Guys---A 96.2% feedback and 72 feedbacks, makes me suspicious. With 72 sales, minimum he should have a 99.5% positive feedback. And that's being a bit generous.
Now for sure you can find deals on ebay. I just bought a blue ant Q1 for 48.00, buy it now. But my guy had a 99.5% feedback and 1200 feedbacks.
Something looks funny to me.
How could someone with 72 FB even HAVE 99.5%? If all 72 were positive, it'd be 100%, if one out of the 72 were negative, they'd have ~98.6%...please check your math. Also, eBay changed the way feedback is calculated in the past couple of years...instead of using your lifetime total feedback to determine the percentage, they now only use the feedback you have received in the past 12 months. Therefore, it is entirely possible for a seller that has a lot of negatives to have 100% positive feedback if they have cleaned up their act in the past year.
As for the $99 Droid, please guys stop flipping out. Most likely it was a stolen eBay account, simple as that. It's doubtful that the seller got away with any of the cash from the 500+ fake droid sales, because for one, PayPal takes several days to transfer to your bank account, and ANY red flag that went up would cause a freeze on all his funds... and the main reason would be because of the sudden increase in sales volume...which would likely cause PayPal to freeze the funds in the seller's account until positive feedback and/or delivery confirmation was achieved. It is NOT normal for a 72 feedback Ebay account to make $50K plus in sales in a matter of days, and this would get flagged before he got any cash.
I suppose he could've gotten away with something if some individuals were stupid enough to send him a money order or cash (which is forbidden by eBay now anyway), which may have been his overall goal.
And anyone who thought this had any chance of being real...that's not how free trade works and you should be very very careful in the future, because you're going to get scammed eventually since you lack a bit of common sense.
And finally, please don't treat buying on eBay as some sort of evil. eBay itself isn't evil (except for the ridiculously high fees they charge us sellers). It all depends on who you buy from, and you can usually tell a lot about the seller from their listing. You may get a seller like me who does his best to describe the item perfectly, offers a return policy if any problems pop up, is sure to get the item shipped out the very day you send a payment (even if it's the afternoon), and even offers his cell phone number in case you have any questions.........or your may get the exact opposite. But even if you do get screwed, eBay/PayPal is ultimately on the side of the buyer, which is evidenced by the fact that a seller can't even leave a buyer negative feedback at all, EVEN if the buyer wins an auction and never has any intention to pay for the item, thus causing the seller to actually lose $$ in time and listing fees.
In short, it's pretty hard to get scammed on eBay unless you are a "ruh-tard" (as Alan from The Hangover puts it), and you may very well be one if you couldn't see that this was obviously fake. USE your brain. Even Verizon themselves have no chance of getting these phones for anywhere near $99.
I didn't think you would but I hoped for you.