Weird eBay thing…
So, I’m on the phone with my mother this morning, and she asks if I say the new photos of my niece in Texas. For a reason I have yet to figure out (mainly because it involves going through my voluminous e-mail rules), whenever my sister-in-law sends me e-mail, I don’tget it, but when my brother does, on the same provider, etc., it comes through fine. So, my mother forwards the pics to me.
When I get the new e-mail, there’s about 30 confirmations from eBay that my auctions have all been listed successfully. This is news to me, as I’m not selling anything on eBay. They are all multiple DVD box sets for very low prices, like four seasons of Star Trek Enterprise on DVD for like $70. In addition to the listings, two of the items have already sold.
My identity theft flags go up, and I hurry over to my eBay account, thinking I’ll be locked out. But I’m not. I log in, change the password. Then I bounce over to PayPal, and again, no activity there since my last visit, change that password, too.
Then I investigate the auctions. I was thinking there would be some money order requested as payment, or some other service, but the auctions said PayPal was preferred. So, the auctions are listed as me, without affecting my account information, and payment is also going to me. The only snag is that I’m not selling any of these items.
I quickly add a note to all the auctions for people not to bid, since they are a mistake. Reading on eBay’s help site, it says to cancel auctions if this happens, so I do (thanks to eBay for requiring me to input EVERY auction number, and not have a special link to kill multiple auctions at once).
I send them e-mail, they send me stuff back a few hours later confirming it wasn’t done by me, my account has been credited for the auction listing fees, etc. So, everything’s fine.
The only thing that has been perplexing is… what is the point of it? I mean, what is the end game here? I could see if they had gotten into my PayPal, but even then, you can’t easily switch the bank account for the deposits. That takes about a week.
So, someone starts auctions in my name, prices the stuff to move, says PayPal is the preferred payment whereby anyone winning the auction can deposit money from their credit card into my account, but then they can’t get the money.
What am I missing?
