Buggers nearly got me with this one. I was half-heartedly bidding on an item on ebay a few days ago which in the end I didnt win. a day or so later I got an email, supposedly from ebay, saying that the winner of that item had cancelled his bid and that the seller was giving me a second chance offer. the email looked 100% official as i have received genuine ones of these before. there's a link to follow if you decide to buy the item at your maximum bidding price.
luckily i queried the fact that the seller was willing to offer a laptop, which in the end went for £330, to me for my maximum bid (£60 - i did say i was half-heartedly bidding on it!)
i checked the bidding history, being careful not to touch the email, and there were loads of bidders who were bidding much higher than me. if the winning bidder had copped out at the last minute, the seller would have offered it to the next highest bidder (£320) and certainly not me!
i emailed the seller and he indeed confirmed that he had not sent out any second chance offers.
its easy for a scammer to select a non-winning bidder from the 'History' link for a particular item and send a message to them (although im not sure how they got hold of my email address). i guess if id have followed the 'buy it now' button from my fraud email it would have asked me for my userid/password, and then asked for payment which some sneaky bugger would have pocketed. :slap:
Buggers nearly got me with this one. I was half-heartedly bidding on an item on ebay a few days ago which in the end I didnt win. a day or so later I got an email, supposedly from ebay, saying that the winner of that item had cancelled his bid and that the seller was giving me a second chance offer. the email looked 100% official as i have received genuine ones of these before. there's a link to follow if you decide to buy the item at your maximum bidding price.
luckily i queried the fact that the seller was willing to offer a laptop, which in the end went for £330, to me for my maximum bid (£60 - i did say i was half-heartedly bidding on it!)
i checked the bidding history, being careful not to touch the email, and there were loads of bidders who were bidding much higher than me. if the winning bidder had copped out at the last minute, the seller would have offered it to the next highest bidder (£320) and certainly not me!
i emailed the seller and he indeed confirmed that he had not sent out any second chance offers.
its easy for a scammer to select a non-winning bidder from the 'History' link for a particular item and send a message to them (although im not sure how they got hold of my email address). i guess if id have followed the 'buy it now' button from my fraud email it would have asked me for my userid/password, and then asked for payment which some sneaky bugger would have pocketed. :slap: