Happy Cyber Monday!

I actually did a bunch of on-line shopping over the long weekend.

And....got embroiled in my first ebay/paypal scam!

I've been flip-flopping on wanting to get the complete Buffy the Vampire Slayer tv series on DVD, so I've been watching prices online (ie amazon, ebay, and whatever cheap places google returns). So I finally decided I found THE rock-bottom price online and thought I would try to beat it on ebay. I found a few actions to watch and zeroed in on my target.... I had the winning bid, and beat the other online price by about $30.

The next morning I went to pay via paypal, and when I got the receipt, it said payment went to an address like XXXXX@googlemail.com.... so that was red flag 1. red flag 2 was the name of the person did not match the name in the winning bid email, red flag 3 was that the address was a Non-US Verified address, but the auction stated the location was in the US (Florida) -- as a general rule I will not buy anything outside of the US.

Then I contacted the seller via email, and never got an answer. Then I posted on an ebay messageboard and opened a paypal claim to get my money back. The sellers other auctions were shutdown and his account has been suspended, so now he has emailed me asking me to pay again! LOL!

Now in addition to not buying an item in a location outside the use, I have learned don't buy a high-ticket item from someone with feedback for all Private auctions.

Live and Learn!!