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Advice Please! Buyer Scammed in Tracking Number Fraud - Careful Buying RTX Pro GPUs!
Hi everyone. This is going to be a long one as I dive deep into how I got scammed. TL;DR: the seller fraudulently added tracking numbers that weren't actually heading to my address, and eBay now thinks the order was successfully delivered to me when nothing was ever sent. Read below for details:
Looking for a little advice here. I bought an expensive GPU in late December. The price had a steep discount and because it was shipping from China and there were several for sale, I was under the impression that the seller bought them in bulk originally at regional pricing and was selling them before Nvidia's CES product announcements. I was stupid and rationalized my way to falling victim to this scam. At the time though, it seemed reasonable and the seller had 100% positive feedback with lots of orders in the past. I didn't realize it until after I already made the purchase that every order feedback under their profile was only for selling small booklets of stamps. Obviously now, red flag.
After I purchased, I asked about shipping, and the seller told me it would take half a month, so I'd receive the card some time in mid January. It was a little alarming that it was shipping on such a slow route instead of by air, given the expense of the card and the fragile nature of some components. I looked further into the listing and saw it was shipping from Preston, China. There is no Preston in China, so I got a really bad feeling. I asked the seller for the specific city it was shipping out of and they ghosted me from that point on. At the same time, I saw a tracking number added from China Post. It did look like it was a real package heading towards the States, but the tracking updates mentioned something about an airport or flight, which I would have been happy with except this now seemed only more suspicious when "half a month" or longer usually means it's shipping on a freighter across the ocean.
A couple days later, I get an update to my order on eBay. I check, and a second tracking number was added from FedEx showing that a package was delivered to my city, but the delivery photo was of a blue building with a white garage. As you can imagine, it's not my home and I don't even have a garage. Meanwhile, the first tracking number was still working its way to the US. At that point, I knew without a doubt that this wasn't at all legitimate. I started looking up what to do, and I've been feeling pretty discouraged seeing that a lot of buyers had similar issues with a scammer using a poached tracking number to fake the delivery and eBay automatically rejecting their case because the tracking info says something was delivered.
There are so many things that don't make sense about this, and I think it's easy to see that I'm the victim of fraud. I can show my home is redbrick with my address visible which doesn't at all match the proof of delivery photo. The FedEx shipping info shows it's a 91 pound shipment while a GPU with substantial packaging should weigh 10 pounds, give or take (it's a 2-slot card weighing 4.2 pounds). The fact that they added a second tracking number that delivered something from Katy, TX, not China or any customs port while the original China Post shipping was still en route is pretty glaring. Now that it's been a few days, the China Post tracking details finally show the package was delivered but to an entirely different state hundreds of miles away in a different timezone. Furthermore, the listing only uses stock photos for the card available from the manufacturer's website.
I've been calling FedEx about this and even tried to go to an office in person to ask for any help with verifying that this didn't come to me. I called the 800 number and they said that they could not give me the address. Several calls later, I finally got someone to at least tell me, "it didn't go to your address." I wanted something I could show eBay though, and they said I'd have to talk to someone at my local branch office. I drove 45 minutes to my nearest FedEx office. Doing so was no help and I was told that only the local warehouse facility would be able to lookup who made the delivery and what their route was. So I called them (going in was not an option because it was fenced in with security gates). They told me they couldn't do anything about that because the national phone line is the only way to get a case number (800 GoFedEx). Called them (yet again), and asked for a case number and they said they couldn't do that because the name and address I've given doesn't match the tracking number so they would not open a case to investigate it... Which is really screwed up in my opinion. I asked to escalate it to a supervisor and was again rejected because they decline any request to transfer to supervisors if they cannot verify the details match on a tracking number in question. That is beyond bizarre but fine, I'll avoid spending money on FedEx from now on.
I feel defeated already and I haven't even sent a dispute to eBay yet. Without a case number to reference or an official statement from the carrier who shows the status as delivered, I'm afraid eBay will decline my dispute and side with the seller. The seller, btw, apparently had their account hijacked during this whole fraudulent scheme because today I just saw a bunch of notices from eBay proper telling me their account had unauthorized access and proper access was just recently restored. Seems to be happening a lot with others who offered me deals on GPUs, and I'm not sure if it was legitimately hijacked or if that's their way to get off scot-free but whatever.
Can anyone offer some advice for this situation? I don't want to lose thousands of dollars because someone was clever enough to buy a few tracking numbers from one of those gray market number swapping websites.
I took a bunch of screenshots over the last few days as I've been working up the courage to take this to eBay support. I'll share some here with some details redacted just as a safety precaution (I'm not exactly sure what support would be okay with me sharing or not sharing).
Message with the seller:
Tracking info displayed in the eBay app:
eBay tracking on the first shipment from China:
Discrepancies between the two tracking numbers:
Second shipping info shows it's from Texas, not China:
The first tracking info shows it's coming from China using China Post as the carrier. It was still shipping at the time of my screenshot, despite eBay labeling the order as delivered due to the FedEx delivered status:
Sorry for the wall of text and the large images. I tried to shrink them on my phone by around half while preserving detail, but they're still pretty big.
Any help from seasoned eBayers would be invaluable to me right now. I'm legitimately frightened by the thought that eBay will deny my dispute out of policy just because one of the tracking numbers actually was delivered to somewhere in my city (at 91 pounds).
All the best,
- TheoreticalBay
theoreticalbay
OP9 months agoThis feels hopeless. I just read a post about a similar situation where the carrier was USPS. The best answer stated the buyer needs to get documentation from the post office that the delivery wasn't to their address. In my case, FedEx is the carrier and they have refused time and time again to provide any information that isn't strictly listed on the tracking info because I can't give them the account number for the shipper or the name of the recipient.
After several calls, the 800 number told me to go speak with someone in person at the office (45m driving one way btw), the office worker told me no and that I'd have to speak with someone at the warehouse facility that actually delivered it. He gave me their number. When I called them they abruptly shot me down and told me that I had to call the 800 number in order to get a case number. And upon calling the 800 number again to ask for a case number, they told me they would not even open a case because I couldn't give them the shipper or recipient name.
I've gotten several of them to say outright that it did not go to me, but no kind of documentation, no reference numbers, no point of contact to verify anything. Nothing that I can give eBay for them to consider before they automatically rule against my dispute.
Please, does anyone have any ideas that could help me? I don't want to lose thousands of dollars.
theoreticalbay
OP9 months agoWas this not the right place to post?
theoreticalbay
OP9 months agoAnd I just noticed from one of the screenshots that, indeed, the second FedEx tracking number really was added AFTER it was marked as delivered. The tracking details near the bottom show it was added to eBay on the 31st yet it was delivered on the 30th. How in the world are legitimate buyers (and sellers for returns) actually supposed to protect themselves from tracking number fraud??