How to find if a seller is legitimate.

Question

I've called numerous eBay phone numbers and can't speak a live person as I was able to a couple years back when a seller cheated me.

How to find if a seller is legitimate. Seller is offering an expensive drone and has no reviews after listing says several have been sold.

Please help. Thank You

eburtonlab · Answer

@renraw1

There are many good reasons to not buy expensive items from zero feedback sellers, not the least of which being that scammers often list expensive items at fire sale prices as bait to attract potential victims, and then make it as hard as possible to actually get a refund.

And even otherwise honest, new sellers may encounter lots of potential problems selling for the first time and actually delivering the goods, and such sellers may require a lot of additional hand-holding to get through a transaction. And that is if the seller is not planning to drop-ship the item from someone else who turns out to be a scammer.

In general, you can avoid a lot of headaches by choosing to purchase only from established sellers that have recent and past positive feedback as a seller for selling items in the same category that you intend to buy. If someone is selling a dozen apple watches, but has no feedback, or only has feedback as a buyer, or only has feedback for selling dress patterns or fishing lures (actual examples I have seen), perhaps wait until they have a track record of positive feedback for selling electronics before you buy from them.

You might miss out on a good deal from a new seller once in a while, and nothing can guarantee that you won't still run into an issue anyway, but you can avoid a lot of potential problems by choosing to do business with established sellers. Anyone can put together a listing that looks nice -- it is not hard at all to simply copy an existing listing -- but it is much harder to create a history of consistent sales and positive feedback.

For more experienced sellers, you can learn a lot about the sort of seller you are dealing with by checking the seller's feedback page to see where the seller is registered and to notice if the seller has any negative feedback. If you see negatives indicated in the table of recent feedback, you can choose to exclusively see each type of comment by clicking on the numbers shown in the table. Reading negative or neutral comments can often tell you if a seller has a pattern of problems with items not matching the descriptions, canceled orders, late deliveries or item location misrepresentation.

If a seller has a pattern of too many serious negatives -- or just not enough positive history -- it is often better to find another seller with a better track record to do business with.