Setup by eBay employee?

[webguy]

The very first stealth account I had, I was selling a pair of valve covers and was only accepting Paypal for payment. Right before the end of the auction a "customer" emails me asking If he can pay via money order. Well the address on my account was **** so I wasn't accepting money orders for that reason. (This is back when you were allowed to accept checks and money orders).

The guy offers to pay an extra $20 if I were to accept a money order stating he really wanted the valve covers, (they were vintage Edelbrock) so I agreed. I told him to contact me if he won the auction and I would give him a different address to send the payment to.

After the auction ended he emailed me saying he won and asked where I wanted the money order set to. I was suspicions right away because his user id was different than the first one he emailed me from.

Well I went ahead and gave him the address to mail the payment to which was my real address (a suspended address) less than 30mins later my account was suspended due to association with a suspended account.

Coincidence? Not likely. Don't ever give your real info to anyone!

You can't trust anybody.

I think they were suspicious of the account from the get go because I made a couple small mistakes and they were pretty sure who I was already.

[kuntrykok]

what do you do when you have someone that wants to return an item? You have to give out your real info for that, right?

[webguy]

If someone wants to return an item I give them my sisters address and pick it up there. Her address is not on file with eBay.

You can give them a friends address or anyone you know that doesn't and never has had an account.

I would never give anyone on eBay my real name or address ever anymore.

I deal in strictly Non-Tangible items now so I don't have that problem anymore.

[NO ID]

If you have a winning bidder - it is better to contact them through their email for shipping to a different address - don't use ebay mail.