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Fraud? Seller BEWARE
I am the seller and sold a phone with no returns. Buyer claimed it was defective after a week. It had Apple care so I didn’t want to accept the return. EBay strongly suggested I allow the return and pay for the shipping. I bought a label from eBay and it was issued to the buyer. The buyer had my address so found another address near me, changed the recipient address on my label but kept the tracking number. Buyer had a box of paper delivered to the nearby address and therefore had proof my tracking number showed a delivery but not to me and not the phone. I got proof of altered shipping label from USPS and eBay is investigating. The buyer also used a third party shipping company and it turns out he owns the shipping company. Does anyone know if tampering with a USPS label can be prosecuted as a crime? Most of what I’m finding is misuse of priority mail supplies.
house*of*paws
Mentor3 years agoHi @ddm1353
I'm so sorry this happened ... and hope you will be able to prevail in the 'appeal'. Hopefully, you contacted eBay via social media ... where the the CS reps are most likely to understand the issue.
From your description of what happened ... it doesn't sound like the buyer 'tampered' with the USPS label if they only used it to discover your address AND THEN used their own shipping company to deliver the 'package' to another address.
Please let us know how things turn out. Best of luck to you!
ddm1353
OP3 years agoThank you but they did use my label and copied over the address and used my tracking number. I’m sure he’s covered his bases but it sure seems illegal to me.
i have not contacted eBay through social media but I will look into it. Thank you again.
shipscript
·3 years ago@ddm1353
This is called the "tracking number scam" and most USPS offices and customer service reps should know what that means. Essentially, USPS can provide proof that the delivery address of the tracking number does not match whatever address was provided to eBay. Writing over the address would mean the new address would not match the tracking number. So this is a slightly different version of the original scam.
It is not clear how a third party shipping company can play into this scam, since tracking must be scanned as "delivered" by USPS to make this scam work. Can you elaborate where that other shipper fits into this scenario?
As to your "tampering" question, you should be able to get an answer from your local postmaster. People manually edit labels all the time to make minor changes like adding an apartment number or correct a house number, and that level of editing is not considered "tampering".
ddm1353
OP3 years agoThe post office was able to provide a photo of the label that was on the box and showed where it was delivered so I can prove to eBay I did not get the package. The label looked just like the usps priority mail label but the recipient name and address was different. He also changed his name but kept his address. eBay said they had to do a manual request for my situation since he used a third-party shipper and they gave me the name of the shipper. When I looked up the shipping company it was his address. I am not sure how the third-party shipper came in to play because the label was still a USPS label. To me, it appeared. He scanned the original label into a program, and then pasted a new text box over it with new information, and then re-printed it it wasn’t scratched out and looked as though it were tampered with, but it was because that’s not the label he was sent.
I have reached out to the local P.O. but I have not heard back.
Thank you for your interest. I have a little stubborn streak in my genes and won’t let this go.