Fraudulent sellers

Question

I have been trying to get a part and it appears as though these sellers are posting items they don't have just to pocket the cash until they have to return it. I have made three purchases, so far, for the same item. Two of them have already been refunded supposedly because the package got lost in transit. Is this a joke/scam?

These sellers need to get it together. Don't sell if you have NO product.

eburtonlab · Answer

@mercdel0

Scammers and poorly performing drop-shippers share many common characteristics. If all three of those sellers are drop-shipping from the same sold-out retailer or supplier, for instance, then what you have experienced is common in that situation. Drop-shipping sellers are supposed to have items under contract before listing them so that this does not happen, but not all of them do so as they should.

It may not be possible to always identify in advance those sellers who drop-ship, but it is possible to identify some common characteristics of illicit retail drop-shippers or other under-performing sellers, and thus avoid the worst of them.

Often they can be spotted by a combination of low feedback number, free shipping of heavy items where it would not be profitable to use retail shipping, use of stock photos, high handling time (not necessarily if they are using Amazon or Walmart, though), poor feedback received with complaints of delays and wrong items or out of stock cancellations, very odd item selection and/or quantities like items were chosen at random from a catalog, canned item descriptions scraped from another site that exactly match many other similar listings, differences between registration location on the feedback page and item location (or vague item location -- like "US, United States"), or inability to answer even basic questions about the items being sold.