" and fake the item value. And when I explained that I don't want to break the law just to save them a few dollars they got nasty with me.

I stopped using Canadian post because they are (and I'm being nice here) all fucking retards.

I've had packages shipped back by CP to me because the item description wasn't in French, or because (I kid you not) they claimed there was a spelling mistake in the item description.

So nowadays I just try and avoid Canada, plenty of people in the US with cash.

As for the person who shipped to Nigeria, I am trying my best to feel sorry for him. One would think that by now every single person in the world would know not to bother shipping to them.

In an ideal world Ebay would just block the whole damn country and block every single email with "Nigeria" in it.

@Crazytree: As it should be.

Sucks to be him, but nothing good comes out of that country when it comes to the Internet.

That really does suck - I was selling my iPod on ebay and it was bought via pay it now by a supposed Nigerian Mom who wanted me to send it to her son in college in Lagos. I smelled a scam... but if there'd been actual money deposited in my account I would have been more susceptible.

Good to know.

PayPal is willing to screw its customers in the name of security, even when the security threat is nonexistent. And they work hard at maintaining a monopoly so they don't have to have good service. I recommend Googling it before you buy anything through PayPal.

Why is it that PayPal ALWAYS rules in favor of the buyer no matter kind of crap goes down? Several years ago I sold a DVD to lady for $7 including shipping highly recommending that she get insurance/confirmation. She declined and then claimed she didn't get it. Longs story short, despite documentation and clear warning that I was not responsible if they declined coverage, PayPal ruled in her favor and refused to pay. They shut my account down. Ebay and Paypal just suck now...sigh...I remember the good old early days ...

@bastarre: Not true. I tried to file a damages claim through paypal (after the post office out and out refused saying it was SHIPPED that way, insured or not). The seller won, I wrote the $65 off as a lesson learned to never trust eBay OR PayPal.

@queen_elvis: That really just isn't true. But every story I've ever read of someone losing a dispute with Paypal contains some form of the person not reading the website.

I mean, WTF ships a $1000 item to Nigeria and expects Paypal to cover their losses?

Simple rules on Paypal:

Only ship to a confirmed and verified address. It couldn't be easier. EVERY single paypal payment you receive will tell you whether it is eligible for protection or not. If not, then simply refund the payment till the buyer fixes their address and confirms it. It is there in GREEN or RED in the email. Non eligible purchases mean you are on your own.

Over $200 ship with confirmed delivery AND signature. In fact, I ship EVERYTHING with signature/confirmation. FedEx ground is only on average $5 per shipment and is as reliable as they get.

Don't ship anywhere that can't track/confirm.

Stay away from places like Indonesia, Nigeria and anywhere else you can't point to on a map.

Nigerians don't just love Paypal, they love stupid people on Paypal.

More stories of how PayPal screwed honest sellers here:
www.paypalsucks.com

Paypal is scary as hell period. I was a customer from around 2000 through 2003 when I was frauded on my account. If it wasn't for the simple fact I had no money (poor college kid) I would have been out 700 bucks. As it was my credit union refunded all the overdrafts from PayPal continuously dipping into my account and opened me a new account as Paypal graciously locked my account out when I tryed to unlink my bank and credit card accounts. It was impossible to get someone on the phone there, and at least at that time filing the fraud reports did nothing. To this day I still don't know if someone got access to my Paypal account or what. I went without Paypal from then until late last year (in the meantime I used every alternate service that Paypal ended up crushing; cit2pay, bidpay, yahoopay etc) when I switched Webhosts and the company was new and only had Paypal at the time, so I bit and reopened an account. I ONLY have a credit card on there so hopefully if there is ever a problem again Chase will come to bat for me at least but I don't really know).

I'm really sad that Google sort of folded in their battle to get Google checkout on eBay because any competition to Paypal would be wonderful.

Bottom line take extreme care when dealing with Paypal period!

@scoobydoo: What, do you work for them? Look it up. They like to interpret their terms of service very broadly.

Simple rule.

NIGERIA = NO.

@Evan: I can't believe people still fall for this shit. I'm sorry Evan, but you really need to educate yourself on various types of fraud, if you want to sell on eBay. I applaud your level of trusting and wish more people were like that, but there comes a point where you have to question who you're communicating with and what motives they have.

Did you know that in Africa it's legal to have flamethrowers mounted under your car, to 'deter' carjackers? Think about that, before you ever ship something there again. On the bright side, you can take solstice in knowing that your $1100 probably went toward ammo and assault rifles, which means that your defrauder might end up on the wrong side of a bullet, eventually.

@scoobydoo: Don't ship to Canada with UPS or Fedex. They charge brokerage fees, which are very high, on top of the customs, but roll it in as one charge.

Ship USPS. I've never had a problem; there are no brokerage charges, and the customs duty, if any, is the standard 10% or whatever rate applies to the item.

@queen_elvis: Ah yes. The old "if you don't hate them you must work for them".

No. I don't work for them, I'm just an educated consumer who values his hard earned cash enough to pay attention to their rules.

At the very mention of 'Nigeria' you should always run (especially if it's Lagos, Nigeria) Seems like the only people that live there are heartless scammers. Personally, when I sell on eBay I will only sell within the US and get tracking/signature confirmation so I can protect both myself and the buyer. There's really no reason why he should have had any problems selling his item in his own country. Anyway, it's really to bad he didn't call PayPal to confirm that he was protected before shipping it out. Lesson learned the hard way I guess, I definitely feel for him. Hopefully he can take at least a little comfort in the fact that it was only $1100, these scammers regularly take people for $10,000+ dollars which sometimes results in destroyed lives and broken marriages. I don't know how these guys can live with themselves, they sure as hell aren't making mom and dad proud.

For some more info on Nigeria and the various scams check out:
[scamorama.com]

That site is fun to read, lots of stories about people who receive scam emails and bait the scammers and waste their time for months on end. This often leads to some very very amusing results.

What I don't get is that Paypal should auto-rule in favour of the person who DOSN'T live in the scam-filled nation of Nigeria... And put a disclaimer on their site saying "if you dont live in the US, Canada or UK, you most likely won't win, use at your risk" instead of ass-fucking every honest seller on the planet and lining the pockets of the same scammers every day..

@RonDiaz: Your story is a perfect example of why I will never be a "Verified" Paypal member (although it's a moot point since I'm no longer a member anyway). I can't imagine why anyone would give their bank account information to a company with a track record like Paypal's. Fuck them and their little online auction racket.

Just wanted to post a quick objection to the use of "eBay" as a verb in the headline - it is an abomination upon the language and must be stopped.

Ok, I have a question for the experts.

Which is worse:

A) Paying the $1100 off to the collection agency,

B) Explaining the situation to the agency and the fact that you won't cough up the money, taking the initial hit on your credit report, and fighting/protesting the charge with the credit bureaus

Hmm, yes... The classic paypal scam... Note to self: Verify My Account.

The only thing keeping me from Verifying my account is I've heard PayPal has a nasty tendency to dip into peoples bank accounts...

The new name for Nigeria is NOgeria. Always say NO to Nogeria even if they spell it Nigeria.

And wtf dude? You mailed a $1100 product to Nigeria? Cmon man. You gotta have more sense than that. It's like handing your keys to a roadside bum while you bend down to tie your shoe laces.

When you ship international, ALWAYS ... ALWAYS remember to add tracking/confirmation stuff. USPS has a good system.

To the U.S. sellers that won't ship to Canada, I say thank you. I ship to Canada every day and have found that, by and large, Canadians are the most honest people in the world. I make it very clear up front that we only ship USPS, we will not pay for any customs charges (I tell them how to figure their customs charges), and we only ship products with insurance against loss and damage. That way there's no problems from the get go. I live on the East Coast and find it's a lot quicker to ship to Toronto or Montreal then it is to ship to the West Coast of the U.S. And I've shipped over 1000 packages to Canada and have NEVER had a problem that there's no French on my packaging.

I don't sell anything over 100 bucks on ebay anymore. it's just not worth the grief. instead, I do cash and carry on craigslist. works quite well, and no scammers.

I've been selling stuff on CraigsList lately and running into these Nigerian scammer types as well.

Check out 419eater.com, from where the picture comes. They get back at the would-be scammers, and its frickin hilarious...

PayPal does blow though. I've been ruled against twice now - once for a counterfeit DVD I bought (because apparently receiving a fake product is close enough to receiving the right product,) and another time when the seller just vanished. Man I wish GCO could compete freely.

Its not just Nigeria. Simple rule: Africa or Asia or Eastern Europe or Russia = NO NO NO NO.

@Hawk07: yeah, good luck with that one. you're pretty much effed either way...if you pay right away, there's a chance that you could dispute it in a year or two & it would wipe clean (if they keep crapass records). if you don't pay, you run the risk of that debt being resurrected into eternity (even if it's not legitimate).

this guy got taken by what seems like a pretty easy shell to crack, but what if the fraud is slightly more concealed. there's a whole load of thieves buying with fraudulent paypal/ebay accts. & having the crap sent to a u.s. address. then they turn around & fence it or throw it back on ebay or craigslist under another account. craigslist is full of those "help me sell my stolen shit on ebay" ads.

if you're lucky, they buy it w/ a stolen card b/c liability lies w/ the card issuer.

I hate to say it, but thou art farked - having dealt unsuccessfully with paypal for several years as a part of my job, i've realized exactly how much I wish google would create an entire auction system alternative to eBay. Neither eBay NOR PayPal has *ever* sided with a seller (you know, the ones who pay the fees?) that I have *ever* heard of... in eight years. I use paypal because I have to (my cusomters think it's just spiffalicious), and not because I want to - Not a good situation for any business to be in.

A few tips: One: See if you can sue the buyer in small claims court. Probably not, but worth a try at that price.

Two: If you used a tracking number (which, according to paypal, you have to use every time you ship anything.... (i could write a book on being a canadian seller and dealing with this aspect of paypal alone) see if you can track and prove that the item was recieved. Sounds dumb, but some people forget to do this.

Three: File as many complaints with ebay as you can about this seller, Negative feedback, etc, etc. There are ways to get another member's contact info - check on eBay's site to find out how. This may prove helpful info to have later. Phone ebay as well - they're open from 7am to about 10pm PST. Tell them about the situation - They may have more tips to help you out. Remind them, you're the seller, you pay the fees, the buyer doesn't, and it has certainly soured you and all your friends for both buying and selling on ebay, etc. Bad publicity travels - I wish more people realized just how often the *seller* gets scammed, and not just the *buyer.*

Tips for the future: One, don't use paypal. The fees keep rising - not only a percentage, but another cut if it's foreign currency. etc, etc. It may be free to send money, but it's damn well not to recieve it.

It is quite common for people to chargeback, and paypal rarely sides with the seller - Even if the item is sent to the UK from the US, the buyer can claim their payment back anytime after 7 days (iirc). You have 3 days to deal with the complaint, whereby, if it hasnt' been recieved, paypal will give them a refund *for you.* Even if the buyer only paid for regular mailing rates (ie not express,) and expected mailing time is 3-5 WEEKS. And you cannot do one damn thing about it, except to hope that your buyer is not malicious, and will re-pay upon actual receipt.

If you DO insist on using paypal for anything over a $100 purchase, send it Fedex or UPS - and don't leave an option for anything else. If the company will no longer deliver to that location, BIG RED FLAG. They have a much better tracking system than USPS or Canada Post or Royal Mail, some of whom's tracking stops the second it leaves the country of origin - thereby making even the $12 tracking number from canada post "utterly useless." (according to one paypal representative I spoke with)

Finally, as others have suggested, on higher value items, limit the buyers to countries you are comfortable shipping to, and who have more than X amount of positive feedback - there are controls for doing this automagically in the account areas of the myebay page.

Ebay has proved over and over that they absolutely do not care about the seller. If I was in your situation, I'd tell them to take me to court for the money. Screw'em.

man if I had a dime for every item I got shipped from US to CND that was $9.99 in US or $40 to CND I would be rich too. Hell screw the dime I will take the shipping difference instead, especially when I see that the actual shipping is usually $20 or so. So to all the boys and girls that got scammed on eBAY perhaps it is just a bit of karma for ship-scamming Canadians all the time. Something to think about.

@scoobydoo:
UPS and Fedex: basic brokerage fee for them: 35-40$. Actual customs costs extra. So something that would or should cost 5$ in fees costs 40$ or more. And you have no choice because they automatically charge the customer the brokerage fee. So if you want that neeto toy from eBay, or grandma Jones for that matter, you need to pay it. UPS and Fedex will hold it hostage until you pay up. Nor will they reconsider the fees.

Customs fees from Canada Post? Only the actual amount owed - 5$.

Sneaky little trick: label the item "gift" with "no cash value." Any spot that requires a dollar amount, write in "$0." More often than not, it'll just slip through customs without as many problems.

I had to rescue a piece of needlework from one needleworker because the person who sent it to me forgot to mark it as "no cash value." It wasn't mine but part of a cross stitch circle. If I hadn't forked the money out, she would have been out her project.

These scams come in a variety of forms. Last year my son sold an Ipod on Ebay. He then received what purported to be, and looked very convincingly like, a Paypal email advising that the necessary payment had been deposited to his account and instructing that the item be sent to the buyer's "son" in Nigeria using a provided Fed Ex account number to pay for the shipping. Of course the Nigerian connection tipped my son off, and he checked his Paypal account, only to find that no such money had been deposited. At the time, he considered using the Fed Ex account number to send the guy a very large box of rocks, but he got busy and never got around to it. I thought it was a splendid idea, though.

$1100... where's your tracking #? You DID use a traceable method of shipping an item AND insurance, right? Of course not, so you're going to whine to Consumerist, like it's EBay or PayPal's fault you got scammed.

I have no love for eBay or PayPal (c'mon someone else, come up with a viable alternative and charge 1/2 the fees, you'll get all of my business), but in this case, the complainer needs some common sense. It's a whole wide world on the 'net, complete with the scammers.

@North of 49

Marking an item as a gift to avoid customs charges can land you in real trouble

[forums.ebay.com]

Conspiracy Theory: When Paypal says to the seller that they've ruled in favor of the buyer and are giving him his money back, they also send a letter to the buyer saying that they've ruled in favor of the seller and that the sale is final. Paypal then keeps the money for itself and nobody is the wiser.

If you guys get some kind of scary sounding take-down notice for this remark, it's probably true.