So I’ve had this pretty sweet fully suspended mt. bike sitting in my garage for over a year and have barely ridden it. I decided to finally let it go on ebay.
It has been the strangest auction so far, I have had FOUR people asking if I will ship it to Israel in the first day, WTF?
Are these guys for real, or is there some new scam going on?
At first I was like, yeah, no problem, by the way it costs 550 bucks to ship it there. But they seemed a bit flakey, so I’ve decided no.
yeah that is really odd. Nice bike though. Santa cruz doesn’t make half bad bikes.
Can’t be sure, but it could be scammers. When you sell the bike, don’t ship it until you receive payment. No wiring of funds, no funny business. Wait for checks to clear at your bank before shipping.
It does look really nice. I’d like to have one but I would also hardly ever ride it…
How much are you selling it for? With Fox all around you should be able to get some good money for it.
Gene
+1
Looks like a good bike. Do you really need the money? Because otherwise I would keep it if I were you. Of course muni is much better, though.
Crikey, that looks like a complicated machine. No wonder you never ride it. Why’s your other wheel?
I’ve got a couple of reasons I’m letting it go. I’m not much of a screaming down the hill with my hair on fire rider, which is what it wants to do. I have another hardtail mt b*ke which is more my speed. I’m also thinking about getting a single speed 29er for the trails around my house, plenty of beginner/intermediate trails, but I have to drive a ways to get to the stuff where the Santa Cruz would shine. Also I just picked up 2 new Unis (kh20 and coker big1) so there are just too many wheels in my garage.
I figure sell it now while I can still get good money for it, if I wait another year or two it will lose a bunch more value.
I’m hoping I can get 1500 US for it.
Since posting this I’ve had two more interested parties from Israel ask me about it??? Really strange…
I guess we’ll see in a couple of days how it all shakes out.
Don’t do it
That like a scam. The thing with the paypal scam kinda puts you at a loss. Someone gets the item, you loose your money. All they have to do is dispute the transaction with PayPal, send them photo’s for the “defective/damaged” item, and PayPal awards them their money back. Something to that effect. Google it. I only ship within the US with confirmed addresses for the most part.
I once had a scammer try to buy my car from cars.com. It was actually kind of fun to mess with him.
It was a well know scam. He sends me me bank checks (fake) for way more money than I’m asking for. Some of the extra money is for shipping, the rest is for me to keep and is supposed to make me lose all sense of reality. He wants me to pay a shipper that he has arranged. The shipper is actually his friend and is in on the scam. They’re hoping for me to bring the checks, which look 100% legitimate, to the bank. The bank will hopefully take them. Feeling secure, I should then wire money to the shipper, but he will never show up. A few days later the bank will call and say the checks are fake, but it will be too late. I was just scammed out of the shipping money.
I played along with my scammer for a while. I kept asking him questions about the extra money. I even gave him my address and got the fake checks. I think I still have them too. They’re my trophies. I then made up a fake story about how I was at the police station using one of they’re public computers to email him. I said the bank thought the checks were fakes and security took me into custody. I told him I how I hadn’t seen my family in days, they weren’t feeding me well, and they were mistreating me. I said I knew the checks were legitimate because I trusted him, and I gave all our emails and information to the police to help work it all out. Including all the shipper information. He suddenly stopped responding to me emails. I emailed him for a week or too with cries for help. Telling him how my life had been ruined and how I was suffering so terribly. Maybe he didn’t care. I like to think it made him think twice about scamming people. Yeah right.
Another time I replied to a craigslist seller who was scamming, but as a fictitious female character. Our interaction lasted for weeks. He claimed to be in England and wanted me to wire money to him. I created a fake blog for him to see, sent him fake pictures of me, and eventually got him to say he was in love with me. He was getting so frustrated that I hadn’t yet wired him any money yet, but I just kept coming up with excuses. Job problems, roommate problems, drug problems. I got him to give me his “brother’s” email address, though based on the writing style, typos, and timing of the emails, it was so obviously just him. I told his brother about my secret plans to travel overseas and meet with his brother so we could live together. But then I ended up dying from complications from a blow to the head (long story), and my mother emailed him to let him know I had died. My spirit still sends him an occasional spooky email. hahaha!!! I wasted a ton of his time (and arguably my own) but I got a lot of entertainment out of it.
I think that post has prompted me finally to drop my disguise. I am not Mikefule: Morris dancer, concertinist, unicyclist and misanthrope, but Suzette: attractive 22 year old French nymphomaniac, trapped in Nigeria, and needing just $10,000 of your money to be able to escape. I’ll be soooo grateful. X 
Huh. I never knew a scam could be worked through Paypal. I always thought once you got your $$$$ on Paypal and deposited it, you were safe. As long as you have pictures of it before packing and proof of the packing/shipping, you should be safe from repercussions in the Paypal dispute.
Also, any Paypal scam would require a bunch of cash up front, which comes with a potential to lose that cash. I just don’t see most internet scammers working that way, especially when it costs them nothing to have me win the Nigerian lottery. 
Check it out. I did a quick search and found this video. Remember that PayPal isn’t a bank and offers you no protection.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr_7--e5A1g
Interesting, but I’m wondering if this guy is just a disgruntled ebayer that screwed on his own accord? Yes his story sounds possible, but is it the whole truth?
I understand that paypal isn’t a bank, but I don’t think banks offer this kind of protection anyway. Yes if you buy new items, but I don’t think they cover used items from individuals. Sounds like the guy in this video needs to contact his Attorney General, if he is telling the whole truth, they would take care of it.
I have sold a lot of bikes and other stuff that has been over a grand, my experiences have always been positive.
I decided to only sell it within the US. A guy in Ca. bought it, so I’ll ship it out tomorrow and hopefully all will end well (fingers crossed) 
I assure you he’s not the only person that PayPal has tried to take advantage of. I’ve recently run into problems with a transaction involving PayPal and my bank. Turns out it was a mistake made on my part, but just when you think you have a legitimate reason to dispute something, go and read the User Agreement. There is a lot covered there that’s got PayPal covered in all directions. Once you click that “I agree”, you are at the mercy of PayPal. I still use PayPal and will continue to do so, but I am very aware of how PayPal works, for and against me. Out of all the business I’ve conducted through Ebay, PayPal has done me no wrong, but once I’ve set my parameters, I won’t break them to ship something to the prince of India. A deal like that is just too shady. Good news to hear you sold your bike.
Yeah… I can’t help but wonder if there is something missing to the story. At 3:00 he talks about paypal’s reversing their decision for no reason. You’d think he’d talk about what paypal had to say at that point.
I had someone try to get their money back from me through paypal once. Paypal held the funds and we went through paypal’s arbitration process (or whatever paypal calls it). With our messages being monitored through paypal’s site, I careful asked the buyer what was wrong with the item and tried to be very helpful. Luckily the buyer was not responsive, and I could just repeat what paypal had suggested at the start of the arbitration… “We need to communicate well to resolve this”. The buyer still didn’t respond, and in the end the money went back to me.
It’s a long story, but the item was a quadruplet baby stroller I was selling for a friend, and the friend actually drove something like 5+ hours to hand deliver it and demonstrate it. Yet after the transaction the buyer still claimed it wasn’t what they expected. After seeing the ad, the photos, emailing questions, and a live demonstration, you still decide to buy it but then change your mind. WTF? People are weird.
That guy in the video sounds like he has a serious axe to grind. He also seems to have rolled over and given up. I would have fought tooth and nail to keep my money, because that’s right according to the information given. He’s probably not telling us something to make himself sound more sympathetic.
can’t watch the movie right now so can’t coment on it but I can tell you that I had no problem getting my money back when the buy who I bought a bike from dissapeared after accepting my money and my bike never showed up.
I started a dispute through paypal after waiting for a month. The seller never responded to the dispute and a month later I got everything -$10 back. From my understanding paypal pulled the money that they deposited into the guys acount and gave it back to me. the $10 that I lost was due to fluctuations in curency exchange.
This makes me think that perhaps people are accepting items paid for through paypal then start a dispute at the end of the window hopping to get their money back and keep the item. If the seller does not check their account this might be fairly easy to do.
Reminds me of this bloke who lead a lottery scammer on a superb wild goose chase. Well worth a read if you haven’t seen it before.
Rob