Reseller offered $$$ for old tech gear – then stiffed thousands with suddenly lower quotes

US trade watchdog the FTC has terminated second-hand electronics reseller Laptop & Desktop Repair in Sparks, Nevada – after the biz shafted people out of millions of dollars. The company, operating under such names as cashforiphones.com, cashforlaptops.com, ecyclebest.com, smartphonetraders.com and sell-your-cell.com, offered …

[Camilla Smythe]

If an offer looks too good to be true

Meh... I buy all my 2TB USB drives from e-bay for £0.50. I must have about 400TB of photos by now.

Bargain!!

[Your alien overlord - fear me]

Apple II worth a few bucks? If you can't see the over inflated prices they were offering, well....

[Bruce_c]

Read slower

"typically between 3 and 10 per cent of the original amount offered."

So that is 90%-97% less.

[Glenturret Single Malt]

Re: Read slower

Better than saying that the offered price is "between 10 and 30 times smaller than..."

[Anonymous Coward]

news?

I thought ALL of those 'send us your phone in the post after we've given you a possible price' companies worked like this - certainly I've never heard any praise or good news about them all. this is even in the UK.

[Anonymous South African Coward]

One of Simon's companies?

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Nah, Simon wouldn't have been caught.

[Robert Carnegie]

An offer doesn't have to be "too good to be true" to be a scam. Even a fair offer that turns into not paying would work. On the other hand, if your target victim is gullible people, then maybe promising more does work better.