Fake Ebay buyers.. now what?

[jpodresell]

update: I had to remove the buyers names.. Ebay just pulled this conversations. Lets try again....

I put a $1100 laptop up on EBay for sale. Started it at $500.  I knew it would hit at least $1000 and had "offer" selected.

I get some good bids.

Then the last 4 hours I get this activity. 4 bidders. 3 cancel in the last hour for the same reason. Drive up the price and then cancel within the last minute and buy the item for half of what its worth:

xxxxxxxxx Feedback Score (64)	Retracted: $1,041.00 Explanation: Entered wrong amount	Bid: 31 Oct 2021 at 2:43:41pm PDT Retracted: 31 Oct 2021 at 3:43:04pm PDT
xxxxxxxxx Feedback Score (526)	Retracted: $1,200.00 Explanation: Entered wrong amount	Bid: 31 Oct 2021 at 1:46:33pm PDT Retracted: 31 Oct 2021 at 2:43:29pm PDT
xxxxxxxxx Feedback Score (45)	Retracted: $1,100.00 Explanation: Entered wrong amount	Bid: 31 Oct 2021 at 12:48:11pm PDT Retracted: 31 Oct 2021 at 1:46:14pm PDT

Obviously the same person right? They are all excatly one hour apart. Both the bids and the cancellations. I dont notice this until the auction has ended. So I call EBay and they agree this was a scam but just tell me to cancel the sale and if there is a problem to call them back and they would notate this.

So I cancel the sale, and the guy leaves me bad feedback. I call EBay within 5 minutes and they tell me they can't do anything.

On top of that I had already relisted it, and now my feedback score has went way down, so I cancel the relisting until we get this resolved, and Im chaged over $60 in fees.

Ebay just keeps telling me they send this to the fraud team, but I havent received anything and I cant talk to them directly. And almost everyone I have spoken to speaks broken English and I dont even know if they fully understand what Im saying.

Ive already blocked the 4 buyers and reported them, but this doesnt help me now.

Does anyone have suggestions? Am I right here? I'm not going to sell here if I dont have great feedback, not high end stuff which is what I deal with. "

[albertabrightalberta]

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@jpodresell wrote:

Also, I checked off no international buyers and even hand picked the countries I allowed. Which was only the USA. So how could they even bid?

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If they were using a freight forwarder and have a US shipping address, they are able to bid and buy.

(In my own listings, though I do make exceptions when international bidders contact me, most just use freight forwarders in Oregon, Florida, Delaware and a few other countries.  Without actually going through my sales, about 20% are international with **bleep** and I've never had a single issue with any. Many are repeat buyers also.)

ETA: Why was the abbreviation for freight forwarders bleeped? 

[jpodresell]

This is from another poster here. His detective work is spot on.. This proves it is not random

ll of the following times are pm PDT on Oct 31st.

EOA:  3:43:04

Shield #3 (bidder):  bid 2:43:41 / retract 3:43:04

Shield #2:  bid 1:46:33 / retract 2:43:29

Shield #1:  bid 12:48:11 / retract 1:46:14

Bidder:  12:47:57 upped at 12:48:15

[dryophelia]

This is definitely bid shielding. 

For the first time ever that I have seen, a snipe bid retraction. Done at the last second of the listing. 3:43:04

[iart]

Okay, so most people are saying that these were legit bid cancellations?

I've never seen so many. If not some kind of scam, why? Is it coincidental?

[kare-bearb]

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@dryophelia wrote:

This is definitely bid shielding. 

For the first time ever that I have seen, a snipe bid retraction. Done at the last second of the listing. 3:43:04

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I was impressed by that snipe too!

[albertabrightalberta]

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@iart wrote:

Okay, so most people are saying that these were legit bid cancellations?

I've never seen so many. If not some kind of scam, why? Is it coincidental?

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No one can answer that. My point is that the bidders are all in different locations, all registered on ebay at different times in different years, none of the accounts were new, all have many feedbacks, and feedbacks left for others were all different wording, etc. 

Who knows why people cancel bids but if the OP were to list at fixed price and IPR, he wouldn't have this problem. (However having received a neg from a buyer for the same item, this seller might have trouble finding future buyers who may be unwilling to take a chance.)

[iart]

The accounts could have been hacked by the same person.

I think.

I'm just glad we don't sell these higher prices electronic items. Them and clothing seem to lead to a lot of frustration.

[jpodresell]

Sorry.. What is IPR? Ive never thought about listing at fixed prices. This is what Im looking for.. a solution. Thank You.

[jpodresell]

LOL.. I was wondering what you were cussing about!

Thank you, this is good info to have.

[marnotom!]

IPR = "Immediate payment required"

[kare-bearb]

The eBay help link for listing with IPR:

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/immediate-payment-works?id=415...

[jpodresell]

Selling these items in general stinks.. Im just finding this out. Local ads, marketplaces, etc. It doesnt matter anymore, MOST of the calls, emails, etc are scammers. I thought EBAY would have policies and technologies in place to prevent this. They dont. And then it looks like the buyer always wins from what I am seeing.

I'll rethink my strategy.. Kinda stinks the replies I received here from other sellers right away. Not very supportive of other sellers and jump to conclusions. Bummer.

[a_c_green · Accepted solution]

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@iart wrote:

The accounts could have been hacked by the same person.

I think.

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Me too. But regardless of whether it's one person with three accounts or three different bidders who know how to bid-shield, it was indeed an organized bid shielding attack that paid off. Note that if you look at the feedback for each of the retracting bidders, they each have 40+ bid retractions over the past year. The upset winner was the beneficiary of the bid shielding.

If you feel you must list that here, decide on what you want for it and list it as Fixed Price with no Make Offer and with the Immediate Payment Required option set. (See the full listing form; the checkbox for that is in the payments area.) That way no one can snatch your item off the market without actually paying you for it first. There is no need to do an auction listing for something with a known retail price.

This does not help your chances of escaping a fake damage or empty-box claim later on, though, so your best solution is probably to sell it as Local Pickup Only for cash.

[jpodresell]

Thank you!

That is very helpful. I insure all items, so that probably helps a little bit too. I have to look into what happens if they say it was stolen or wont cooperate with the shipper...

But the fixed items with make offer makes sense. I like this. 

[zamo-zuan]

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@jpodresell wrote:

I'll rethink my strategy.. Kinda stinks the replies I received here from other sellers right away. Not very supportive of other sellers and jump to conclusions. Bummer.

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Well just so you know, you're not alone. We're in this together, sellers should support each other, and that's what you'd think this forum was intended for.  Sadly, it can sometimes be hard to find community members that actually are willing to support sellers on the seller forum. 

This timing is unquestionably suspicious, and as mentioned earlier, it's common for fraud to be done on multiple accounts. We've saw many postings about this happening in the past on here. And we know high value items are a prime target for fraud.

Not sure why these things are not taken seriously and dismissed. It seems as if the motive behind many responses is to come up with a quick explanation and bring the issues that are reported by the OP in to question for anyone that might read this thread, while dismissing the actual issues reported.

I'm not sure why the reports of timing and fraud on multiple accounts is treated by some as if it's "circumstantial evidence". But then to actually say the OP is in the wrong, or pretending to know that these accounts were all used by different people, that's building an entire argument on circumstantial evidence. Clear double standard. The evidence we have to go on is limited, we can only determine the possibilities. Nobody but eBay has the information to say anyone else here is "wrong". 

And as I had mentioned recently in the chat thread, it can be a negative environment here. As eBay has the data at hand to look in to this. They can tell us what the truth is. But they stay silent and just let people argue it out, bringing the truth in to question. 

We shouldn't have to do eBay's job for them and figure out the truth here. It's their responsibility to keep sellers safe. It's commonly mentioned on that it's not even safe to sell high value items, that falls under eBay's responsibility as well. So why is the inclination to accuse sellers and hold them responsible? This is a sellers forum... So why is there more effort to attempt to prove the seller wrong based on circumstantial evidence, rather than actually support the seller and encourage eBay to investigate (as they should with it being eBay's responsibility to protect sellers)?