i am from Davao City, so things are harder to me than usual both as buyer and seller, pero over the years i have perfected a system.
AS SELLER:
-do not accept verbal reservations. only reserve an item for 3 hours, anything longer than that, i am more than happy to accept the money and ship the item to the guy that would pay.
-only accept payments thru my bank account
-put lots of good quality pictures
-write all 'must know' stuff in bullet form
AS BUYER (applies only to items 4K and above, i give a lot of leeway to cheaper stuff):
-will only pay thru bank deposit
-make sure that the seller has a decent track record.
-check the seller's communication skills, age and work. the better the job is, the least you'd have to worry about getting scammed.
-check to see how consistent the seller is ... if i detect any form of inconsistency, im backing out.
and finally ... bad deals are different from scams. learn to accept bad deals and move on. i have had a lot of bad deals, and i am ok with it... i understand the risk in transacting online.
funny though, i have had more bad deals in pinas than in ebay or talkbass. to be honest, i trust them sellers more, hehe.