eBay used to be the only place people went to sell anything online, but more often we’re seeing more eBay alternatives because Ebay has, unfortunately, lost what made them great. Selling or buying anything on eBay is more nerve-racking then it used to be. eBay offers little security and customer support; leaving eBay users open to scams and fraudulent transactions. If eBay won’t help it’s users, I will. Here are some tips when buying/selling on eBay:

Be weary of “Buy It Now.” I always considered eBay’s Buy It Now a great feature to add to your auction. If somebody wants what your selling badly enough they can avoid the auction and purchase the item for an often increased price. To put Buy It Now on your auction it’s about ~.25, which I felt was worth it.

After a couple of auctions I had started (iPod, Monitor, Games) I noticed that a few of the items I had auctioned would sell quickly. Quickly as in a couple hours after I posted the item. Looking at the buyers of the auction, a red flag poked me in the eye. Firstly, the mailing address was from somewhere in Nigeria. Secondly, the sender sent me a fake invoice, which could be considered real by unsuspecting eBay users. Trying to contact to scammer buyer was somewhat of a game. I told them that “I would consider this a scam until I received payment.” The next day I got an email from the buyer (this time the buyer was named Mary, the day before it was John) attacking me about the accusations I had put on them.

What I’m trying to say is, skip Buy It Now. After the auction, I still have my item, but I have lost $3.00 in listing fees and eBay hasn’t responded to any of the emails I have sent them. Just go through with the auction and let other users bid on your item.

Don’t do ANYTHING until the money is in your account. So you’ve just sold something on eBay and you’ve sent the buyer an invoice. Most often you’ll receive a PayPal notification alerting you that the buyer has sent you the money. Sometimes, though, the buyer will send you an email with instructions on getting your payment. RED FLAG! You, as the seller, should NEVER have to play any game to get your money. If this does happen, send the buyer an email, but don’t think about sending your item until you get the money in your account.

Make sure to check your account. The email you recieve could be a fake.

If it’s at all suspicious, walk away. If any part of your transaction on eBay (buying or selling) seems odd, walk away, it probably is. If the item you bought seems too good to be true, it probably is. Walk away with your item in hand or your wallet full. There will be another chance.

As I was writing this email I recieved an email from a fraudulent buyer who “bought” my iPod Touch a few days ago. This scammer is extremely good at what they do, but I found a couple of problems with the fake emails.

This is a fake PayPal payment notification email. Thankfully, Gmail knew it was fake.

Click to enlarge

…and what has Ebay to say about this? Absolutley nothing!

If you are having trouble with eBay or need help trying to figure out if an email is fraudulent, send me an email (mail[at]r3fresh.com) and I would be more than glad to help you. This kinda stuff should never happen, especially with a big company like eBay.

[UPDATE] Here is another fake PayPal email by my buyer. I’ve got to give it to him, he doesn’t give up easy.

Click to enlarge

Top Picture by Ella’s Dad

This is what I get when I try to go to ThePirateBay.org from my home. From the looks of it Qwest, my ISP, has decided to block access to the popular foreign torrent site. This block irks me as there was no warning that I would no longer be able to reach this site. It’s like someone telling me I can’t go into a store because I could steal something. This will be the first time I’ve had problems with Qwest, but it won’t surprise me to see more torrent services mysteriously stop working.

Thanks Qwest!

Have you found more ISP blocked sites? Leave them in the comments.

Update: I’ve gotten it to work. Looks like there was a problem with my browser. Pirate Bay’s up and running.

Update 1: It looks like Pirate Bay will only work during certain parts of the day. Qwest has to be invovle with this somehow.

If you listen to the radio for any amount of time you’ll know “Lollipop” by Lil Wayne. It’s a pretty catchy song with some laughable lyrics, but Lil Wayne has done one better with a remixed version with help from (the master of terrible) Kanye West. The remix strays from the songs original lyrics and will leave you baffled on how these guys wrote this song. Read the rest of this entry »

Outbrain, an embeddable rating and “recommendation” widget for your blog or website has found a place at the end of each of my posts. The guys behind Outbrain have been great; allowing me to try out new features and even helping me with formatting issues. I have been extremely happy with Outbrain and what they are offering until I noticed that the “recommendations” portion of the widget is not what it seems.

Before something drastically changed at Outbrain, the recommendations widget would show similar blogs at the end of your blog post. In exchange for putting the recommendations on your blog, you would expect to have your blog show up on other Outbrain users. This in theory would give you a little more traffic, but it’s not true anymore. The Outbrain recommendations now include more popular blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo, but neither Engadget or Gizmodo have the recommendations widget on there site. (Where’s my part of the deal?)

So I am involuntarily putting free advertising on my blog without ANY chance of getting ANYTHING beneficial in return? Yep. Outbrain has either made an error (I hope) or worse they’ve been selling recommendations links. If they’ve done the latter, expect my use of the widget to cease. It’s too bad to see something like this happen and I’m hoping it’s a mistake.

I have currently turned off the recommendations portion of the widget until this conflict is cleared up.

Readers, what do you think about Outbrain’s new recommendation/advertising widget?

Update: An explanation post.

Fonts. We see them every day. We use them for work. We see them in advertisements. Like anything we use regularly, fonts get boring. There are thousands of different fonts on the net, many of them free to use, but society seems stubborn of finding new fonts. This unwillingness to change leaves us to look at the same fonts over and over again. Here are five of the worst fonts… Read the rest of this entry »

In the beautiful Seattle airport last weekend and I decided to purchase the most current issue of WIRED. Browsing through the countless hard liquor ads I found a celebrity startup section about half way through. To my surprise, the beloved David Caruso of CSI: Miami fame has a startup called Lexicon Digital. Now if you watch CSI: Miami you’ll know David Caruso plays a total cheesebag investigator who has difficulty keeping his shades on. From what I’ve come to know of Caruso, I was expecting Lexicon Digital to be very interesting.
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Digg has changed. And not for the better. I’ve hit my breaking point with the popular, “democratic” news site and I’m nearing the end of using it. There isn’t one reason for ending my time with Digg; it’s been a mixture of four main problems I’ve been having with the site.

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Blogs are a dime dollar a dozen now and when I see a promising blog introduce itself to the internet only to lie deserted until the hosting plan isn’t renewed, I get irritated. I’m not going to name names, but I have concocted a (YES or NO) test for maybe bloggers.

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