by Joan Hall

Created on: September 16, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

I think after first getting the internet I probably did what most people did. I searched my name to see how many times it was listed. I searched my hometown or friends' names. Of course it didn't take long for that to get boring. Somewhere along the way I typed in that now famous www.ebay.com. There was no going back after that. Being a very cautious person, I started slowly. At first I just looked, I had to see how it all worked. Then I started getting braver and starting searching for things that interested me. WOW! I was hooked. I still wasn't buying much, but I was getting braver. Once in a while I would actually place a bid, knowing that I would more than likely get outbid.

As time passed I did start buying and gained confidence. I learned to "play it cool" and not always bid right away, to wait until closer to end of the auction so as not to run the price up too high. I always did my best to pay immediately when winning an auction. Having PayPal being a big part of eBay made that very easy. I remember way back my son asking me to bid on some cd's for him. I made the bid, won the auction and promptly paid the seller. Days and weeks went by without any communication and worse yet, without any cd's. I tried emailing the seller many times, saving them for proof if needed, but I never got any response. Finally I thought my only option was to leave negative feedback for the seller. For weeks I tried to communicate with the seller without any luck, but it took only hours for him to reply to my negative feedback by leaving negative feedback of his own, along with some not-so-nice comments about me. I was devastated to have my perfect 100% feedback score
blemished. I never did get my money back nor did I get my cd's.

I chalked that transaction up to a bad learning experience. I would not let that discourage me from further eBay shopping though. I kept at it. I am strictly a buyer, have never sold on eBay. I shop for pretty much anything but usually I limit myself to buying smaller things so as not to get charged too much for shipping on large/heavy items. For the most part I have to say I have enjoyed my eBay experience. I love finding something, bidding on it, paying for it and having it delivered within days, usually much quicker than I could find the time to go shopping for the item I had just bought. Then there came the day when I received a strange email in my inbox.

I was very skeptical of that email. I had just started hearing about email fraud and phishing

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