Nov 29, 2007

Well, we are having winter weather today. Of course, our winter weather is often mistaken for early fall weather by people who don't live here. It is in the middle fifties and is raining. That is close enough for us. You might think that a guy suffering from the Hacking Bird Flu would have the good sense to stay in on a day like today. But when dealing with me, all the rules of normal behavior have to be loosened up or ignored altogether. I went out to play golf with the Seafood King, Seafood Jr. and Some Guy Named Bob today. Everyone but Bob has the same crud that has me down. What a sorry lot we were, hacking and complaining for eighteen holes. While I was at the golf course, I saw a guy that looked familiar to me and after a moment or two of thinking about it, I realized that he was a teacher at my high school in the 1960s. I stopped him and talked to him for a minute. He didn't have any idea who I was, but he seemed happy to be remembered. On the seventeenth hole, he and the other guys he was with, came over to talk to me. They all turned out to be on the old high school staff, although none recalled me. My graduating class was over a thousand and my high school had about five thousand students my senior year, so it would have been unexpected that I would be anything but a stranger to them. So long as former teachers are alive, I'm not too old. I seem to be the target of some sort of eBay scam. I bid on something yesterday and and even though I was the high bidder, I did not met the reserve price that the buyer had set. So, the item went unsold. The seller had a good eBay rating and was in Canada, which will be important in just a minute. Shortly after the end of the auction, I got an email from someone purporting to be the seller, asking how much I would be willing to pay? Assuming that it was a legitimate inquiry, I told him that my final bid was all I could pay for his item. Today I have received two emails, one purporting to be from eBay, asking me to send the amount of my last bid to the alleged seller and he would sell the item to me. The second email claimed to be from the seller and asked the same. Neither email appears to me to be from a native English speaker. You decide. Hello, Thank you for your e-mail. I must tell you that now I'm in Europe ( Romania) with UNICEF to help the people, but this is not a problem because you will receive the item in maximum 24 hours.I will pay for the shipping and insurance and I will provide you 10 days money back guarantee, no questions asked. That means within 10 working days you decide if you don't want to keep the item.The payment you will do via western union,because here the paypal is no't aviable!!! So, if you are really interested, now all you have to do is to send me exactly those info: First name: Last name: Address: City: Country: Zip: eBay ID : Item # Total Amount:75$ with shipping included! need the details exactly like i have requested , because i have to forward the email to eBay.In short time, they will send you the invoice with all the details you need to complete the deal safe and fast for both of us,under ebay protection!I am dealing only thru eBay. Thank you! I vote for a fake. The supposed communication directly from eBay was also filled with grammatical and spelling errors. Since it had a link in it, I deleted it before it could cause any real trouble. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

3 comments:

Bobby D. said...

did you really see your old teachers on the golf course or were you hallucinating from Hacking Bird Flu? I saw an old teacher of mine a few years back. He had no clue who I was-- the only interesting students are the ones you are currently teaching I suppose.

I am going to Romania to help the people, could you loan me a few hundred bucks?

Squirrel said...

I have a question for you--How difficult is it to sell a house "by owner" ?

I have noticed in my walks around the neighborhood, that the "by owner" houses stay on the market a long long time. (and inmy neck o the woods, houses sell like freakin hotcakes despite the overall real estate scene.)

Today I noticed that yet another "by owner" home had given in and hired a real estate company. It seems as soon as the get a realtor, the house is sold in a week or two.

What are your thoughts on this?

Steve Reed said...

Definitely a scam! I'd send it to eBay's security folks. I would never complete a sale outside the parameters of the eBay Web site, since that provides some measure of security and enforcement. eBay will want to know about this person so they can deactivate the account.

Good instincts, Merle!