Here's a very helpful tidbit for you guys..
Back in January of this year I sold a notebook computer in
eBay to an alleged Joe Silva from Gulf Shores, AL for $700 plus shipping. This individual provided a cell phone number and an email address for a contact, and even asked that I ship the notebook overnight. Since he had no feedback, I asked to send it via Fedex COD, to which he agreed. Turns out that he handed a phony money order to the Fedex guy and was busted by the local PD on
FIVE other fraud incident involving fake money orders. Incidentally, he was busted as he was "paying" for my notebook and the very polite and helpful detective down there recovered it for me. After all the paperwork and having to get Fedex on the ball about this, I eventually got my notebook back shortly afterwards. I was lucky. The detective said a printing machine that he used to print out the money orders was found, so for all intents and purposes I would have been out of my notebook and out of $700 plus shipping expenses.
This said,
DO NOT ACCEPT MONEY ORDERS NOR AGREE TO DO COD FOR ANYTHING. If the buyer is really skeptical about you or pushy about getting you to ship first, chances are
YOU ARE ABOUT TO GET SCREWED OUT OF YOUR GOODS AND/OR YOUR MONEY. When doing business, either accept PayPal or personal checks only. Doing PayPal guarantees you will get your money and secures the buyer should there be anything wrong with the merchandise. Doing a personal check provides less protection to the buyer, but at least a check can be stopped and a check can be cleared for funds.
Most importantly, if the deal you're about to get into seems funny to you, request a home address and home number and match them against the telephone company's phone book, and request Heatware or
eBay feedback.
Hope this helps.