Buyer claims he is buying laptop for his son who happens to work at a freight forwarding service.

[revsteven]

Just sold a laptop to a buyer who accepted an offer that I sent to watchers. Buyer has 400+ feedback spanning a few years back (10 or so in the last month). His ebay profile says Nigeria. I sent him a message saying I didn't ship to Nigeria. He claims he is buying it for his son who works in Delaware. 

When the buyer paid, I noticed that the address came up as a freight forwarder. I asked him to confirm that he is using a freight forwarder but he just says that is where is son is working. The freight forwarder is an air logistics company that just so happens to specialize in shipping from the US to Africa.

Should I be concerned or am I just being paranoid? What options do I have? Would you as a seller, go through with the transaction?

Thank you for your time.

[bonjourami]

This is what was being discussed in here.

@mam98031 wrote on ‎10-04-2019 11:10 AM:

@mangorunner wrote:

Called eBay and eBay said the whole freight forwarding thing recently got changed.  They (eBay) can now only reject a return request if the Buyer actually *says* they used a forwarder in an eBay message.  Apparently, the fact that the shipping address belongs to a freight forwarder is no longer enough.  The eBay Rep said that buyers are claiming that they *work* at the freight-fowarding company - things like that  - in order that they may still be able to make returns and file INADs/SNADs.  The eBay Rep said that only way to actually prove that they used a freight forwarder is with a Buyer message acknowledging that.

[sextons-sweet-deals]

That should be correct, but a few recent posts say different. 

Maybe they are not giving all the actual details.

[albertabrightalberta]

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@revsteven wrote:

I know it's a bit creepy for me to research weird looking buyer addresses with lots of numbers, but I have had one or two issues in the past. I have been an eBay member since 2000, and it's very sad to see how things are going.

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With sellers having so little real protection on ebay, sellers have to trust their gut and often do a bit of creepy research. 

I don't fault you at all! 

[stephenmorgan]

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@a_c_green wrote:

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@sextons-sweet-deals wrote:

There have been some recent posts here about shipping to F.F. What seems to stick out is the issue of when the tracking shows delivered to F.F., that is when the 'scammer' opens a case of not received. 

The seller only has the tracking to the F.F. address. Think about it! With eBay's auto / A.I. responses, sellers can lose case.

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When the tracking shows a Delivered status to the address received with the payment, the seller's delivery obligation is complete. That's true even if the address is a freight forwarder. A scammer opening a Not Received dispute at that point will go nowhere.

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Item not received scam is not the only scam and that is not likely the scam that would have been attempted.  Buyer is having item sent to that address so how could they claim item not received when it shows delivered?  There are other ways to rip of the seller that are much, much more difficult for the seller to overcome.  

[a_c_green]

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@stephenmorgan wrote:
Item not received scam is not the only scam and that is not likely the scam that would have been attempted.  Buyer is having item sent to that address so how could they claim item not received when it shows delivered?  There are other ways to rip of the seller that are much, much more difficult for the seller to overcome.

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Indeed there are. I doubt that the scammer would be attempting an Item Not Received dispute in this case, since it's just domestic shipping to the recipient's address. I think it's more likely that a fake damage or empty-box claim would occur later, after which the seller would need to either send a return label to the freight forwarding address, or refuse the claim on the basis of third-party forwarding, which is not always easy to prove to eBay's satisfaction.

Sending a return label would require the buyer to send... something... back to the forwarder to subsequently return to the seller before a refund would be issued.

(For the record, I agree with the others that this buyer stinks to high Heaven and his story about a son working for the freight forwarder is ridiculous.)

[buyselljack2016]

The resulting "case", "dispute", "whatever"  with an item "not proven to have been forwarded" will be, as has been posted over, and over on the community boards, a SNAD  that can result in the seller being required to accept a return with the subsequent action by the buyer to send some sort of garbage (not the item shipped) that upon receipt of, the seller will have to, or be forced to refund for.

The subsequent appeal by the seller will be denied.

[revsteven]

Yes, this is what would happen. Someone attempted to do this to me a few years ago to me when I sold a CPU.

The mistake they made was using their own shipping label and shipping a box of rocks to a Dominos Pizza in my town. As far as the USPS tracking was concerned, it was shipped back to me (since it only displays the town). I ended up going to the post office and requesting detailed information as to where the return was actually delivered. Their internal tracking contains more details (exact time stamps, geolocation, more steps) so I was able to file a police report and get my money back since there was proof that they didnt actually return anything to me. I should also mention that the buyer's address was in California, and the return originated from a random warehouse in New York state.

Had the buyer actually sent the box of rocks to my address, it would be my word against theirs, and they would have likely won.