The scam truck

Image by jepoirrier via Flickr

The most popular post on this entire blog is, depressingly, this one: How to scam eBay sellers and get all your items for free!

There was a recent comment on this post from a brand new eBay user who had heard a lot about scams on eBay and has become a little paranoid about being scammed on a transaction.

There’s a shortage of info on the web on scams. I’m a new seller and want to know what to watch for, as well as trying to figure out if I’m being scammed by another seller. He listed an uncirculated 1885 Morgan Silver Dollar but misspelled silver as Sivler. I got the item at a descent price ($30) and was feeling rewarded for what was about a 3 hour browsing session (similar coins are selling up to $150) After waiting a week and seeing that he still had not mailed it I finally got an email to my private email address that said he could not find the item and suspected his grandson of taking it out of his desk drawer. He has a 100% positive feedback score of 700+ and I have no reason to discount his story other than the fact that I was actually excited about my ‘find’ and his reluctance to respond quickly. He said that if he doesn’t find it by Monday he will refund my money. I’m horrible at these types of judgement calls and don’t want to over react. I know it’s a binding contract and all, and don’t want to report negatively on a hunch. I also don’t think it’s right for anyone to do this without it being noted, what’s the point of tracking and giving feedback if we don’t use it when something out of the norm happens? What if he’s done this before? Anyone have any suggestions?

I have my own thoughts on this (which I’ll post in the comments section like everyone else to be sporting) but I wanted to open this up to the community of buyers and sellers who read this site. If you were this buyer, would you leave negative feedback? Do you think the seller is trying to pull something here or do you think he’s telling the truth?