Bloody Nigerian Scammers!!

we were selling a mobile phone on ebay (A Samsung F480 to be exact) and last night it sold for £97. At first we were pleased it had gone for so much but when we looked at the bidders details were were concerned. The address was in the USA.

We sent them an e-mail saying that we would have to look into the cost of the postage and get back to them but a few minutes later we got and e-mail supposedly from paypal to say they had paid. However when we looked at it it said £97 for the phone and £50 postage making a total of £127 eh? It also said that the money would not be released into our account until we had posted the item and provided them with a tracking number.

This raised our suspicions so we looked into it further. The buyer had no feedback, had only opened the account that day and wanted the phone to be posted to an address in Lagos, Nigeria – it was so obviously a scam. Also closer investigation of the e-mail showed it had come from an address other than paypal.

We started to recieve more e-mails which were arriving 3 at atime proporting to be from Paypal or ebay. They all came from the same address which was @consultant.com. The english was so bad that it was obvious they were fake despite all of the ebay logos they had gone to the trouble to add.

Due to the numerous amount of complains gotten from buyers that after payments has been made, they do not get their item been sent out, we have decided to place your money on Pending to the time you confirm the shipment to us and then we credit your PayPal Account immediately.

This morning we started to get e-mails from them which again were arriving 3 at a time but from a different e-mail address @europe.com and again proporting to be from ebay. They were saying things like “her account has been re-instated please send her the phone” and “If you don’t send the phone within 24 hours your account will be closed” it just went on and on!

You have received an Unposted Item strike.
We regret to inform you that your eBay account will be suspended due to concerns we have for the safety and integrity of the eBay community.You were the seller of an eBay item ***Samsung F480 Cell Phone****(xxxxxxxxxxx) bought off you by Mrs Ann Timothy and she has informed eBay that postage for the item has still not been done, As a result, you have received an Unposted Item strike. Furthermore, you will loose feedback privileges as well we terminating your membership for this transaction if the posting of the item is not done as soon as possible. If the item is not posted within 24hrs of this warning suspension of this account will take place and be advised that you will be prohibited from using eBay in any way. This includes the registering of a new account if the item bought by our customer was not posted as agreed.

I really don’t know how people fall for this shit. We reported it to ebay and their account has now been shut down.

The really annoying thing was that the bid was obviously placed at the last second by a bot which pushed a genuine offer of £96 and another of £94 into second and third place. We have sent a second chance offer but suspect we may have to relist the item again.

I was listening to Barry Humphries on Desert Island Discs this morning and the last song I heard was Mother Kelly’s Doorstep sung by Randolph Sutton and now it’s stuck in my head…

All together now!

On Mother Kelly’s doorstep, Down Paradise Row,
I’d sit along o’Nelly, she’d sit along o’Joe
She’s got a little hole in her frock, hole in her shoe,
hole in her sock where her toe peeped through…..

Didi Bergman
Originally uploaded by deadheaduk.

I was lsitening to the songs on Didi Bergman’s My Space page last night and I highly recommend that you go and check them out – they’re really fantastic!

This is the photograph that made me become interested in photography. It’s Rory Gallagher at the Newcastle City Hall in 1978. I took it with my Dad’s Halina which he had bought when he was 21. I used Ilford 400ASA film and I was sitting quite near the front but I think I managed to sneak down to the corner of the front row to take this one.

After this and further sucesses at the next event (Eric Clapton supported by Muddy Waters) i decided to get a camera. So my parents bought me a Zenith E as a combined Christmas/Birthday present and set me off on a lifelong hobby.

Was waiting on my desk when I got to work this morning – woohoo!!

Basket Case

Inspired by youngest Step Daughter having a clear out of her bedroom!

Last week I slammed my HTC TYTN II in a car door breaking the touch screen and rendering it virtually useless. It still work but it was such a pain to operate and it was very slow. Luckily for me it was insured against accidental damage and the insurance company said they would replace it. They were going to send one out on the Wednesday but I was out and about for the last three days of the week so they said to call them on Friday to sort out a date.

When I rang them back I was told they no longer stocked that phone and was directed to the business section of the Vodafone website to choose another phone. I was told I could have almost any PDA type phone or Blackberry device. I had a look and the only two phones that were of interest were the HP Data Messenger which was very similar to my phone or the Balckberry Storm. I looked at both of them and decided I wanted to stick with the Windows CE device so I called them back

However when I called them back they said that was out of stock too ( – I said I would have another look and get back to them. The only problem was that this only left the Blackberry storm and I had already decided I didn’t want that. I pondered for a while and then rang customer services. Eventually after about 15 minutes he discovered that I could have a phone that wasn’t on the site which was the HTC Touch Pro which is an upgraded version of my phone with lots of whizzy extras!

So that is on it’s way – only problem was with it being Bank Holiday weekend it wasn’t going to be delivered until Wednesday. faced with the thought of struggling with my phone for 6 more days I dug out my old Qtek 9600 and put my sim in there. I was quite suprised to learn that despite it not being charged for 8 months it still retained all of my settings which made getting up and running easy.

I can’t wait to get my new phone!

As well as Gillingham being promoted at the weekend the news came that despite losing 3-2 to Chelsea in the last game of the season Sunderland remain in the Premiership……

….unlike Newcastle!

…or Middlesborough!

hehehehehehehehe

As I said yesterday Medway Council announced after Gillingham won at Wembley on Saturday that a victory parade would take place today. The route, according to the Council site, would pass down our street on it’s way to the fottball ground. We did think at the time that getting a bus down our road would be interesting.

So there we all were waiting for the team to appear, kids had hung out banners and balloons outside various houses and up and down the street people were standing on corners or like us sitting in the sun in our front garden. The bus was late but we had heard via Facebook that it was running late. Eventually we caught site of it coming down from the station.

It reached the end of our street and promptly kept going. We all realised that it was going down the next (wider) street. We all had to quickly throw our stuff into the house, lock the door and leg it to the bottom of the street before the bus came past – we only just made it.

As we were down there now we decided to go down to the ground. Once we arrived there it was obvious that no one had really thought what was going to happen next. I thought the ground was going to be open and the team would have done a lap of honour or something – but no! It’s a good job that thousands of fans hadn’t decended on the ground.

The bus was stuck for about half an hour and then eventually edged it’s way to the car park entrance where it stopped unable to get in and the players had to get off. It kind of fizzled out after that. Another Medway triumph of planning.

I can’t help but wonder why the civic reception was in Rochester. We heard from people at that end that they were giving away loads of freebies but they seemed to have run out by the time they reached Gillingham. Given that the team is based in this particular Medway Town there seemed to be nothing organised at this end and we seemed to come off worst.

It all seems to be part of the Councils plan to push forward the idea of Medway rather than Chatham, Gillingham, Rochester etc. I wonder how long it will be before the Council punt the idea of renaming the team Medway FC?

Congratulations to Gillingham who secured promotion to the Coca-Cola Division 1 by beating Shrewsbury 1-0 at Wembley yesterday. Apparently there will be a civic reception in Rochester castle tomorrow and then a victory parade to the ground which will pass down our street on the way (although quite how they will get a bus down here I don’t know)

While I’m genuinely pleased for them I would like to add a little perspective here.

They haven’t won a cup competition. They haven’t won the second division championship. What they have actually achieved is won a match to scape promotion from the bottom division by slipping into 4th place in the league after having finsihed 5th at the end of the season. And anyway they were in Divison one last season and managed to play so badly they were relegated. And only a few years ago they were in the Championship!

So in reality they’ve only managed to get back to where they were a year ago and thankfully halt the slide – is that really worthy of a victory parade?