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Part II - UDP For Life
- Thread starter jdougal
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The cases were OOS from the beginning except for a few off colors of the Hula case. However, on Cyber Monday Case Mate had a 40% off, free shipping deal. I posted about it on XDA Moto X 2014 forum.
You didn't PM me, how rude!
Have you found anything good that is clear? I was looking through the XDA thread and it doesn't seem like anyone has found a good choice. There is one people were waiting for but even today it looks like it hasn't been released.
I wanted to write a post addressing all who have been scammed by David Han.
Back in July, we sold an iPhone to a "David Pham" in Fountain Valley, CA. (Fountain Valley is only 11 miles from Anaheim and the shipping address was a mail center box) As soon as he received the phone, he immediately filed a "Significantly Not as Described" claim, alleging that the iPhone was Apple locked and could not be activated.
Paypal told him to return the phone to us. He sent tracking information to Paypal and we went down to the post office to look at the returned item. "David Han" was the name on the return address and the address was in Westminster, CA.
As it turned out, he sent a single envelope with one sheet of paper and a few lines of type written text in there. No iPhone in sight. We had the postal clerk type up a signed statement, stating that we received a piece of paper and we turned this in to Paypal for evidence, as well as loads of photos. Paypal immediately ruled in our favor and returned our money. We breathed a sigh of relief. Well, a number of days later, this guy files a chargeback! We spend tons of time on the phone with Paypal working things out and hoping that our evidence is rock solid enough to win. However, we found out the hard way that credit card companies have no incentive to side with the merchant. They will almost always refund their customer, even if they are a thief and a criminal. We lost the chargeback.
At that point, I filed a police report with local law enforcement in my home state of Michigan and showed them the mounds of evidence that we had against the guy. I showed him the various aliases that the scammer went by. (although the multiple names could also indicate some sort of organized criminal activity like a scamming ring)
The sheriff took a police report and told me that it would be eventually transferred to the local law enforcement agencies in California. By doing what he did, the scammer not only committed mail fraud, but also committed credit card fraud. I also reported the iPhone as stolen to Apple.
Shortly thereafter, we spent literally hours on the phone with Paypal and talked to the chargeback division in depth about our case. Paypal ultimately decided to reimburse us for the transaction, since it was deemed that the buyer was fraudulent. So we lost no money, but we lost about 50 hours of our time, fighting with Ebay and Paypal and producing tons of evidence.
However, it absolutely infuriates me to see that this same criminal is apparently still damaging more victims. Apparently he is on Ebay or Paypal under different usernames, as we got him banned from Ebay for what he did to us!
I beg each of you who have been scammed by this man, please report him to law enforcement and file a police report. He needs to be stopped! He is committing crimes that are very worthy of prison time.
I may call my local sheriff's office and see what progress, if any, has been made with investigating this. Apparently not enough since he's still on the loose.
We need to band together and fight against criminals! If anyone has any more suggestions of legal action to take, let me know.
Back in July, we sold an iPhone to a "David Pham" in Fountain Valley, CA. (Fountain Valley is only 11 miles from Anaheim and the shipping address was a mail center box) As soon as he received the phone, he immediately filed a "Significantly Not as Described" claim, alleging that the iPhone was Apple locked and could not be activated.
Paypal told him to return the phone to us. He sent tracking information to Paypal and we went down to the post office to look at the returned item. "David Han" was the name on the return address and the address was in Westminster, CA.
As it turned out, he sent a single envelope with one sheet of paper and a few lines of type written text in there. No iPhone in sight. We had the postal clerk type up a signed statement, stating that we received a piece of paper and we turned this in to Paypal for evidence, as well as loads of photos. Paypal immediately ruled in our favor and returned our money. We breathed a sigh of relief. Well, a number of days later, this guy files a chargeback! We spend tons of time on the phone with Paypal working things out and hoping that our evidence is rock solid enough to win. However, we found out the hard way that credit card companies have no incentive to side with the merchant. They will almost always refund their customer, even if they are a thief and a criminal. We lost the chargeback.
At that point, I filed a police report with local law enforcement in my home state of Michigan and showed them the mounds of evidence that we had against the guy. I showed him the various aliases that the scammer went by. (although the multiple names could also indicate some sort of organized criminal activity like a scamming ring)
The sheriff took a police report and told me that it would be eventually transferred to the local law enforcement agencies in California. By doing what he did, the scammer not only committed mail fraud, but also committed credit card fraud. I also reported the iPhone as stolen to Apple.
Shortly thereafter, we spent literally hours on the phone with Paypal and talked to the chargeback division in depth about our case. Paypal ultimately decided to reimburse us for the transaction, since it was deemed that the buyer was fraudulent. So we lost no money, but we lost about 50 hours of our time, fighting with Ebay and Paypal and producing tons of evidence.
However, it absolutely infuriates me to see that this same criminal is apparently still damaging more victims. Apparently he is on Ebay or Paypal under different usernames, as we got him banned from Ebay for what he did to us!
I beg each of you who have been scammed by this man, please report him to law enforcement and file a police report. He needs to be stopped! He is committing crimes that are very worthy of prison time.
I may call my local sheriff's office and see what progress, if any, has been made with investigating this. Apparently not enough since he's still on the loose.
We need to band together and fight against criminals! If anyone has any more suggestions of legal action to take, let me know.
I thank you for sharing that with us.
Good luck to all of you who were scammed by this a--hole. It feels like there may by more than one of him. He also picks people from far away, and knows it will be very difficult to track him down.
It's possible that he may have accomplices. The name of the registered mail box owner was Jimmy Phan, the name on the order was David Pham, and the name on the return address was David Han.
So moved to Ga, eh?
Did you get a job good sir? Is there a direct number that we can call?!
I am not joking about i-i-i-iPhone. Fight fire with fire somehow.... but he may know the "system" too well, and somehow come back to bite you in the a--.
Since we're in the sharing mood....
When you call Verizon to switch your calling plan/texting plan. Make sure your ALL your sim cards are in phones. I just called to switch from 1400 min to 700 min(who needs to use "phone" minutes when you have unlimited data right?) One of the obstacle was due to a sim card sitting in a UML295 right now. When the very nice CSR (probably from GA, since it is after all 8AM EST) tried to do it, the system kept telling her the phone number that is attached to the device right now is not eligible to switch, because it is a modem, and cannot have voice plan and unlimited texts with it.
Just confirmed to what everyone has been saying. Have a spare phone/phones if you are planning on calling verizon with any sort of plan changing requests.
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Unfortunately 2 wrongs doesn't make a right, nor does it prevent him from filing a police report on us.
I don't want to go to prison for mail fraud. I do kind of wish though that he could realize what being scammed feels like.....
Maybe when he turns around to resell his stolen phones, he'll get a bunch of Paypal claims! We can only hope....
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Home of the best big red call center. Direct line is 800-FREE-AOL
:-D
Timj
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By the way, if anyone is still selling iPhones and wants to know how to prevent issues, shoot me a PM and I will send you the document that my wife drafted on how to avoid doing business with scammers. Since we implemented those steps to limit our risk, we've had zero issues with Paypal cases or fraudsters.
I don't want to go to prison for mail fraud. I do kind of wish though that he could realize what being scammed feels like.....
Maybe when he turns around to resell his stolen phones, he'll get a bunch of Paypal claims! We can only hope....
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Kennesaw GA....So moved to Ga, eh?
Did you get a job good sir? Is there a direct number that we can call?!
I am not joking about i-i-i-iPhone. Fight fire with fire somehow.... but he may know the "system" too well, and somehow come back to bite you in the a--.
Since we're in the sharing mood....
When you call Verizon to switch your calling plan/texting plan. Make sure your ALL your sim cards are in phones. I just called to switch from 1400 min to 700 min(who needs to use "phone" minutes when you have unlimited data right?) One of the obstacle was due to a sim card sitting in a UML295 right now. When the very nice CSR (probably from GA, since it is after all 8AM EST) tried to do it, the system kept telling her the phone number that is attached to the device right now is not eligible to switch, because it is a modem, and cannot have voice plan and unlimited texts with it.
Just confirmed to what everyone has been saying. Have a spare phone/phones if you are planning on calling verizon with any sort of plan changing requests.
Home of the best big red call center. Direct line is 800-FREE-AOL
:-D
Timj
----------
By the way, if anyone is still selling iPhones and wants to know how to prevent issues, shoot me a PM and I will send you the document that my wife drafted on how to avoid doing business with scammers. Since we implemented those steps to limit our risk, we've had zero issues with Paypal cases or fraudsters.
I am going with the Hula bumper for mine b/c I want to feel the leather but I heard that the bumper dents the leatherYou didn't PM me, how rude!
Have you found anything good that is clear? I was looking through the XDA thread and it doesn't seem like anyone has found a good choice. There is one people were waiting for but even today it looks like it hasn't been released.
These are the case mate cases although after the sale they are all OOS.
http://www.case-mate.com/Moto-X-2nd-Gen-Cases/Moto-X-2nd-Gen-Cases.asp
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I don't get this. Why wasn't the item delivered to your mailbox? Why was it at the post office?
Do you live in a small town where everyone knows everyone? There is no way a postal clerk would type up and sign a statement anywhere I have ever lived and they are under no obligation whatsoever to do that. In fact, whoever that postal worker was could get in trouble for doing that. They shouldn't have done that.
See 39 CFR 265.13(d). So no one else should ever count on getting a postal worker to violate official USPS policy.
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I would contact the police department where the crime occurred also and that is in California.
Did it ever get to the local California law enforcement? I would just file with them yourself.
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But you need to report him to the local authorities where he lives too.
Report in California.
You can contact USPS and see what they can do to investigate this as well as the local law enforcement where he lives.
We refused delivery and asked them to hold it at the post office, so that we could have a witness present while opening.
We do live in a small town. I was not aware that postal clerks were not allowed to sign a witness statement. Thanks for the heads up!
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Thanks for the tips, we will see what we can do with his local law enforcement.
We do live in a small town. I was not aware that postal clerks were not allowed to sign a witness statement. Thanks for the heads up!
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Thanks for the tips, we will see what we can do with his local law enforcement.
Did he send it signature required? I would not even get the chance to refuse delivery as they would just leave the item in my mailbox unless it is signature required.
As a general rule, no public employee should ever be involving themselves in a private dispute while on the job. If a crime occurred, it is up to the police to investigate but as I am sure you are aware, the police have lots of crime to investigate and this type of incident ranks low on their list of crimes to investigate.
Incidents like this are hard for police to investigate because the events happened in multiple states. If enough people complain to the california jurisdiction where the guy lives, that may prompt more action in california. But since the victims aren't in california, idk how responsive they would be. Still the act of reporting should help with the chargebacks.
Also, you could call the USPS and see if the USPS inspector would investigate this:
https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/contactUs/phoneus.aspx
I took screen shots of Apple's IMEI check and the iCloud lock check as well. I also took screenshots of the IMEI on the Swappa listing. Along with the Swappa selling policy that phone was verified before it was allowed to be listed. You are going to have to call them up.
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I am going with the Hula bumper for mine b/c I want to feel the leather but I heard that the bumper dents the leather
These are the case mate cases although after the sale they are all OOS.
http://www.case-mate.com/Moto-X-2nd-Gen-Cases/Moto-X-2nd-Gen-Cases.asp
I don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe just get Motocare and let her ride it out lol. I still haven't found anything that I really thought was nice, the Hula is probably the best but sold out everywhere.
Just called Paypal, mentioned the name " DAVID HAN " is filing a claim on me, the rep. said hold on let me check. Got put on hold for about 5 secs. Rep came back said that it shows a history of this guy doing this scam to a lot of people , so she will denied his claim. I was freekn speechless. I was like huh ? what ? that's it ? I had screen shots, paperwork all ready for a fight. Took less than 10 mins from dialing paypal # to hanging up.
Just called Paypal, mentioned the name " DAVID HAN " is filing a claim on me, the rep. said hold on let me check. Got put on hold for about 5 secs. Rep came back said that it shows a history of this guy doing this scam to a lot of people , so she will denied his claim. I was freekn speechless. I was like huh ? what ? that's it ? I had screen shots, paperwork all ready for a fight. Took less than 10 mins from dialing paypal # to hanging up.
Wow it's about time, he's only being doing it for a year and a half. Maybe my threats of a suit were finally heard. Either way congrats!
Thanks, can't imagine how long a rap sheet and money he must have for that amount of time he spent scamming people. I would think that it would be grand larceny level. At which point shouldn't this be turned into a federal crime considering it's crossing between states?
I don't believe grand larceny is additive, meaning if you stole a $1 item 1000 times, it wouldn't be grand larceny, but rather 1000 petty theft charges. However, each time you stole the $1 item, it would be a separate crime and judges have the ability to sentence people consecutively rather than concurrently.
It is a federal crime to use the US Mail for fraud. However, the problem is whether or not law enforcement has the resources to deal with these types of crimes. If each of you had reported this to the local authorities where he lives, something might have happened by now. But so far, none of you have. You are moving on with your lives after you win the paypal dispute. Tim actually went to the Michigan authorities, but it would have been better to report in both California and Michigan.
Also, if paypal were to try to do something about this guy, they would likely get results. Ask to speak to a paypal supervisor and ask when they are going to do something about this guy.
I am sure that the Hula will come back in stock soon and with the delays people are experiencing, you may get the Hula before you get the device!!!
Heck, my device did not ship today and Motorola told me it was exported!! I don't think that is true b/c no tracking number has been assigned. I suspect the leather is the cause of the hold up.
I also bought a Sena S5 case that supposedly fits the Moto X 2014 when it was on sale for 30% off. I posted about that sale on XDA, too!
http://www.senacases.com/product/heritage-pouch-samsung-s5/
Everybody save all the information that you have on this guy, addresses, aliases, etc. etc. Make sure to save every shred of evidence!
The more info that you submit on the police report, the more chance they have of finding him.
And please do report him to his local authorities. As soon as we can recover all of our evidence from our sheriff's office, we will proceed in that direction.
It's really exhaustion inducing at this point, considering the amount of hours of our life we've already devoted to this scammer. But if nobody does anything, these criminals get to keep going on. We've got to shut them down for the sake for future victims.
It seems that Paypal could do it's own legal investigation, given the amount of claims the guy has made.
In the future, Paypal really ought to come up with some limit on the amount of claims that a buyer can file. I mean, seriously, what legitimate person would file 20+ claims? So a system like that would probably weed out a lot of crooks.
The more info that you submit on the police report, the more chance they have of finding him.
And please do report him to his local authorities. As soon as we can recover all of our evidence from our sheriff's office, we will proceed in that direction.
It's really exhaustion inducing at this point, considering the amount of hours of our life we've already devoted to this scammer. But if nobody does anything, these criminals get to keep going on. We've got to shut them down for the sake for future victims.
It seems that Paypal could do it's own legal investigation, given the amount of claims the guy has made.
In the future, Paypal really ought to come up with some limit on the amount of claims that a buyer can file. I mean, seriously, what legitimate person would file 20+ claims? So a system like that would probably weed out a lot of crooks.
I totally agree, also the fact that he opens the claims and then escalates right away in every single instance. It doesn't take a genius to figure this stuff out. The fact that they ruled in his favor in my case, after talking to two reps, posting screenshots of him being a fraud, etc is beyond me. I personally got him removed from Swappa and have contacted Postal Inspector. I didn't actually lose anything other then time, but hopefully they'll still hear my story out.
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uh oh, did you get tracking yet? I was reading some complaints online about talking to customer care and getting one story and then days later no one knows where the device is. I hope you get your device or at least where it's at soon!
I called today and they called the warehouse. They are waiting on a part for the phone, I presume the leather back. At least I know now that it isn't lost. I am OK with waiting as long as I know it isn't lost.
A couple of you asked for our scam prevention tips. I'm not sure if my PM capability is working yet. (I tried to message back, but didn't see any items in my sent folder.)
So, I'm going to post them here, for you to copy and paste at your convenience. My wife and I developed these steps after our negative scammer experience. After implementing these, we've never had another Paypal case. My wife typed it out in this format so that we could pass it onto others.
Ebay Fraud Prevention for Iphone Sales
On Ebay, as well as in the rest of life, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. By far, the best way to take care of scammers is simply to refuse to do business with them in the first place. It's far better to cancel bids, block bad buyers, and avoid problems, than having to deal with a problematic buyer after the fact.
When we first started selling iPhones on Ebay, we simply listed them as a “Buy It Now” and shipped after cleared payment, as long as Paypal told us it was okay to ship. As time went on, and after we dealt with our first scammer, our techniques have changed. Yes, we got reimbursed for the claim with the scammer, but only after about 50 hours on the phone with Paypal and Ebay and an enormous amount of loss of sleep and stress. We also only got reimbursed because our evidence was rock solid, we had an actual signed affidavit from the postal clerk when our scammer tried to return a piece of paper instead of the phone. We eventually filed a police report on him and reported the iPhone as stolen.
This experience has shaped the way we currently run our Ebay business. We use the following policies to guide our business:
1) We’ve made an absolute decision not to ship overseas and not to ship to freight forwarding companies that forward items overseas. Although in theory, if an item is reshipped, the seller shouldn’t be liable, they often end up on the hook for the transaction anyway. I really do not want to ship directly or indirectly to corrupt places like the Ukraine (where many iPhones are stolen right in customs) or places with corrupt postal systems or full of scammers. Banning all international shipping, whether direct or indirect, prevents having to deal with those hassles. As one Ebay seller said, before he stopped shipping to freight forwarding services, buyers would often contact him complaining, “Where’s my item?” even though the tracking information shows that he correctly sent it to the freight address that the buyer provided.
2) In order to implement our ban on foreign shipping and freight forwarding services, we blocked foreign buyers from our auctions. However, foreign buyers with an U.S. forwarding address aren’t covered by that block. So, we carefully examine each new bid that comes in. If their location is listed as outside of the USA, we cancel their bid. In the event that an international buyer lies about their location to Ebay or snipe bids at the last second, we’ve blocked any non US Paypal accounts and foreign currency from our Paypal account. Then, when the foreign buyer goes to pay, he will be unable to pay and we can file an unpaid item dispute and relist the item or offer a second chance offer to another bidder.
3) We ONLY list iPhones in auction format, never in fixed price format. The reason is that a seller is allowed to cancel bids without penalty, but the same absolutely does not apply to completed sales. Auction format allows us to weed out problematic bidders without penalty.
4) As each new bid comes in, we carefully examine their feedback, both as a buyer and seller. We also look at their recent feedback left for sellers, especially within the last 6-12 months. We absolutely will cancel bids if the buyer is showing a pattern of leaving excessive negative feedback for other sellers. I can think of at least 3 bidders that we cancelled due to leaving excessive negatives. One had left 30 negative feedbacks, one had left 25 negatives, and one had left 12 negative feedbacks. If a buyer has a pattern of leaving negatives for sellers, they are likely either a problematic buyer or a scammer. 1 or 2 negatives in a 6 month period is okay, but much more usually indicates a pattern of feedback abuse. If your buyer has left a lot of negatives, look for the pattern, were they mostly for iPhone transactions? If so, that buyer is likely a Paypal claim waiting to happen. Save yourself now and remove the bid. After removing bids, you also need to block the buyer on your blocked buyer list.
5) We also cancel buyers if they have too many negatives on the feedback left for them. Though buyers can’t get actual negatives for buying anymore, look at the person’s feedback as a seller. Also read comments on their buyer feedback carefully to see if there are any comments from sellers on transactions gone bad.
6) We also cancel bidders if their feedback is under 5 and they haven’t contacted us first. We have that wording right on our auction. This policy has saved us from disaster more than once. We had 2 zero feedback bidders bid in the same day. The iPhone was worth $1100-1200. After cancelling their bids, I saw that their maximum bid was much higher than that. One had bid $1,800.00 and one had bid $1,600.00. Nothing good usually comes from overbidding. Overbidders usually have a bad motive, either to just bid and not pay and cause your auction to take a week to get relisted (they could be a competing seller bidding under a second account) or they are wanting to file a Paypal claim as soon as they get the item and the overbid was an effort to ensure that they would win the auction. Save yourself the hassle and deal with brand new members only if they contact you for approval.
7) In the last hour of the auction, sit right by the computer and babysit your auction. Make sure that you have your bidder cancellation form open and your blocked buyer list open, so that you can quickly perform any actions necessary. In the last minute of the auction, still keep that open. Although you don’t have time at that point to read bidders’ feedback profiles, you can still quickly cancel low feedback bids if you have the bidder cancellation form open. Fill in the item number and the reason fields, so that all you have to do is copy and paste the user id and hit, “Cancel bid.”
8) After the auction completes, request the buyer’s contact information. Ebay will allow you to do that if you have recently completed a transaction with them. Look over the contact information and check if everything matches up well. Reverse search their phone number to confirm that it matches the general area that they live in.
9) After you receive the payment from the buyer, web search their address and determine if they are shipping to a legitimate location. Hint: If they are sending it to some random business like a UPS store that they don’t even work for or is in a different state than them, that is a typical scam alert. If you see something like that, call Ebay and report them ASAP. If they have false contact information, report that as well.
10) Call the buyer on the phone with the phone number that Ebay provided you. Tell them that you want to confirm some details with them. Chat with them about where the phone is being shipped to and confirm that the phone will work for them with their current network. Keep in mind that buying an iPhone on Ebay is nearly as scary as selling one. When you call your buyer and confirm details with them, you are giving them added peace of mind that you are legitimate and not running a black market business.
11) Ship the item promptly after confirming information, securely packaged, and always with adult signature confirmation. (you DON’T want to risk their 10 year old signing for their package!) Upload the tracking number right away for them. Let them know on the phone that you normally ship via USPS and ask if that is fine for them. If they express any worries or doubts, switch to FedEx shipping at no extra charge.
Yes, these above steps are a lot of work. But they are only a fraction of the work of dealing with a criminal. 30-60 extra minutes per auction can literally save you 30-60 hours on the phone with Paypal and Ebay. Since we have implemented these steps, we have had the following stats:
1) Zero buyer protection cases
2) Zero complaints from customers
3) Many happy, reliable Ebayers as customers
4) $0 lost to scammers
So, I'm going to post them here, for you to copy and paste at your convenience. My wife and I developed these steps after our negative scammer experience. After implementing these, we've never had another Paypal case. My wife typed it out in this format so that we could pass it onto others.
Ebay Fraud Prevention for Iphone Sales
On Ebay, as well as in the rest of life, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. By far, the best way to take care of scammers is simply to refuse to do business with them in the first place. It's far better to cancel bids, block bad buyers, and avoid problems, than having to deal with a problematic buyer after the fact.
When we first started selling iPhones on Ebay, we simply listed them as a “Buy It Now” and shipped after cleared payment, as long as Paypal told us it was okay to ship. As time went on, and after we dealt with our first scammer, our techniques have changed. Yes, we got reimbursed for the claim with the scammer, but only after about 50 hours on the phone with Paypal and Ebay and an enormous amount of loss of sleep and stress. We also only got reimbursed because our evidence was rock solid, we had an actual signed affidavit from the postal clerk when our scammer tried to return a piece of paper instead of the phone. We eventually filed a police report on him and reported the iPhone as stolen.
This experience has shaped the way we currently run our Ebay business. We use the following policies to guide our business:
1) We’ve made an absolute decision not to ship overseas and not to ship to freight forwarding companies that forward items overseas. Although in theory, if an item is reshipped, the seller shouldn’t be liable, they often end up on the hook for the transaction anyway. I really do not want to ship directly or indirectly to corrupt places like the Ukraine (where many iPhones are stolen right in customs) or places with corrupt postal systems or full of scammers. Banning all international shipping, whether direct or indirect, prevents having to deal with those hassles. As one Ebay seller said, before he stopped shipping to freight forwarding services, buyers would often contact him complaining, “Where’s my item?” even though the tracking information shows that he correctly sent it to the freight address that the buyer provided.
2) In order to implement our ban on foreign shipping and freight forwarding services, we blocked foreign buyers from our auctions. However, foreign buyers with an U.S. forwarding address aren’t covered by that block. So, we carefully examine each new bid that comes in. If their location is listed as outside of the USA, we cancel their bid. In the event that an international buyer lies about their location to Ebay or snipe bids at the last second, we’ve blocked any non US Paypal accounts and foreign currency from our Paypal account. Then, when the foreign buyer goes to pay, he will be unable to pay and we can file an unpaid item dispute and relist the item or offer a second chance offer to another bidder.
3) We ONLY list iPhones in auction format, never in fixed price format. The reason is that a seller is allowed to cancel bids without penalty, but the same absolutely does not apply to completed sales. Auction format allows us to weed out problematic bidders without penalty.
4) As each new bid comes in, we carefully examine their feedback, both as a buyer and seller. We also look at their recent feedback left for sellers, especially within the last 6-12 months. We absolutely will cancel bids if the buyer is showing a pattern of leaving excessive negative feedback for other sellers. I can think of at least 3 bidders that we cancelled due to leaving excessive negatives. One had left 30 negative feedbacks, one had left 25 negatives, and one had left 12 negative feedbacks. If a buyer has a pattern of leaving negatives for sellers, they are likely either a problematic buyer or a scammer. 1 or 2 negatives in a 6 month period is okay, but much more usually indicates a pattern of feedback abuse. If your buyer has left a lot of negatives, look for the pattern, were they mostly for iPhone transactions? If so, that buyer is likely a Paypal claim waiting to happen. Save yourself now and remove the bid. After removing bids, you also need to block the buyer on your blocked buyer list.
5) We also cancel buyers if they have too many negatives on the feedback left for them. Though buyers can’t get actual negatives for buying anymore, look at the person’s feedback as a seller. Also read comments on their buyer feedback carefully to see if there are any comments from sellers on transactions gone bad.
6) We also cancel bidders if their feedback is under 5 and they haven’t contacted us first. We have that wording right on our auction. This policy has saved us from disaster more than once. We had 2 zero feedback bidders bid in the same day. The iPhone was worth $1100-1200. After cancelling their bids, I saw that their maximum bid was much higher than that. One had bid $1,800.00 and one had bid $1,600.00. Nothing good usually comes from overbidding. Overbidders usually have a bad motive, either to just bid and not pay and cause your auction to take a week to get relisted (they could be a competing seller bidding under a second account) or they are wanting to file a Paypal claim as soon as they get the item and the overbid was an effort to ensure that they would win the auction. Save yourself the hassle and deal with brand new members only if they contact you for approval.
7) In the last hour of the auction, sit right by the computer and babysit your auction. Make sure that you have your bidder cancellation form open and your blocked buyer list open, so that you can quickly perform any actions necessary. In the last minute of the auction, still keep that open. Although you don’t have time at that point to read bidders’ feedback profiles, you can still quickly cancel low feedback bids if you have the bidder cancellation form open. Fill in the item number and the reason fields, so that all you have to do is copy and paste the user id and hit, “Cancel bid.”
8) After the auction completes, request the buyer’s contact information. Ebay will allow you to do that if you have recently completed a transaction with them. Look over the contact information and check if everything matches up well. Reverse search their phone number to confirm that it matches the general area that they live in.
9) After you receive the payment from the buyer, web search their address and determine if they are shipping to a legitimate location. Hint: If they are sending it to some random business like a UPS store that they don’t even work for or is in a different state than them, that is a typical scam alert. If you see something like that, call Ebay and report them ASAP. If they have false contact information, report that as well.
10) Call the buyer on the phone with the phone number that Ebay provided you. Tell them that you want to confirm some details with them. Chat with them about where the phone is being shipped to and confirm that the phone will work for them with their current network. Keep in mind that buying an iPhone on Ebay is nearly as scary as selling one. When you call your buyer and confirm details with them, you are giving them added peace of mind that you are legitimate and not running a black market business.
11) Ship the item promptly after confirming information, securely packaged, and always with adult signature confirmation. (you DON’T want to risk their 10 year old signing for their package!) Upload the tracking number right away for them. Let them know on the phone that you normally ship via USPS and ask if that is fine for them. If they express any worries or doubts, switch to FedEx shipping at no extra charge.
Yes, these above steps are a lot of work. But they are only a fraction of the work of dealing with a criminal. 30-60 extra minutes per auction can literally save you 30-60 hours on the phone with Paypal and Ebay. Since we have implemented these steps, we have had the following stats:
1) Zero buyer protection cases
2) Zero complaints from customers
3) Many happy, reliable Ebayers as customers
4) $0 lost to scammers
You're welcome.
The way we got started with this plan is after the sale to David Pham (aka David Han) we checked the contact information and found out that he had listed a stolen phone number. Had we known that beforehand, we would've reported him to Ebay, refunded him and not shipped. Legitimate customers don't put stolen phone numbers. Period. (we figured out it was stolen by looking for who it belonged to and then spoke with the real owner of the phone number on the phone. He had no knowledge of the transaction.)
It occurred to us, why not look at the information provided by the buyer before shipping?
We started on that path and eventually developed the plan to screen most of the bad customers out, by listing in auction format and making good use of the "cancel bid" and "block buyer" features.
I'm pretty certain that we would've had another Paypal claim by now, especially if we hadn't enforced our rule to cancel low feedback bidders. We were auctioning a 6 Plus and got a couple of zero feedback bidders, which we cancelled. One of the buyers had bid a maximum bid of $1,800 and the other $1,600. Pretty sure that they did not have good intentions. Generally speaking, nobody bids $600-700 over what an item is worth, unless they are either a competing seller trying to derail your auction for a week, or a scammer looking to file an immediate Paypal claim.
Another great thing is to black list bad buyers en masse. Our favorite tool for doing this is: http://www.ebayblacklist.co/
Unlike other blacklist sites, they actually update their list frequently. Just copy and paste their bad buyer list into your buyer black list and you're good to go!
The way we got started with this plan is after the sale to David Pham (aka David Han) we checked the contact information and found out that he had listed a stolen phone number. Had we known that beforehand, we would've reported him to Ebay, refunded him and not shipped. Legitimate customers don't put stolen phone numbers. Period. (we figured out it was stolen by looking for who it belonged to and then spoke with the real owner of the phone number on the phone. He had no knowledge of the transaction.)
It occurred to us, why not look at the information provided by the buyer before shipping?
We started on that path and eventually developed the plan to screen most of the bad customers out, by listing in auction format and making good use of the "cancel bid" and "block buyer" features.
I'm pretty certain that we would've had another Paypal claim by now, especially if we hadn't enforced our rule to cancel low feedback bidders. We were auctioning a 6 Plus and got a couple of zero feedback bidders, which we cancelled. One of the buyers had bid a maximum bid of $1,800 and the other $1,600. Pretty sure that they did not have good intentions. Generally speaking, nobody bids $600-700 over what an item is worth, unless they are either a competing seller trying to derail your auction for a week, or a scammer looking to file an immediate Paypal claim.
Another great thing is to black list bad buyers en masse. Our favorite tool for doing this is: http://www.ebayblacklist.co/
Unlike other blacklist sites, they actually update their list frequently. Just copy and paste their bad buyer list into your buyer black list and you're good to go!
- Status