Someone tried pretending to be a valued ebay member, and pulling this fast one on me too! Do your research people. As one of you said in this thread, "if it's too good to be true, then it probably is". I notified Ebay about this, so hopefully something will be done about this.
Here are the two fraudulent emails that I received:
[i]Hello Dan, this is Beverly Heagy, you have recently made a purchase from me on Ebay. I also work as the US affiliate of this German company - Agile Electronic GmbH - and I am writing you because I need a reliable Ebay member, with Internet access 24/7, to fill in for me at this job for about five weeks, while I'm on vacation.
If your schedule allows you to work one hour a day - weekdays only, and if you could use some extra income (11% of the transactions) please let me know.
Bev
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My reply (Beverly is a good seller, so I thought this might be ligit. However it isn't actually her, but an impersonator instead. The impersonator went so far as to use her email address as the "username", but a different actual email address, where the domain name was different... ):
Hi Beverly,
That sounds possible. I'd definitely be interested. Could you tell me more about it? With there being so many scams out there, could you provide some sort of assurance otherwise? I'm sure you understand... Also, I definitely have the time and internet access 24/7...
Thanks,
Dan
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Dan,
I am glad to hear from you. Let me just give you some more details so you can understand what my job is about. Many people including myself prefer to pay for merchandise with local bank transfer. European merchants, like the distribution company that I work for (Agile Elektronics GmbH - here you have their site
http://agile-electronic.com/impressum.htm) cannot open their own bank account in the U.S. and they use an affiliate partner to process payments made by customers in the United States.
What I do, as their affiliate payment processor is quite simple: I am notified when a customer wants to pay with bank transfer - inside the US (the amount and date of the payment). After the buyer has completed the payment to my bank account I have to confirm the receipt so they can ship the product. I keep 11% of each payment (my commission) and send them the remaining via Western Union.
Of course, you will keep the entire commission for the period that I will be away, should be about $300 / week, depending on the company sales. I can understand your concern about scams, however the assurance is the commision you keep for yourself before sending the rest of the money, I guess that should do it.
Anyway, if you think you can handle it I can ask Mr. Schneider - the manager, to send you full instructions. Please let me know at your earliest convenience, I want to settle this before I leave.
Bev[/i][i]
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I think I may f*ck with them a little, just to be a pain in their a**!!!
Dan[/i]