I've put a bit of tomfoolery on E-Bay, nothing spectacular just a good quality gold chain that no longer becomes a man of my advancing years. I've put a price of 200 quid on it and within an hour I got this on e-mail:

Hello there,
I just need to tell you that this is a very
lovely item you have gotten here and I am
interested in buying it outrightly. For a quick
sale, I will pay you 700pounds for the item and its shipping costs via royalmail
to ship it to my son. I was planning going on
shopping physically but could not due to the
nature of my work as i am always on the move
cos I am marine engineer and I work with an
International shipping company. I will be
paying with my paypal account.so please do
reply me asap with your paypal account or send
me a payment request from your paypal account
so i can effect payment to you rightaway.
I await your reply
NB:Honestly, I do not know the actual worth of
this item because I'm always busy sailing. If
my offer is not ok, Let me know so i can raise
it a bit or bring it down as the case maybe.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Regards
joshmac@verizonmail.com


Now I am suspicious, particularly as he asks for details of my Paypal account. I've obviously checked with paypal and they say I can ask for the cash by e-mail without giving my details.

Anyone recognise a tactic here and anyone experienced anything similar??

There's no money in the account but offering 500 above the asking price, even though the chain cost me more than that, doesn't smell good??

Kev,if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.
You give him an email for paypal,then you get a reply saying that the money is held in escrow for you & as soon as you show proof of postage the money will be released.The address to post to will probably be Nigeria.
Sack it,its a con.

Sounds to me like its an associate of old Joe from the church of the painted breast .

Tell me more about this breast...........

Thanks lads good advice and I shall follow it. To be honest it did sound too good to be true, the average price of these things on e-bay is nowhere near 700 and miracles seldom happen do they.

i am just sad that MEDALLION MAN thinks he has to retire so early
must be the ty chee

I reckon you could get the dumb fucker up to a grand, do it!

Church of the painted breast. There is a website I used to use quite a lot where we all dragged all these nigerians along and got them to do all sorts of daft things in order to agree with their requests. Of course they never got any real details but of all the baits this is by far the greatest. It's a long read but well worth it.


http://www.419eater.com/html/joe_eboh.htm

I sold a car via eBay last year, and had people offering me money to take it off eBay and sell it to them within hours. The one I eventually sold it to told me how to do it while still handling the transaction through eBay and that was far preferable and also AFAIK within their terms and conditions - he made sure he would be the highest bidder, I chose to end the auction early and sell to the current high bidder, and there's then an option to put an adjustment in on the price.

One of the main things IMO is that is it's all legit and done through eBay there's a level of protection on both sides - leaving feedback, their dispute resolution process etc. Take it off and sell direct, and if it goes pear shaped eBay will (reasonably enough) not be interested in helping out....

You weren't kidding about it being a long read!!! Very funny though