Interesting

Below is people’s belief in Australia for the next 12 month house pricing.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/property/home-prices-seen-stagnating-survey-20100729-10wti.html#poll

Poll: What do you think will happen to house prices in your city in 12 months’ time?

Poll form

1. Please select an answer. Rise 10% or more
2. Rise 0-10%
3. Little changed
4. Fall 0-10%
5. Fall 10% or more
6. View results

Rise 10% or more

8%

Rise 0-10%

23%

Little changed

25%

Fall 0-10%

19%

Fall 10% or more

25%

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Today’s background of Bing.com is Sydney Harbour Bridge… beautiful

Sydney Harbour Bridge

eBay seller should be aware of paypal fraud

Today, to my disappointment, I experienced a real fraud online. I was selling one item on ebay and was very happy to have someone bought it so quickly, only a couple of hours after it is listed on eBay.

First email I received was from eBay (eBay Member: victoriarob1ww <member@ebay.com.au) as below:

I’m glad to have bought the item you advertised on ebay.I actually wanna buy the item as a birthday gift for my boyfriend in Vancouver Washington,United State.I’m not home at the moment,I’m presently in Asia on an official assignment, that why am buying on ebay with my PayPal account,I’d like you to do me a favor of posting the item directly to my boyfriend in Vancouver Washington,United State.I’ll pay extra postage fee to United State.Pls get back to me asap with the item’s present condition.
Regards
Victoria

– victoriarob1ww

The above email is a real email from eBay as email address shows that.

I replied with below:

Hi Victoria,

Thank you for purchasing from us. Paypal is fine for us.

As we normally only post to Australia domestically, can you please ask your friend or relative to help you to ship to USA?

Please let us know their detailed address in Australia.

She did not reply very quickly, so I sent another email below:

Dear victoriarob1ww,

Hi Victoria, not sure if you received my email
this morning. We prefer to deliver to your friend
or relative in Australia. We will deliver the item
as soon as we receive payment. If all your friends
or relatives are not available, we may find out
how much it costs to USA by courier. Insurance
also is a must when ship to overseas. You are
welcome to find your own courier so that make the
shipping cost more reasonable. Let me know.

I believe every seller is eager to finalise the deal, that’s why I agree to ship to overseas if customer really wants to.

The buyer replied and asked below:

i need your full name before the payment could be made and send the cost of postage to usa because i have no relative in Australia.i wiill be very grateful if you can do this for me

Regards,
Victoria

Be careful here, she asked about my Paypal account real name, which she could later in a fake email. And you should know that you only need an email address to send money by Paypal.

Before I find out the cost for Freight, I received an email from below which said a payment was sent to me. Receiver’s detailed address in America also included. Read below carefully.

The email was sent from service@paypal.co.uk.  which has the realy email address <payMerchant@mail2member.com>, service@paypal.co.uk is only a name for email address. For example, you can put your name as the name showing for your email address when you send email to your friends. Sometimes you can need read the email address name to find out who sent it. But here is tricky. At first glance, you think it is from service@paypal.co.uk. but actually it is from its realy email address <payMerchant@mail2member.com>. You can find out this information from email details. Read below please.

Dear “Your Paypal Account Name”,

You have an Instant Payment of AU $750.00  from Mrs.Victoria Robinson (victoriarob20@rocketmail.com) for an eBay item.
– Show quoted text –

Payment Details

Purchased From:ebay user name

Transaction ID:68F8034528382432U

Buyer’s User ID: victoriarob1w

Buyer:Victoria Robinson
Amount:AU $650.00

Postage & Packing:AU $100.00

Postal Compensation:AU $0.00

VAT:
Total Amount:

Payment Status:AU $750.00

Payment Status:AU $750.00

Verified  (Awaiting Shipment Verification)

Pay With:

 

This payment is pending because it was sent in a currency in which you do not currently hold a balance. Get back to us with the Shipment Tracking details so that we can verify that the item has been shipped and transfer the funds deducted from the buyer’s PayPal account to your account. If you have any question or you want to send the Shipment Tracking details to us at :payMerchant@mail2member.com You can also send the Shipment Tracking details to the buyer if you want. Please Note: If the buyer is no longer registered on eBay, does not affect the payment for been credited into your account as soon as the Shipment Reference is confirmed.

***PLEASE NOTE***
THE BUYER OF THIS ITEM HAS REQUESTED THIS ITEM TO BE SHIPPED TO THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS BELOW:
BUYER’S SHIPMENT INFORMATION:

Confirmed

PLEASE NOTE*** FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT HAVE PAYPAL ACCOUNT, PAYMENT RESIDENTIAL DELIVERY ARRANGEMENTS TO YOUR REGISTERED ADDRESS WITH US WOULD BE EFFECTED AS SOON AS WE HAVE RECEIVED A TRACKING NUMBER FOR SHIPMENT VERIFICATION.
If you have an account with PayPal your funds will be transferred to:******@gmail.com. If you do not have PayPal account your payment will be delivered to the Registered Address with PayPal.

Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team

PayPal Credit Card

With PayPal, you always shop without sharing your financial information.

This is definitely a fraud email, the tricky thing is your payment is pending due to some reason. When you check your payple, of course you will not see the payment. I almost believe the above email is a real one. eBay sent me an email as below to warm me that this buyer has unregistered from eBay, so maybe it is a fraud.

Dear ******We recently cancelled bids for the buyer:victoriarob1ww Our records indicate that this buyer recently attempted to complete a transaction with you. Since the buyer is not currently registered on the eBay site, you can consider the transaction cancelled if you haven’t already shipped the item. In some cases, sellers have reported receiving an email indicating that they have received payment by PayPal, but in fact this is a fake message. We recommend logging into your PayPal account to confirm that payment was actually received. For more information on spoof messages, please go to: http://pages.ebay.ca/help/account/reporting-spoof.html   If you’ve already shipped the item, we recommend taking the following steps: 1. Contact the company that was used to send payment to verify whether or not funds have cleared. 2. If you find that the funds are fraudulent, contact law enforcement in the buyer’s area. Be sure to be as specific as possible, including names, addresses, phone numbers, and any other information that you may have about the buyer. If a detective is assigned to your case, please ask him or her to contact us so that we can assist in the investigation. 3. Contact the shipping carrier to determine whether or not it may be possible to stop shipment on the package. 4. Consider filing a complaint with The National Fraud Information Center (NFIC). The NFIC compiles reports of Internet fraud and relays that information to local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. You can file a report with the NFIC at: http://www.fraud.org 5. If your package was shipped via Canada Post, you may be able to file a mail fraud complaint at: http://www.canadapost.ca If you can’t receive funds for this sale, you can file for a Final Value Fee credit, provided it has not been 45 days or more since the listing ended. To request a Final Value Fee credit, please follow go to: http://pages.ebay.ca/help/sell/credits.html   If you have any concerns or questions, you can visit our help system by clicking Help at the top of any eBay page. We apologize for the inconvenience, and we thank you for your patience and cooperation. Sincerely, eBay Community Support H19380
Learn More to protect yourself from spoof (fake) emails.This administrative email was sent to [my email address] from eBay International AG. Your account is registered on www.ebay.ca. As outlined in our User Agreement, eBay will periodically send you information about site changes and enhancements. If you would like to receive this email in text format, change your notification preferences  . eBay will periodically send you required emails about the site and your transactions. Visit our Privacy Policy and User Agreement   if you have any questions. Copyright © 2010 eBay Inc. All Rights Reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. eBay and the eBay logo are trademarks of eBay Inc. eBay International AG is located at Helvetiastrasse 15/17 – P.O. Box 133, 3000 Bern 6,Switzerland.

At this stage, you will see it is a fraud. The most important thing is check your paypal account to see if a payment has beenb paid to you before you ship the item out. But seriously, if eBay did not send me a warning message, I might already have been cheated. Lucky as me, the email from eBay arrived before this buyer’s another email below:

Am sorry for the late response due to some circumstances …I just wanna let you know that the payment has been effected now Via PayPal now AU $750.00 has been deducted from my PayPal account now and i had pay the postage cost to united state  ..i have check postage cost on courier service web site kindly get the item post to him today and get back at me with the tracking number,for me to know when the item has been sent,it Nice doing business with you i hope we know each other more.here is the address.. Vicky Roberts, 6400 north east highway 99 #G180,Vancouver Washington,98665,United State.
Regards
Victoria

That address in America is not a residential address. I checked google map, which shows it is a business area. The buyer is so generous that she also paid $100 postage before I adivse her this cost. Too good to be true.

There is another blog also the same Paypal fraud for seller. Link is: http://www.mogmachine.com/sellers-beware/

Please be really careful when you sell or buy.

Fraud continued… received futher email on 10 July 2010 19:46 below:

Hello,
Good Day,how is you family?hope they are fine.can you tell me what is happening over there?because the payment has been made via paypal,and the fund has been deducted from my account,but i have not hear from you and i have already contact paypal customer care and i was informed that you have not get back to them with the tracking number for the posting of the item.so get the item posted to today.and get back to me with the tracking number for the posting of the item.i have contact ebay about this transaction.Hope to hear from you before 1hurs
Regards
Victoria

You can see from the above, they won’t stop trying to get you into the trap either by enticing or threatening. I guess, there will be more emails from this Victoria in next few days.  Will get this blog updated later.