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Tuesday 4 November 2008

Safe Selling?

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I've recently been selling some old stuff I had around the house, mostly electronic things. I have been trying to sell my PS2 and XBox for AGES and decided to use Gumtree and Craigslist. I have been posting them every week for maybe a month or two and in all that time only received two genuine e-mails! All of the others wanted to buy it for their son/husband/father and have me send it to Nigeria/West Africa or Asia. There was even one woman who wanted to buy it for her priest (who was away working at a mission in Africa of course) and would pay me more than double the asking price and delivery! I'm not a stupid person and could spot them easily but I followed one through and issued them a Paypal invoice. Shortly after I received a very genuine e-mail from Paypal saying the money had been received and I should post the item. Most people wouldn't be fooled but some must be for these scammers to be sending so many e-mails out. After one deal fell through I eventually sold both the PS2 and Xbox but for the money I received I'm not sure it was worth it.

We met the buyer of the Ps2 at a local train station but due to all of the scams I had received, and the deal that fell through, I felt very suspicious. After we exchanged goods I happened to decide to drive home via a different route as I crazily thought he might follow me! On the way home we were driving along quite leisurely when a car came flying around a right hand corner on the left side of the road aiming straight for us. I was going so slowly that I couldn't even swerve, but just come to a quick stop. The car must have missed us by less than a couple of inches and proceeded to smack into a tree just past us. I jumped out and checked the people were ok while my girlfriend called 999. A guy got out of the car and went to the rear to get his wife and young baby girl out. This is where things get stranger. Before the ambulance and police arrived, three car loads of their relatives arrived! Luckily the neighbours had also come out and so I didn't feel so intimidated. One even made us a nice cup of tea. The ambulance arrived and checked everyone out and the only injury luckily was a small cut on the guy's head as he hit the steering wheel. The police arrived and conducted a small investigation and after the driver tried to claim he wasn't driving it became clear he was a drunk driver. The thing that gets me mad though was that the police told me they had to take him to hospital because of the cut and by the time they do a blood alcohol test he might be under the limit and they can't charge him for drunk driving! During the process I also locked my keys in the car with the engine running in my haste to get and. Its quite amazing that although we were driving along minding our own business, out of no-where we could have had a head on collision with a combined speed of probably 80mph.


For the xbox, as it was a bit harder to sell I was willing to travel into London to meet the buyer and after a week of waiting the day finally arrived. We arrived at 7pm and he wasn't there. At 7:05 called him and he said he was in a taxi and would be there in 10 minutes. Firstly it was strange he was in a taxi and secondly, I had spoken to him at 5pm when he said he was already leaving and would be there on time. Time passed and when I called at 7:15 he said he would be a further 10 minutes. At this point I thought I had been pranked, perhaps it was the same guy which the deal fell through from before. At 7:25 I called again and this time he was at a train station waiting to get the tube! I really thought that was it, he would pretend to be unreachable underground and leave us waiting for nothing. We waited and waited and waited some more and 5 minutes before I was going to leave I saw a guy looking a bit lost and starting to use his phone. We met, made the deal, shook hands and that was it. Of course on the trip back home I was even more paranoid, I couldn't lose the guy if he followed us on a train, we were stuck until we got to our station. Thankfully (I hope) he didn't follow us and I've got rid of one more thing cluttering up the house. All I need now is to go in the loft and try to sell some more crap.

Wish me Luck.

1 comment:

Ines said...

Ye had to make it look better than mine, didn't ye?

Still can't believe we got out of that without a scratch!