Son of a &^$%#

It's been a pretty crappy day, all told.

Okay, I already documented my problems with the audiobooks this morning. Here's what else has gone wrong:

1. The "cursed" Collector's Edition only went for $588, significantly less than either of the two times when the winning bidder failed to pay. At least this time the buyer has actually paid for the item.
2. Only 24 of the 51 audiobooks up for auction sold, for less than $30 total by the time fees are taken out. Not such a great week there. And I still have to go through and edit the remaining 27 audiobooks to add the number of cassettes and run times.
3. The absolute worst, though needs a few paragraphs for itself:

I'm the victim of an apparent scam artist in the Philippines. I got really excited when a buyer purchased the Alpha Mox Pearl for $550, and even more excited when they immediately paid with PayPal - with $50 for shipping for some reason. WOW! I left positive feedback, printed my packing slip...then another order from the Philippines - this time for the Library of Alexandria (one of the commission items for Alan) for $250. I sent an invoice, saying that there would be no additional shipping, as I could include the two cards together. Only later, after there was no forthcoming payment, did it occur to me that maybe the two Philippine purchases weren't actually the same buyer! D'oh! I checked, and sure enough, it was a new user, with 0 feedback. Now I started to get nervous. Large purchases from new users smell fishy.

Later my fears were shown to be founded. PayPal emails me saying that the $600 was apparently fraudulent. It was taken back from my account. Then I double checked and discovered that although the two items were purchased by different user names, they both showed the same shipping address.

I then noticed the "first" buyer (the one who "paid" $600) had other feedback as well. It looks like s/he "bought" two high-priced cards from another seller. I quickly emailed that seller to let him know what had happened to me, in case PayPal somehow missed his payment. Hopefully he hasn't already sent the cards.

Which brings up a point that scares me - if this hadn't happened on a Sunday, there's a very real possibility that I would have packaged up and mailed off that $550 card before PayPal got back to me about the fraudulent funds. And I would have been out a lot of money! Oh, so sorry!

And there doesn't seem to be a way to get my Final Value Fee back on these items until the requisite amount of time has passed for them to be listed as unpaid. Hopefully since PayPal is an eBay company, the two talk with each other and this user will get their accounts shut down and that will expedite matters.

Ugh.

I'm off to get the Boys to bed, then return to my dungeon to edit 27 audiobook listings and package up a dozen or so shipments to take to the post office tomorrow.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day?!