I’ve been trying to sell an old computer on eBay so I can have some christmas money, but it’s proving to be an ordeal. I’ve bought and sold many things on ebay through the years and have been very happy with them until recently. What happened was that my winning bidder claimed that they did not authorize the bids, so ebay deleted my item. No ifs, ands or buts, they just flat out deleted my item to “protect the integrity of the eBay system.” They say they’ll refund my fees and that I can relist the item for free within 7 days if I want to.

So, after I cooled off, I relisted the item. Then, I started getting questions in my eBay inbox like these:

“Hello,
I want to buy this item and pay you $350 for the item and the postage via USPS express mail international .
I will greatly appreciate it if you can sell this item for me cause i am unable to wait till the end of the auction so i can’t place a bid on the item.
There is no need to worry as i am willing to pay all the extra charges (Postal insurance and all) that it may attract. Please add your email address when replying so i can be able to reply, you can also add the email address registered with your paypal account so as to be able to transfer funds from my account asap as the item is urgently needed. My email address/Paypal is jdat11@verizonmail.com
Matthew Tackeff

jdat11″

And this one:

“Hello, I am interested in the purchase of your laptop listed on ebay .It is to be shipped internationally so i am willing to pay the sum of $2800 for it.I Will like it gift wrapped and sent to my daughter in West Africa and I will be making the payment via Money Order ..Kindly get back to me with your name,address(phone number inclusive) and two valid email addresses if you are interested and i will proceed with sending the payment immediately.you can also contact me on susanjenkins@deafconnect.com Regards Mrs Susan Jenkins

- goddessvt”

At least their offers are getting better.

Too bad I’m not getting dumber. In case you don’t know, these offers are in violation of the eBay TOS (Terms of Service).

Way to go, awesome way to “protect the integrity of the system” hoss.

There’s not even a mechanism that I can use to report these people’s emails to eBay.

I should counteroffer the second one and tell them that I want $10,000 for a computer that’s worth about $120 and see what they say.