Was ALMOST caught in a scam... involving US$1k

Long story short, bidded for an item, lost the bid becoz very kiam gana.

But the winning bid was $150 more, which was about the right price.A short while after the bid ended, I was contacted by the seller about the 2nd chance bids (that means his winning bidder put his aeroplane).

After a short verification that he is indeed the seller, by sending a message directly through his ebay account. I agreed to buy his product. But he replied to say that we could do the deal through "ebay square trade", and I was supposed to send the money through this 3rd party agency through Western Union.

When I search the net for the company Square Trade, I found that it is indeed a recommend arbitration party by ebay.

The PROBLEM is... when I click through the email sent to me by the seller, it led me to this webpage: http://www.square-trade-ltd.info/index-1.htm

When I click it through ebay, it led me to this page:http://www.squaretrade.com/cnt/jsp/index.jsp

Seems the same? I think it's not. I tried to locate the physical address... it seems correct too.

Then when I check the official website (through ebay), it said:"Beware of potential fake "spoof" emails that pretend to be an authentic email from SquareTrade or other trusted companies. DO NOT SEND MONEY TO WESTERN UNION / MONEYGRAM / WIRE TRANSFER !!!"

http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pop/p...raudAlert.html
(READ THIS... It's good)

So... beware... I am not 100% sure that the seller is a fraudster, but I will not trade outside the ebay homepage. (i cant be sure until they take my $$$). Hope it helps.

The morale of the story... there are very few extremely good deals... the market now is quite transparent, so it's hard to get an extremely low price for anything. If you do get one... do your homework, or risk losing your money.

Thank God for the Kiasu Kiasi mentality in me... I am after all just a Singaporean....