offering way more than reasonable

[hmcphail918]

I have a laptop up for sale at starting bid of $420 or best offer.  This person offered me $650 for the item and postage and I checked his profile out which has 10 positive feedbacks but I can't read them because he and the reviews are German speaking.  What should I do?  That seems odd.

[gopetersen]

I agree with the other poster who said it's probably better to report this as the buyer trying to make an "off-eBay transaction" than reporting it as a scam. eBay has a way of looking the other way where scams are concerned, but they come down hard on "off-eBay transactions".

Point the CS rep to the message where he asks for your PayPal transaction to make a direct payment. This deprives eBay of their selling commission and they hate that.

Don't bother mentioning the scam, eBay makes a lot of money off on-eBay scam transactions, because they still get their payments and it's the seller who gets stuck with the loss, so the word "scam" doesn't trigger much action from them.

[castlemagicmemories]

You can copy and paste the feedback into Google Translate to translate them into English from German.

[nowthatsjustducky]

Even better, you can just enter the translate order directly into just a plain Google search...

https://www.google.com/search?q=translate%3A++guten+tag&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

Hopefully DDG will get this feature soon.

[hmcphail918]

now I don't know where to report this since this scenario doesn't seem to fit their offered situations, like harassment or fake listings.

[gopetersen]

Just call Customer Service, when they answer, tell them a buyer is trying to talk you into doing an off-eBay transaction, give them the buyer User ID and ask them to look at the second message from the buyer with that User ID. Keep it simple.

[turquoisetulips]

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@hmcphail918 wrote:

I have a laptop up for sale at starting bid of $420 or best offer.  This person offered me $650 for the item and postage and I checked his profile out which has 10 positive feedbacks but I can't read them because he and the reviews are German speaking.  What should I do?  That seems odd.

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Pass it by  is my suggestion . Tulips 

[7606dennis]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "... starting bid of $420 or best offer."  Are you stating that you are running an auction with the Best Offer option attached to it.  If so, it is possible that the person making the offer is thinking that the bidding might go higher than what they are offering.  However, there is the distinct possibility that it is a scam.  If it is a fixed price listing with a BO attached, I would consider it a scam and block the person making the offer.

[nowthatsjustducky]

Later in the discussion, the OP mentioned another message asking for his email to send a (fake) PayPal message to.

That there shot down any lingering reasonable doubt as to whether or not this is a scam.

[hmcphail918]

"Our records show that you recently contacted or received messages from  clima2012 through eBay's messaging system. This account was recently found to have been accessed by an unauthorized third party, who may have used the account in an attempt to defraud other members. 

We've taken action to restore this account to the original owner, but wanted to let you know to be suspicious of any communication you may have received from them.  Nothing is wrong with your account at this time – this message is just being sent as a precaution. If you have received any messages from that appears suspicious, please feel free to forward them to us at spoof@ebay.comfor review. "

Bingo!  Didn't even have to report it.  Also, someone else is doing the same thing to me now.  Sad.

[newview]

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@hmcphail918 wrote:

"OK,i will prefer to pay through PayPal because is safer and protected.
Kindly mail me your PayPal email address  now so that i can transfer the money to your account now. "

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It never ceases to amaze me that eBay can script a bot to *attempt* to discern off-eBay transactions ... but cannot script a bot to look for THESE types of words or phrases to tag a message as a scam attempt ... and then, once determined to be such, automagically terminate the account ... with extreme prejudice.