I have read a couple of these boat scams recently. I definitely would like to share an experience I had recently. My powerhead had a scorched piston so I had been looking like crazy for either a new motor or new powerhead. I live in Indiana and came across a boat motor up in Michigan, which was about 3 hours away. It was a late 90's motor that caught my attention. I place a bid around $1500 and of course was outbid. The motor ended up selling for just over $2000. Since I bid the seller emailed me later saying that the high bidder backed out and was wanting would offer to take the bid I gave. He said he would ship for free and needed to just get rid of soon to offset the cost of a new one he had purchased in its place. I was on board naturally, but I told him I live just a few hours away so dont worry about shipping and I would come pick it up then pay then. He wrote back and stated that he had recently moved and to Florida. I thought it was odd but still had my eye on that motor since I had been looking for so long. I asked if he could just relist to a buy it now price, its cheap to relist. Then he sent me what appeared to be a legitimate second chance offer with all the ebay bells and whistles. I tried clicking on some of the links thinking it would take me back to the ebay site (I was cooresponding through my yahoo account of course). Nothing would come up. He also said I could western  union him money etc..  Of course my sense got the best of me and I talked to ebay directly through their live chat. They of course told me they would not support western union transactions and told me to avoid this seller, could be a scan. I also noticed that none of our messages went to my ebay email inbox. I wrote back to him and said that he needs to talk to ebay, because they will not honor his transaction. This guy never wrote back. After reading about another boat scam in which some one was trying to get another guy to western union money out of Florida, I would recommend that most people stay away from buying things from that area. unless you truly check out the seller. The person I was trying to buy from seemed to have sold over 400+ items on ebay and had power seller by the user name. Cant trust that either. Needless to say, I changed my user names, passwords and emails immediately after that transaction. Never coorespond through your regular email. Always check ebay messages!!! Ask the seller to relist if it is a part. It only cost them about a $1 to relist. Then you can hit a buy it now negotiated price if they are going to ship it. If they have a problem relisting an item and argue with you, then its probably a scam.. I know if I wanted to sell something, i would have no problem relisting that item and telling a potential buyer when they can expect to see it show up.