New Seller Scam - involving fake tracking that is associated to my town - they somehow filed a claim

[e-lectronicsllc]

Hi all, 

This 'new' scam just happened to me this morning and so far has me rather confused.

I bought a dyson v11 vacuum last week from a Canadian seller, shipping from USA, with a new account and a suspiciously low price. I know, shame on me although there should be ebay and paypal protection right?

Here is where the "new" angle of this scam comes in:

The seller was slow to provide a tracking number, they waited about a week. I actually received it yesterday. This morning I was out doing errands in the county with no cellular reception; when I got back in reception with in an hour I had several messages. The first was a copy of the transcript for "my ebay support chat"... wait, what??? I didn't talk with ebay, I'm assuming its a phishing scam. Sure enough when I log into ebay there is a chat session and a claim for item not received on this vacuum. Next I call ebay, they tell me it all looks good and that "I must have filed that claim". I check with my wife who was home and is not a computer person to make sure she wasn't in my account; she had no idea what I was talking about, the vacuum purchase, the supposed delivery, my  computer, nothing. Ebay still doesn't believe me.

The next message is a delivery confirmation that the vacuum was delivered to my front door and it indicated the location was the same town I live in (no exact address provided ofcourse).

This seller had 5pcs of this dyson v11 listed which sold very quickly, and they also have "hand knit mittens", that's all they have listed. I called paypal who told me the account was just opened from the UK by this Canadian seller, who is supposedly shipping from USA. PayPal didn't like what they were seeing and flagged the account.

Ebay on the other hand does not believe me (I am a 20 year ebay veteran with 100% positive and over 3,000 transactions). They think I either forgot filing the claim an hour ago while I was out of reception in the county, or my wife who doesn't know how to turn my computer on did it, or my PC was hacked over the internet because their system "shows the claim was issued from my computer" but would not elaborate on what that means such as IP address, general ISP location data or what...

I have spoken with two ebay support staff now, neither of them think anything about this transaction looks suspicious and neither believe I was not the one who initiated the "item not received" claim minutes apart from the tracking number showing delivered in my town.

My suspicion is that this scam is playing off the getting ebay to close the claim based of the delivery status in my town which will then free up the funds that paypal has.

But how the heck did someone start an ebay chat on my behalf? The first ebay support person told me this can only be done through my ebay account. The second told me that anyone can call in, claim to be me, give my birth month/year and file a claim. The transcript to me is ridiculous, poor spelling and wording completely different than how I speak. So eBay was no help, still says this looks totally normal, thinks I submitted this claim. Nice work on the scammer's behalf so watch out for this new one.

PayPal did mention that they are aware scammers can now buy fake tracking numbers within specific cities.

PayPal will hopefully back me up as I suspect eBay is going to auto close the claim due to the tracking showing delivered in my town. PayPal told me to go to the post office and ask them to confirm if the package was delivered to my exact address and provide the YES/NO answer to eBay. The post office apparently cannot say where it was delivered but they can provide a statement of YES/NO with respect to my address.

I am curious if anyone else has seen this scam yet?