Xbox One Sale On eBay Ends Up Expensive Scam

An Xbox One sale made the father of a hopeful four year old boy in the UK very upset. This is a classic example of how people should read the fine print before they put money down on anything on the internet.

The eBay listing had advertised the product as “XBox One Fifa Day One Edition, Photo Brand New UK 2012.” Unfortunately, one word made all of the difference, causing Peter Clatworthy, 19, to fall for one of the oldest tricks on the internet.

Instead of the console he thought he was buying for his son for Christmas, Peter ended up paying the equivalent of over $700 for a bad picture of the console box. The picture had been printed, and the seller had written on the back of it, “Thank you for your purchase.” Now he is out of luck because the Xbox One is currently sold out in the UK.

If you see something on the internet that seems too good to be true, it probably is. Sadly, Clatworthy had decided to ignore the word “photo,” thinking it was the console his boy had been wanting so much:

“I had saved up for months, just cutting back on things and putting money in a pot, [a little] here and [a little] there. It came in a brown envelope, when the postman gave it to me I kept asking him if he was sure this package was for me and he kept saying it was. As soon as I knew it was for me I realized it was a con, I pulled out a crumbled piece of A4 paper with a pretty bad picture of an Xbox One probably taken from Google. … I spoke to eBay straight away and asked for a refund, I e-mailed the seller and he told me it was a console – so he did lie to me.”

Nottingham teenager furious after paying £450 for a photo of an XBox One on eBay http://t.co/ctchbUmnuh

— Jeremy Conrad (@ManaByte) December 5, 2013

Peter Clatworthy of Bilborough, Notts, commented further on his reaction to the Xbox One sale gone wrong:

“It said ‘photo’ and I was in two minds. But I looked at the description and the fact it was in the right category made me think it was genuine. They’d written on the back of it ‘thank you for your purchase.’ I was fuming. I’ve had to make a joke out of it because I was that angry. At least we’ve now got something to laugh about in the years to come.”

The online auction site isn’t taking this lightly, demanding that the seller of the picture fully refund him his money by Monday. A spokesperson for eBay has stated that they will be taking legal action against the seller involved in the bogus Xbox One sale.

[image via Nottinghampost.com]