The beauty of email is that it s done without long distance phone charges and you have a record of the process, if you kept copies of your email correspondence on your hard drive. I almost always get the sellers phone number and call to confirm the deal. The phone call to the seller is a key ingredient in achieving the degree of comfort and trust necessary for the deal to be completed. The phone call to the seller confirms the accuracy of the ad or the seller gets to correct it over the phone. The telephone call also provides a method of measuring or weighing the tone of the seller which is important information to help decide to go through with the purchase or not.
Further checks are really important to establishing an even greater degree of confidence.
Knowing the home community of the seller and the phone number they provided, call Information and confirm that the official number corresponds with the info provided to you. The amount of money involved in the transaction determines the degree of caution to be applied. Reassuringly, this is true for the seller as well. Cautiousness can take several forms. Often the seller will use COD delivery of the software, which assures me that I get the product before I pay out any money.