Possible Scam?

MacDaddy · May 28th, 2007, 11:36 AM

OK, so I am selling my Wii, and this guy emails me. Looks like it could possibly be a scam, but he wants to pay through PayPal. He is over in the UK so I inform him that it is an NTSC system and he is OK with that. I am still a bit leary, but if it is through PayPal, I should be protected right? I am just trying to think how they could try and scam me with just my email (I have a nice secure PW for PP).

Here is the original email from him. THoughts?

	Quote:
	I am interested in this item and I want to buy it outrightly. For a quick sale, I will pay you $550.00 and $100.00 to ship it via FEDEX GLOBAL EXPRESS 3-4 DAYS.If my offer is okay with you, Kindly send me your paypal account email address so I can remit payment to you at once for the item. Theitem is going to ship to united kingdom ok so if you accept mail me back. Thanks

dwp · May 28th, 2007, 11:52 AM

So this guy is going to pay you $650 for something that has a suggested retail price of $249.99 US?

You must be including a whack of games with it!

And a brand new one is available on Craigslist for $360 Cdn.

http://toronto.craigslist.org/ele/339713970.html

Something is terribly wrong with this picture. I don't know what game he's up to, but I'd stay the hell away from it frankly.

MacDaddy · May 28th, 2007, 11:56 AM

For what I am including, retail price is around $550 with Tax, but he is over paying for shipping. Thats what I don't understand, I am trying to figure out how he could scam me with that...

TrevX · May 28th, 2007, 11:56 AM

It does sound too good to be true. However, if he is willing to send you that much in Canadian funds, it works out to roughly half of that in UK pounds since their dollar is much better than ours. Still, it doesn't seem legit. If something is too good to be true...

Trev

dwp · May 28th, 2007, 12:29 PM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by MacDaddy
	For what I am including, retail price is around $550 with Tax, but he is over paying for shipping. Thats what I don't understand, I am trying to figure out how he could scam me with that...

When people buy used at least in my experience they don't usually compensate you for the tax paid unless it a rare item that is difficult to get. I'm thinking of the prices that were being paid for the Playstation 3 last Christmas or the crazy prices for the Apple iSight camera recently.

Maybe the wii is unavailable at the present time in the UK?

Could be, but I've had so many e-mails from people in the UK wanting to buy whatever I was selling that you'd think nothing was available in England anymore!

I don't know what he could do with your PayPal info but it is suspicious.

The Doug · May 28th, 2007, 12:43 PM

Smells fishy. Walk away.

Wolfshead · May 28th, 2007, 12:52 PM

Reads like a scam to me - who writes like that?

HowEver · May 28th, 2007, 01:13 PM

.

May 28th, 2007, 02:01 PM

Paypal offers you NO protection on anything like this. The scam usually runs that they make payment to your paypal account and wait until you ship the item, then they resind the payment once the item is "in the mail". There is no recourse for this scam under the rules of "protection" from Paypal. Paypal and protection are oxymorons.