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Brand New iPhone 16 Pro Max listings by Brand New Sellers Mostly
Anyone have any idea why eBay doesn’t screen the subject listings that go for the $400 range - give or take? They are listed as brand new with many at 1 TB for about a third of the price of Apple selling them and roughly 50% for a pre-owned one. Supposedly some sell but does anyone actually receive a new iPhone as described? Check their sold listings and if 5 sold some only show 1.
Last year, responding to a similar listing at $600 from a 20+ year seller on here with a good feedback rating that won my trust and got me to bite for 2 of them. eBay jerked me around for some time with double talk, different CSR’s responding at different times and so forth before I finally successfully got a refund.
In the short time after that purchase I contacted the seller. He ultimately said his account was hacked. He later said eBay was requiring him to reimburse any sales of those ‘hacker’ listings - presumably mine too. That seller, who had a boat load of listings active at the time, removed all of them and was gone. His account today seems to be still there but no listings.
Over the last couple of days I was looking at the 16 pro max listings again and noticed around a dozen listings for those too good to be true deals, and all were new eBay members with no feedback and account started in march ‘26. Message them and you get no response. So, I inquired and eBay’s automated response said those listings are within their acceptable guidelines. So, buyer beware - if you buy one or two or three and receive nothing - remember eBay requires you to wait for the delivery date to pass before you can escalate - you will chase your money like eBay made me do. eBay collects revenue from every sale!!!
They could verify these TGTBT listings to get confirmation of genuine availability or to have the seller put up an escrow account, but apparently they don’t for these listings. These listings should all be sold out if they are genuine, but they’re not. Why permit them to remain posted? Stock price and the bottom line maybe? Who knows.
There will always be someone who may get lured in and buys before someone else does only to learn they received nothing. eBay could prevent this. If it happens with these popular listings then there are others. eBay is becoming a riskier forum.
eburtonlab
Mentor5 months agoIf I had to guess, it would be that if eBay blocked or removed every $400 iPhone listing, scammers would counter by raising their prices until the scam listings were no longer blocked or removed.
The end result would be just as many scam listings, but just a little bit harder for buyers to distinguish from legitimate listings, and just a little bit more profitable for the scammers.
So basically eBay would be training scammers to get better at scamming by making their listings more like legitimate listings.