Scammers and harassers

[giovca5]

Hi has anyone ever encountered a problem where the sold an item and then it was a scam. This is what happened to me; I sold my iPhone 5 then all of a sudden I get a text message from the buyer saying that he purchased item (I don't know how he got a hold of my number) and wanted me to ship out right away to an address in Nigeria and payment was on hold until I provided tracking no. After checking with paypal and seeing that there was no payment I told him that I would not ship item because there was no payment and even if there was a payment made I had made it clear that I only ship to canada and the u.s. I then started getting foul language threatening texts saying that he was military and that he would report to the FBI and he actually sent me a fake email from ebay and FBI that he was reporting me. I blocked him from phone and email Oh and I forgot to mention when I asked him why he had provided a fake address in his registration he told me that it was a camp he was staying during summer and he only used it to register not to ship item to and by the way he registered same day as purchase was made. The whole thing has me a little terrified. What shud I do.

[pierrelebel]

Report the buyer to eBay here:  http://ocsnext.ebay.ca/ocs/sc?&inputtext=INQ_DOCUMENT_OC1649

Then ignore any communication from "buyer".  Do nor reply.  Do not ship.

Relist your item after the "buyer" has been blocked

[pjcdn2005]

It seems that there are always scammers who target new sellers selling higher priced items...especially cell phones.  Even though your listings say that you ship to Canada and the U.S. only you need to block other countries so that they can't bid.

To do that, go to My eBay page, click on account, site preferences,

buyer preferences. Click edit on the right side and then check off

'Buyers whose primary shipping address is in a country I don't ship to.'

While you are in that area, you might also want to check off 'Block buyers who have received 2 unpaid item strikes in 12 months.'

[pjcdn2005]

I would suggest that you make your shipping prices within Canada and the U.S. more reasonable so that people in those locations are more likely to bid.  $30 U.S. for shipping within Canada isn't realistic imo. If you use paypal shipping you can use expedited shipping and get 18% off of counter prices. A 30 x 30 x 6cm  1.5kg package would cost about C$13-$14 for expedited parcel from Alberta to Newfoundland and about the same from Quebec to B.C. If you want to use xpresspost, the discount is around 8 or 9%.