Flashes of Panic

I’ve been too busy to wrap up the story of the errant camera.

eBay spotted the fraud not long after I did, and cancelled the bids administratively. Apparently the account belongs to a perfectly legitimate user, but it was “hijacked” (read: legitimate user’s password was compromised, possibly through phishing) and the winning bid was placed by someone else controlling the account. I’m betting that the intent was not to defraud me, but rather to convert the contents of an illicitly-accessed PayPal account into less-traceable merchandise as quickly as possible.

With that bid cancelled, I looked back down the bidding list. I checked out the second-highest bidder and found, after a long string of positive reviews, two recent negative reviews along the lines of, “Never paid for items AVOID AVOID AVOID.” So I sent a “second chance offer” to the third-highest bidder, some forty dollars down the scale from the original “winning” price. That was active for a day and wasn’t taken, so I’ve re-listed the camera.

I’ve registered a dispute for the original “sale,” since supposedly that’s what I need to do in order to get eBay to refund their charge on my account for the fraction of the sale they take as their cut. That, and the resale is really just tedious. Get this thing out of here, huh?

Now Playing: Sooner Or Later from Bang! by World Party

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