eBay fraud :( any help

[andiwm2003]

what do you mean by finding an open box in the store and getting it for cheap?

it means someone returned the iPad for some reason and Best Buy sells it again as "open box" item for a discount. it's a totally dumb name for a returned item but that's what they say here....


regarding ebay scams: they are less than $1000 and therefore the police is not going to do much. the law should be changed and there should be a severe penalty on petty theft. mandatory 5 years without possibility of probation and impounding of all personal property of the thief sounds about right to me.

 

[panzer06]

it means someone returned the iPad for some reason and Best Buy sells it again as "open box" item for a discount. it's a totally dumb name for a returned item but that's what they say here....


regarding ebay scams: they are less than $1000 and therefore the police is not going to do much. the law should be changed and there should be a severe penalty on petty theft. mandatory 5 years without possibility of probation and impounding of all personal property of the thief sounds about right to me.

That penalty sounds good on paper until you start paying all the taxes it would take to hire the police, prosecutors, public defenders and build the prisons to accommodate truly punishing even the smallest property crimes.

Seems to me educating our people and bringing jobs back to America and improving the standard of living might be better at deterring crime than what it would cost to locate, prosecute and lock up all these folks.

Everything might cost a bit more but in the long run we'd probably be better off.

Cheers,

 

[Stealthipad]

Stopped using EBay 3+ years ago. It's nothing but a scammers haven with the idiots at Paypal collecting you cash and doing nothing to protect legit buyers and sellers. If you use EBay, if you haven't been screwed... It's not IF, but WHEN it's going to happen.

Craigslist, in person, in a public place, cash deal. Only way to deal.

That is simply not so. I have over 500 transactions in eBay and all has worked well. In fact I have done quite well.

Most the problems come from new eBay members who do not understand the rules and that is why I choose to not sell to anyone under 5 feedbacks. You must also follow the eBay and PayPal rules to the letter to stay out of trouble. Even with that, some still get into trouble. There ARE lots of scammers around eBay so beware. If you get greedy of careless you WILL get scammed

 

[avaloncourt]

That is simply not so. I have over 500 transactions in eBay and all has worked well. In fact I have done quite well.

Most the problems come from new eBay members who do not understand the rules and that is why I choose to not sell to anyone under 5 feedbacks. You must also follow the eBay and PayPal rules to the letter to stay out of trouble. Even with that, some still get into trouble. There ARE lots of scammers around eBay so beware. If you get greedy of careless you WILL get scammed

I agree. I've been selling on ebay for more than 10 years. I've had total transactions somewhere in the neighborhood of more than $80,000 for items ranging in value from a few dollars to approximately $10,000. Once upon a time I had Power Seller status. I have never once been scammed on any item. I had one occurrence of a person who was just insane and needed institutionalized (ebay found in my favor quickly). I've had a few non-payers.

As you said, as long as you follow everything exactly to the letter you won't face issues.

The only sweat-it-out moment I had was about three years ago. Payment was made with PayPal with a verified account and shipping address. I got the all-clear email from PayPal that it was good to ship. I shipped it out the same day. Approximately three hours after I shipped it I got a subsequent email from PayPal saying there had been suspicious activity on that account, they were freezing the payment and not to ship it. It was a little late at that point. In the end, everything was fine but I was pretty concerned for a couple of days. The item was an iPod Touch.

 

[robby818]

As a buyer on ebay, I know that my credit card company will get my money back. I recently had a case decided in favor of the seller, I filed a charge back with Am Ex and ebay reversed it's decision and refunded my money.

Regardless of what ebay or paypal decides and frankly regardless of whether the seller follows the rules, the credit card company's decision trumps all. Once the CC reverses the charge, paypal gets the money from the seller. End of story.

It sucks for sellers but the lesson for buyers is ALWAYS pay with a credit card NEVER pay out of your bank account or paypal account. Paypal makes it deliberately difficult to pay with a credit card (fees for them), but it is in your best interest as a buyer to go through the extra steps and pay by credit card for everything.

Also, if you ever find yourself in the position as a buyer and you need to get your money back. There are two buyer's protections options available 1. ebay and 2. paypal. They are separate and mutually exclusive. Paypal is a lot faster than ebay, but why bother with a process that can take 2-3 weeks and may not find in your favor? Save yourself the aggravation and just go to your credit card company's website and file a charge back, the credit card company doesn't care that much about what the seller has to say, they protect the card holder.

 

[Stealthipad]

You credit card company is not going automatically get you money back. You credit card company WILL give you a conditional credit but has the legal obligation to look at ALL the facts. Your credit card company has an entire section who knows the ins and outs of eBay and they will make the choice accordingly. If you are in the wrong, your credit card would simply put the carve back on your account, plus any interest if any applies.

It can work BOTH ways

As a buyer on ebay, I know that my credit card company will get my money back. I recently had a case decided in favor of the seller, I filed a charge back with Am Ex and ebay reversed it's decision and refunded my money.

Regardless of what ebay or paypal decides and frankly regardless of whether the seller follows the rules, the credit card company's decision trumps all. Once the CC reverses the charge, paypal gets the money from the seller. End of story.

It sucks for sellers but the lesson for buyers is ALWAYS pay with a credit card NEVER pay out of your bank account or paypal account. Paypal makes it deliberately difficult to pay with a credit card (fees for them), but it is in your best interest as a buyer to go through the extra steps and pay by credit card for everything.

Also, if you ever find yourself in the position as a buyer and you need to get your money back. There are two buyer's protections options available 1. ebay and 2. paypal. They are separate and mutually exclusive. Paypal is a lot faster than ebay, but why bother with a process that can take 2-3 weeks and may not find in your favor? Save yourself the aggravation and just go to your credit card company's website and file a charge back, the credit card company doesn't care that much about what the seller has to say, they protect the card holder.

 

[MrMac'n'Cheese]

I agree. I've been selling on ebay for more than 10 years. I've had total transactions somewhere in the neighborhood of more than $80,000 for items ranging in value from a few dollars to approximately $10,000. Once upon a time I had Power Seller status. I have never once been scammed on any item. I had one occurrence of a person who was just insane and needed institutionalized (ebay found in my favor quickly). I've had a few non-payers.

As you said, as long as you follow everything exactly to the letter you won't face issues.

The only sweat-it-out moment I had was about three years ago. Payment was made with PayPal with a verified account and shipping address. I got the all-clear email from PayPal that it was good to ship. I shipped it out the same day. Approximately three hours after I shipped it I got a subsequent email from PayPal saying there had been suspicious activity on that account, they were freezing the payment and not to ship it. It was a little late at that point. In the end, everything was fine but I was pretty concerned for a couple of days. The item was an iPod Touch.

Did everything work out in your favor?

 

[AppleGoddess]

Did everything work out in your favor?

It's pretty obvious it did.

 

[robby818]

You credit card company is not going automatically get you money back. You credit card company WILL give you a conditional credit but has the legal obligation to look at ALL the facts. Your credit card company has an entire section who knows the ins and outs of eBay and they will make the choice accordingly. If you are in the wrong, your credit card would simply put the carve back on your account, plus any interest if any applies.

It can work BOTH ways

But in practice, it doesn't. Calling what paypal or the credit card does an "investigation" is being very generous. Paypal doesn't fight that hard if the credit card co. comes knocking. They roll over. It's easier to just issue the refund and get the money from the seller's account. And quite frankly, the relationship paypal has with Visa or Am Ex is more important to them than the relationship it has with any seller. Guess who they are going to side with? It is unfortunate bec. a lot of honest seller's get taken and wonder what went wrong when they followed all the rules and still get screwed.

 

[SDLSteve]

I agree with the opinion to always buy with a credit card. Purchased a 23 inch ACD a few years ago on ebay as the guy said it was just about a year old. When I received it, I attempted to extend the warranty using Applecare and found it the monitor was almost three years old. Contacted the seller and was told he was selling it for one of his friends so I offered half of what I purchased it for and asked for a refund for the other half. The guy declined and said I was stuck. I went straight to amex (I will never deal with paypal specifically for reasons already explained in this post).

Long story a little shorter, paypal contacted me said I was responsible for returning the monitor which I did (with video of my packing it and a signature requirement for delivery) and got my money back.

 

[aperry]

That is simply not so. I have over 500 transactions in eBay and all has worked well. In fact I have done quite well.

Most the problems come from new eBay members who do not understand the rules and that is why I choose to not sell to anyone under 5 feedbacks. You must also follow the eBay and PayPal rules to the letter to stay out of trouble. Even with that, some still get into trouble. There ARE lots of scammers around eBay so beware. If you get greedy of careless you WILL get scammed

Just out of curiosity, how are you able to set a buyer requirement of positive 5 feedback? When I tried to set buyer requirements it wouldn't even let me block a 0 feedback buyer, much less anything positive.

 

[Steelers7510]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

I find selling through amazon marketplace a MUCH safer way to do business for both the seller and the buyer. Amazon makes it pretty dang hard to scam, and if it does happen they will usually do everything they can to make it right.

 

[MrMac'n'Cheese]

Just out of curiosity, how are you able to set a buyer requirement of positive 5 feedback? When I tried to set buyer requirements it wouldn't even let me block a 0 feedback buyer, much less anything positive.

I'm also interested in learning how..... Is it a power seller feature/option??

It does help to only allow Paypal registered buyers, as those without paypal have an astronomically higher rate of nonpayment.

 

[Akuratyde]

Good news!

eBay did decide in favor of the buyer as I hadn't shipped the iPad 2 with a tracking number (long story short, I didn't realized Priority Mail only comes with tracking when you buy postage online). So, I immediately called eBay, and spoke with a very nice woman there in their claims department. I very politely explained my concerns that:

- the buyer was a scammer
- they hadn't responded to most of my emails
- didn't seem at all interested in recovering the iPad 2
- only seemed interested in the refund
- made suspicious and contradictory statements
- they had purchased over 20 iPad 2's in 3 weeks, yet re-sold none on eBay
- that the iPad 2 I sold them had been registered, proving I had actually shipped it, since I still have the receipt with the serial number on it

I asked her to look at the number of cases the buyer had opened claiming the item had never been received. I also pointed her to this thread to show her that at least one other person has had the exact same problem with this buyer. She mentioned that she agreed with what I was saying, agreed that the buyer had made some really suspicious and questionable decisions, and asked me if I would mind holding for a few minutes while she looked into the case further.

After only 5 minutes of waiting she came back on the line and informed me that eBay had decided to overturn the decision, refund my money back to me, and suspend the buyer's account due to bad behavior. Today I logged on and saw that the buyer is now no longer a registered member of eBay:

http://myworld.ebay.com/yenta888/

So, it all worked out in the end. And next time I'll make sure I take the proper steps to protect myself.

 

[epi117]

Great news

 

[Bheleu]

Great news indeed! Also be aware of a CL scam where the buyer wants to pay via paypal to use a credit card and pick it up from you. You will not have proof, they picked it up and will do a chargeback claiming they never got it (no delivery proof). It is one reason I use square for accepting credit card transactions, photo of item/person holding item, signature of recipient, and gps location of transaction, e-mailed receipts. Rock solid proof of pickup!!!

iPad 2 rocks!!! Glad I can now take photos!

 

[Akuratyde]

It is one reason I use square for accepting credit card transactions, photo of item/person holding item, signature of recipient, and gps location of transaction, e-mailed receipts. Rock solid proof of pickup!!!

That's a pretty good idea. We ordered one of the Square card readers awhile back and it never came. Guess we'll have to try again.

 

[maliu]

Wow, what are the odds of the same eBay scammer buying iPads from 2 people who both post on macrumors. Glad it worked out for you. I've been a member of eBay for about 13 years now. Never sold anything, but when I did have a legitimate issue I was glad for the protection both eBay and pay pal provided me. Same post in also in a different thread, but congratulations!

 

[mdlooker]

That penalty sounds good on paper until you start paying all the taxes it would take to hire the police, prosecutors, public defenders and build the prisons to accommodate truly punishing even the smallest property crimes.

Seems to me educating our people and bringing jobs back to America and improving the standard of living might be better at deterring crime than what it would cost to locate, prosecute and lock up all these folks.

Everything might cost a bit more but in the long run we'd probably be better off.

Cheers,

+1

Absolutely correct. By the time it goes through the legal process and sentence term, and the possibility of that individual not being 100% rehabilitated, just makes for wasted money.

 

[Akuratyde]

Wow, what are the odds of the same eBay scammer buying iPads from 2 people who both post on macrumors. Glad it worked out for you. I've been a member of eBay for about 13 years now. Never sold anything, but when I did have a legitimate issue I was glad for the protection both eBay and pay pal provided me. Same post in also in a different thread, but congratulations!

Thanks! I know, its very coincidental that they tried to scam two Macrumors members. The only reason I even found this thread is because I was Google searching the buyer's eBay username to see if anyone had complained about them on any forums. I couldn't believe it when I saw this thread!

 

[chazmink]

Direct signature means a person has to sign, not necessarily the addressee.

Direct Signature Required. FedEx will obtain a signature from someone at the delivery address. If no one is at the address, FedEx will reattempt delivery. For FedEx Express shipments, the recipient may also choose to pick up the package at the location listed on the door tag.

Note: Direct Signature Required replaces FedEx Express Signature Required, FedEx Ground® Auto P.O.D., FedEx Home Delivery Auto P.O.D. and FedEx Signature Home DeliverySM services. Until Direct Signature Required is available, shippers can still choose FedEx Express Signature Required, FedEx Ground Auto P.O.D., FedEx Home Delivery Auto P.O.D. and FedEx Signature Home Delivery for an additional fee


Indirect Signature Required. FedEx will obtain a signature in one of three ways:
o From someone at the delivery address; or
o From a neighbor, building manager or other person at a neighboring address; or
o The recipient can sign a FedEx door tag authorizing release of the package without anyone present.

 

[From A Buick 8]

That penalty sounds good on paper until you start paying all the taxes it would take to hire the police, prosecutors, public defenders and build the prisons to accommodate truly punishing even the smallest property crimes.

Seems to me educating our people and bringing jobs back to America and improving the standard of living might be better at deterring crime than what it would cost to locate, prosecute and lock up all these folks.

Everything might cost a bit more but in the long run we'd probably be better off.

Cheers,

You are assuming the thief's want a job, they do not they just want something for nothing.