I have sold hundreds of items on ebay over the past ten years, but not in the last couple. When my laptop was in the ‘shop’, I picked up a laptop to use in the meantime. Now that my laptop is back, I was hoping to unload this ‘extra’ laptop.  Silly me!

So I listed the laptop on EBay (the first listing). It was immediately purchased with “Buy It Now” by a new user of EBay. They then deleted their EBay account (once they had my e-mail address) and encouraged me to mail the laptop, and when they got the tracking # they’d send me $ through PayPal.  Hehe…I am not that gullible.  Ok, reported the Fraud and EBay refunded the purchase cut, but not the listing fees. Ok, only a couple of dollars in a $1,300 transaction.  I can swallow that.

So I relisted the laptop on EBay (the second listing).  The same thing happened, but the temporary EBay user wanted me to ship it to Niger and claimed he was in the UK.  My warning flags were flying, I refused…reported…refunded (not the listing fee again).

So I relisted it but required the user have a PayPal account.  EBay only allows me to limit it to users either with a PayPal account or to users that have a zero or better rating (new users start with zero). I had wished that they would allow me to limit it to users with some history (perhaps a rating of 5 or more). But no go…

The PayPal limit seemed to help, I was getting real bids from real people.  So the bidding ensued and I got a real buyer. I sent him an invoice and waited…and waited…and waited. Suddenly he decided he didn’t want the item. Arg!

I am giving up…perhaps its worth keeping…it is a Tablet PC and I don’t have another one of them ; )