So a couple days ago I get this inquiry from Amazon from a Kevin Crawford (KC) asking about my lens featured on Amazon in their used section and it seemed pretty legit. He asks what the true conditions are on the lens. I politely replied that I’ve used it for a year but it’s just not something I plan to keep since I don’t do much with it so that’s why it’s for sale. No real damage to it so ‘like new’ pretty much. Then KC replied saying he’d like me to send him a photo of it so that he can see if he’s interested because it’s for a “gift” etc.

See – Amazon is pretty smart about this whole transaction thing and doesn’t allow customers and sellers to be in contact directly because people have gotten scammed before so the way we have been communicating up until this point is via an Amazon system that will directly forward the account to the buyer or seller after you’ve replied. So the way KC got me to give him my email address was he harmless asked to ‘see a photo’ of the lens and for me to email him at: kcrawford45 at ymail.com because of course Amazon wouldn’t allow him to put his email address down. So you think “no harm in sending him a photo because he has noted that he’s “”really”" interested in buying it.”

The moment I send him the photo, he replies directly to my email and says, ‘he’s interested and will buy immediately!!’ That felt really cool and relieving to know someone was going to buy my unused lens off of me – right – who wouldn’t feel that great. So the next thing I know I receive an email invoice saying that the lens has been purchased and yadiyada… EXCITED again with that! Yay – now I have to ship it within the next 2 days according to the invoice.

So me having not sold anything from Amazon before was really excited and told my husband that I can’t wait to ship and wondered if he knew how the whole process was because he’s sold some things on there before. Well he just said, send it and use the tracking things available on the invoice. I looked and looked and didn’t see any of that but was about to head out in the morning to go ship it when I thought to myself, ‘well – I’m sure there’s got to be more information on the web about how to ship to buyer?’ So I went to my seller account to see and that’s when I thought, ‘let me check my seller invetory to make sure that all the correct information is there’ and saw that my lens was still listed as available. Wait a minute – something fishy, how could it have already sold and still be available online? I can’t have someone mistakenly purchase it while I’m in the process of shipping it…

So I went back to the email – you can see it illustrated above – and my first suspicion came with the fact that Amazon always sends things from amazon.com and not from some weird other email place: accountant.com – then I looked at the shipping address a little more carefully and noticed that I was to what??? Ship it to Nigeria!! hello – wtf.

Well – technically I’ve never sold anything before so maybe this is the process? Well – and KC said it was going to be a gift so maybe he has a friend in Nigeria that he’s shipping this too… yeah right, but just to make sure I didn’t not send this to a “”paying customer”" – I googled amazonmessages@accountant.com and found this website: http://askville.amazon.com/Amazon-Market-Place-Scam/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=830221 that was a forum talking about this very issue and boy do I feel bad for the one guy who did send his barely used brandnew camera off before he realized it was a scam!

SO, lesson learned – please please double check all your sales before you finalize shipping etc!! Good night all.