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.

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Haven’t had a chance all week to post these photos. I ran the half marathon in 3 hours. – not so good, but will work harder for a better time next year! Photos, not marked with logo are from my lovely friend Megan.

I had the day off – the Friday of the start of the National Folks Festival in Butte and thought we’d head out that way to see it since this year is the last year it will be held in Butte and of course I didn’t make it out there the first two years it was there. Grr… but then I obviously didn’t do my research when heading out because all the advertising did say: Fri, Sat, & Sun… but I didn’t know that on Friday – it didn’t start until 7pm so we got there early and well – walked around. So the good thing is that we got to see the town and then some of the show but it started to sprinkle and Ber and I needed to head back because we were going to cover the farmers market for my sister-n-law early in the morning so didn’t see much. Well – now if I ever want to go to the Folks Fest, I’ll have to head out to another state

Here are some photos from our trip. - usually post more on flickr, haven’t had the chance yet but will do soon, so check there too!

This is my studio space, shared with my lovely friend Maureen Roy. Even though much of my sessions are on location the studio space is good for a rainy day… lol. Thought I’d share! – Offering all kinds of portrait sessions: maternity portaits, children portraits, baby portraits, senior portraits, fashion portraits, modeling… you name it! Also weddings & events. Contact me today for a session today…

I should take my own advice.. ok – I did, I took it. lol. I was there, about 30 yards from where everyone was standing shooting away because I was keeping the shutter open a bit to capture all the light and realized, this is no fun. grr… I mean, I had a great time and the photos were amazing, but that’s what happens to the photographer, they capture the moments and are not apart of them. So after a couple of shots, I thought – you know what, I’ll put the camera away tonight, and went and watched the rest of the show with him. It was kindda nice, I did miss a couple of grand finale shots of the biggest and bestest works but it wasn’t a biggy – but I got to be with him. lol. I figure – I have about 75+ years left of my life to capture more fireworks along the way… enjoy