Lude Generation

It's finally happened... I've been well and truly conned

Recently I've been searching for a pair of Recaro front seats for the 5th gen. On Tuesday I stumbled on an ebay auction for a mint full EP3 interior. I asked the guy if he'd consider selling just the front seats and if so, how much for them delivered? He replied pretty promptly with £300 delivered. I thought! They normally go for £500+ in that condition... I'm having them! I asked how he'd like to proceed, so he said it'd have to be bank transfer at that price. I understood why he'd suggest that and I didn't really batter an eyelid at it, the guy seemed like a really nice guy, we'd exchanged a few lol's and haha's, and he was wanting to get them out to me that morning as he had a number of other things he needed to send out. But of course he couldn't send them until my payment had cleared, so I got the card out and sent him £300 via back transfer.

During our general chit chat (And we're about 15 messages each in now) he asked if there was anything else I was interested in, he had a lot of Mugen Civic stuff as he was breaking a Civic. I said no, I have a Prelude, but thought I'd have a gander at what he had anyway. Turns out amongst the Civic parts he had a set of mint DC5 red recaros up for auction as well! They were listed as Just "Integra DC5 seats" (Or something similar), which is why they hadn't popped up in any of my "Recaro" searches. I quickly messaged him back saying I hadn't spotted the DC5 Recaros due to said reasons, I don't suppose you'd sell those for £300 instead would you? lol. To that he replied, sorry bud, they're mint, I need at least £400 for those. Even that seemed cheap, but I told myself no, I have other things I need to buy this month. So I offered him £350 delivered Not expecting him to budge, he replied, lol You're like me, you see something you want and just have to have it! Go on then. Woo! I thought and promptly sent him the additional £50 via bank transfer.

We were getting on like a house on fire, but he informed me after a while that he hadn't been able to send them out that day (Tuesday) as my payment hadn't cleared in time, although it has cleared since. That was fine, but just for confirmation I asked if he was going to send them out Wednesday instead (Like he's previously suggested to me), as I needed to inform my other half as to whether she needed to stay in to receive them or not. He said yes, he'll give me the tracking details once they've been sent.

So the next day (Wednesday) arrives, but I never got an update with the tracking details. It doesn't matter to me when they're sent, but I'd like to know so the missus doesn't have to wait in for no reason. So I sent him another message at the end of the day just asking for confirmation. Still no reply, so I just have to play the waiting game.

Thursday comes and still no reply. Ok I thought, weird, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Although one other thing that was concerning me was that although he'd received payment from me, he still hadn't ended the ebay auction

Anyway it all became clear this evening when for every one of the messages he sent me, I had one from ebay saying...

We think eBay account johnnynodaethat has been used without the account owner's permission, so we're now restoring it to them. To protect this member's privacy, we can't share any more details about their account.

People sometimes misuse eBay accounts by sending emails from them. In these emails, they invite you to buy or sell outside eBay, or ask questions that have nothing to do with eBay. They do this in the hope that you'll respond and give them your email address.

We strongly recommend you treat emails from this member with caution and don't respond if you hear from them again.

If you wish to chat to one of our customer service agents through the Live Chat function please follow the below link.
http://contact.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI. ... =1&pid=863

All of his listings have been removed and now when looking at his user ID history his name changed on the 22nd and has been restored again to what it was today. So it looks like whoever hacked into his account changed the username, so the genuine owner couldn't get back in to see what was happening. If I remember rightly, all the listings were 3 day listings as well, so they were probably put there by the fraudster

Anyway, I've been in contact with my bank who have filled out a credit payment recovery form for retrieving the money, but I'm also to ring again tomorrow and speak to the special investigations team and see if they can take it any further. So fingers crossed to that

I guess I've done well so far, in that this is my first real issue in what is probably spanning 8 or more years of dealing on trust alone, but it still bites

That's gutting man, so sorry to hear Hope your bank can get it back

Has it taken you all day to pluck up the courage to tell us, was it like "dad ive bumped your car" you know you got to say it but you really dont want too . Thank heavens for credit card payment protection.

Sorry to hear dude. Never nice to hear genuine people being ripped off by scum. Fingers crossed you get your money back.

Ted wrote:Has it taken you all day to pluck up the courage to tell us, was it like "dad ive bumped your car" you know you got to say it but you really dont want too . Thank heavens for credit card payment protection.

No the ebay warning messages only came through after 8 and it took me 3 hours to write that ^^^

sorry to hear that, nafe, hope you get some recompense either way.

rubbish. We all get caught now and then mate.

Put it down to experience.

It was isis, james knows exactly who and where he is, he knew months ago but decided to keep it to him self.

you're so funny phil.

oh no, I forget. No you're not.

jobby luck nathan but thats all it is. We all stretch out the hand of trust in expectation of getting the same level of trading honesty. Sometimes that gets bitten but thats not your fail. Its just the name of the game. Without the open nature of your buying and selling over the years you would have prolly missed out on loads of stuff. Stick to your guns.

sorry to hear that, hopefully you have better luck going forward.