Scammers on ebay

Hi folks any help would be great. Sold a jacket on ebay 3,weeks ago ,before he bought it he sent me a few messages inc can i get it cheaper etc etc , good price good price he said . Anyway eventually sold it to him 3 weeks later says wheres my refund goods not here . Ive proof of postage and hes hardly any feedback and a lot of them are bad feedback given . His address said china but was an english adress. What will happen now is hell keep jkt and ill have to refund him too ! Stresssss of ebay and scammers grrr

 

Report the scam to the police, and reach out to whoever you can to publicise it. I only buy on ebay, but feel they are somewhat rubbish at protecting sellers.

 

You won't like my answer.

Take the hit. Refund the money. Save yourself the time and trouble of fighting.

Then, bank the experience. In future, send items tracked, and/or if you want, signed for.

I think you'll find that without proof of delivery, ultimately, Ebay and Paypal will side with the buyer. So that's either a beach of broken glass you want to drag your feet over, or not. From a seller perspective, generally, the opportunities they give you to give your side of the story are there for courtesy purposes only.

At least, that's how I see it. Sorry.

 

I get stuck with buyers like this once in a while, eBay is a haven for bad buyers. After eBay stopped allowing negative feedback for buyers, I knew the problem was going to get far worse and it did. Since buyer identities are hidden from sellers until it is too late, it is very difficult to find them ahead of time and block them. My time spent trying to find them ahead of time and blocking them has resulted in over a thousand blocked buyers which I assume has helped me some but not nearly enough.

As far as avoiding losing the money this time, I don't think you will have any luck but trying is all you can do. The last time I lost money to a scammer and filed an appeal with eBay, eBay requested I provide the police report, which I never filed so I didn't follow up and don't know if that would have helped or not. As suggested by Andrew J, try that if you will spend the time necessary. Since no proof of a crime is available, you don't know whether your package has been delivered or not, I think that is a waste of time but it couldn't hurt.

After over 20 years of selling on eBay, I still can't stop the crooks and I believe they are worse than ever now. There is a Facebook page dedicated to sharing stories of eBay scammers, I visit it once in a while to find more scammers to block before they burn me also. Over the years I have spent many hours searching the web for bad eBay buyers to block.

 

This might give you some additional information. If you went to post office and sent by Royal Mail to an address in England you will have received a receipt with a tracking number (even if you didn't pay extra for tracking). Enter this on royal mail website and it will tell you if it reached its destination or not. Not sure that will help you with ebay as it won't provide proof with a signature but at least you'll know if you've been scammed or not.

 

Sorry to hear you've been scammed, but as said you won't win so chalk it up to experience and learn that you need to not only send everything signed for, but also to the registered Paypal address, no agreeing to send to work addresses or elsewhere even if it's the address eBay shows, send it to the address Paypal show, if you follow their rules Paypal will usually protect you, not sure about eBay's new payment service, if someone has a problem with that or even if you feel like they will be a problem just cancel the transaction, most of the time your instincts about potential scammers will be correct.

 

Even with the proof of postage that its been sent from a post office?

 

Cheers scott and everyone

 

Never sold anything there, but I used to buy a bit sometimes, until paying for goods that never arrived from a purportedly "very big" operation that had great prices, and stock that allegedly 'was in the hundreds of thousands of items,' but they never actually shipped anything. After about 6 weeks, I did finally get a refund, but not from the seller as best I could tell, from E-Bay itself. It's been a year and 'what they allegedly shipped has yet to arrive.'

 

Sadly, with regular mail, sending it is not regarded as proof of arrival at destination. Hence the tracking and signature option.

 

If I order something and it doesn't arrive, I'll take the amount of the purchase into account. For £5 to £10, I'll usually just notch it up to experience. I'll contact the seller, but I don't demand refunds. I trust it was sent, and take the loss. For larger monies then I'll ask for a refund, usually.

 

It was for around $50; based on the negative comments by others, I wasn't the first to pay, but not get anything in return. 90 some % allegedly were satisfied, but my guess is that what I and the other unsatisfied folks ordered 'wasn't the super-popular stuff.'
I'll also add that it is the ONLY time I've dealt with 'someone' (in this case, a company) who claimed to have sent something that never arrived, which, to me, increases the likelihood that it was, in reality, never sent.

 

Proof of postage is not proof of delivery. Ebay will side with the buyer every time without proof of delivery. There are great buyers as well as scammers, just like with sellers. You need to protect yourself with tracked delivery. With Covid and the volume of parcels these days, all deliveries are slow. Postal systems are overwhelmed.
I buy mostly from antique shops, and auction houses, seldom ebay, but everyone uses tracked shipping and most use signature confirmation. If it’s cheap items under 50£, most sellers use “cookie jar insurance” where you put a few cents away each transaction to cover the few that go bad.
Also, you mention two addresses. Did you ship to the one Paypal has for the buyer? If not, they won’t cover you either.

 

How do you know it’s a scam without proof of delivery? The police would laugh at the seller for wasting their time. Also, the idea of publicizing the buyer as a scammer without proof could lead to a serious libel and slander suit if the buyer were to pursue it. Why do you think that publicizing the names of sellers or buyers on here is a no-no?

 

I tracked the item today and it was delivered on the 29th 8.42am to his address. He has awful feedback too and just joined last year . Location china but uk address . Stresssd

 

Yes i sent to paypal /ebay address

 

If he starts an INR claim, ebay will ask you for proof of delivery. Once they have that, they will deny the claim. Relax!

 

Cheers

 

No tracking number means Paypal will side with the crooks. I don't ship international anymore.

 

Sold a couple hundred items on ebay and discogs and never had a scammer. I price things to sell and and I don't respond to time-wasters.

I notice the sellers who complain most about scammers are the ones who overprice items and indulge anyone who expresses interest.

 

I only buy on eBay and only from sellers with 100% feedback and a large number of feedbacks. FWIW In Australia it is the sellers responsibility to ensure that it arrives, if it does not arrive then the seller is out of luck. (I am normally using eBay Australia)

I've had a few items go missing, it happened once before the pandemic and a couple of times during the pandemic. I am patient with the seller, if it is a small amount I let it be, otherwise I try to get to some voluntary agreement. If it is a third world country then I expect proof of shipping and if it gets lost then I consider that person needs the money more than I do.

I would no longer consider about selling on eBay after I read stories of the different scams. One was for a genuine violin and the buyer claimed it was a fake. eBay informed the person to destroy it, send proof of the destruction and the money was refunded. Yikes.

If I buy in the USA I get it forwarded to the New Zealand Post freight forwarder. No hassle for the seller. I do message them prior and give my eBay and local auction website's acount ID's.

Unfortunately here in New Zealand on our local auction website, trademe.co.nz, the reverse is true. No redress possible if the seller stiffs you.

Unfortunately integrity and honesty are no longer common, such is the world we live in. We need only to look at the current flock of representatives in the house who do not appear to take their oath seriously. But if you or I do not tell the truth under oath in front of a judge then we end up in jail.

 

If you have proof of delivery, Ebay will back you and deny the Buyer's claim. I recently bought a cat toy and the tracking said it was delivered to my mailbox. I went right out and nothing was there. so obviously it was delivered to someone else's mailbox and they were not honest enough to get it to me. The assumption if there is proof of delivery and that I received the item and am lying. It was just an inexpensive cat toy, but lesson learned.

A few years ago. I sold some spare flash drives on Ebay without tracking as they were not expensive. The Buyer asked if I had tracking and I knew I was in a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation. If you say yes, they ask you for it. If you say no, then you know what may happen. I said no and shortly thereafter the Buyer said they never received the item. I am fairly sure they did, but had no recourse but to do a refund.

The moral of the story is that I have been burned as Seller and Buyer, but delivery confirmation definitely dictated the outcome. Moral two is that if it is expensive, pay to have it insured as you don't know where the post office may leave something these days.

 

If it is tracked and not delivered to the right address then claim from the shipping company. Ask to which address it has been delivered.

 

Another reason to ship through ebay's international shipping program. Once they have the item, all delivery issues (damaged or lost) are handled by them.

 

Up here, Canada Post has delivered these types of packages to me. Maybe in the US they use someone other than USPS to get it to Canada, but once it's here, I've always received the packages via my regular postal carrier. Maybe they have a different courier as well but I've never seen one.

I'm not sure what extra guarantees that program provides to sellers and buyers that sending an item tracked and insured with USPS doesn't.

But I suppose one big attraction to US sellers is that they can essential treat these packages as being sent to a US address as eBay deals with all the other stuff sellers would need to deal with when shipping outside the US.