Amazon Policy

From what I read it seems like as long as you pay through Amazon (whatever that means, I guess they have something like paypay or something) then you'll be protected up to $2,500. If you pay with a check or mony order your protected up to $250. Of course if it is a scam you'll have to wait 30 days before you can even attempt to get your mony back.
If your really unsure why not ask Amazon? I once orderd something from them and then decided to purchase something similar instead. I couldn't actually return it, but I sent them an e-mail and they helped me out.

 

is this a mac? if so, there's no "factory discount" blah blah. so don't go for it.

 

Whatever you do don't let them convince you to use another site to do the transaction. I once got lured into a fake escrow service for an underpriced powerbook. Luckily, before I went through with it I did a quick search. I found a bunch of horror stories about people losing thousands of dollars to these jerks. Personally I'd rather pay extra just to know I'm not getting ripped off, and save myself some trouble. Good luck if you decide to go through with it. Hopefully it's legit.

 

Western Union = scam!

Report it to Amazon.

 

Last night I got very excited for about half an hour at the prospect of getting an Apple 30" Display off the Amazon marketplace for $600. I figured: "Even though this sounds too good to be true, Amazon gives me the Safe Buyer Guarantee, so I'm covered." Even so, I decided to email the seller before I tried to place the item in my cart, just to see what the deal was. While I was waiting for a reply, I did some research, came across this site and other forums, and began, of course, to suspect that something was up. So, I actually went and tried to place the $600 display in my Amazon cart and proceed to checkout to see what happened, but it wouldn't let me - all of a sudden it says the maximum number of units available is 0, so I can't complete the checkout. Aha, I say, that's how this works. Sure enough, this morning I got the same old email that's been quoted on this site many times, saying he's moving to Europe and asking me to use escrow-dsc.com. I actually wrote back, pretending I didn't know it was a scam, but saying that I would greatly prefer to just pay him through Amazon.com, and of course he replied with some nonsense about how it'd be easier for him to get the money in Europe through the phony escrow thing. (I've positioned myself to be able to do some baiting here, and I'd love to stick it to him somehow, but do I have any options as the buyer? It's not like I can send him a P-P-P-Powerbook or anything... But I'd love it if anybody had any ideas.)
Anyway, I feel very strongly that Amazon should take steps to prevent this sort of thing, and not just with a list of fake escrow sites (although it should certainly do that as well), but because there's apparently some loophole which allows people to list items for sale but input the number of items available as "0." This is the crucial way they get around the Amazon guarantee - if they were forced to actually have one available through the marketplace, when someone bought it fair and square they'd actually be liable. At the very least, I think Amazon should be encouraged to close this loophole - not allow marketplace listings to appear without a positive number of items actually available.
Who's with me?

 

Sounds like a good idea to me.