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Nefarious Sellers
I recently had a bad experience with a deadbeat seller. I bought a new Dyson Cordless Stick vacuum. The price was pretty low. I paid but then the seller did nothing and refused to even reply to my inquiries. The day to receive the product came and passed. I ended up getting a refund but now i have no xmas present for my mother.
i got looking more closely at the seller. They had no sales and only 2 items for sale. I looked through the other Dyson Cordless Stick vacuums that were cheaper yhan normal and the status of the seller on all those was almost exactly the same. I highly suspect it is all the same person behind all these sellers.
Does anybody know what kind of scam they might be pulling? Can they steal my credit card information or is that protected by ebay? There has to be a reason they are putting items for sale at lower than average prices never even planning on shipping the item.
Also, how can i contact ebay to tell them what i suspect from what i have seen on ebay for the very cheap prices on Dyson Cordless Stick vacuums so they can check it out and get these nefarious sellers that give ebay a bad name off the seller list at ebay?
I appreciate any information any of you experienced ebay users can tell me.
woodland_gnome
·2 years agoMy best guess is that you dealt with a "drop shipper" who orders from a source once s/he makes a sale and then his/her source didn't come through. And the other sellers are likely the same. They do not get your credit card number. A scammer might try to abscond with the funds and leave eBay to reimburse you from its pockets, but eBay takes steps (holding the funds--which is another possibility for the cancellation with a new drop shipper who needs the funds to order the item) to protect its money.
The seller already got a "defect" when s/he cancelled the transaction (unless s/he lied to eBay to blame you, in which case we'd need details especially what eBay said the reason was in the cancellation notice). That is the primary tool eBay uses to weed out bad sellers, downgrading the selling status of those who get too many relative to their sales volume (as opposed to having to pay employees to actually investigate to see how likely it was that the seller had a legitimate reason to cancel vs. deliberate policy violations).
You may leave appropriate (calm, factual--if the seller said that x was the reason say "seller said x. . ." so people don't think you are just jumping to conclusions) feedback to warn future buyers/bidders. If the usual links have vanished, go to anyone's Feedback Profile (doesn't matter who, click on the feedback score in parentheses behind the username) then scroll down to below the last comment on that page to find a "Leave feedback" link that doesn't vanish (it brings you to a list of items you can leave feedback for).
Theoretically you could sue the seller for breach of the contract of sale (for the difference between the auction price and what you ended up having to pay for a replacement), but that is almost never practical.
eBay is far from the best place to buy time-sensitive items. There are sellers who don't know what they are doing (most are not scammers). Your best bet at this time is to buy something you can afford in a brick and mortar store.
shipscript
·2 years ago@steve_southworth
Popular items for sale at half price are usually scams. Scammers often hijack accounts of real users. In each listing, you should see a report option. You can report those similar listings as fraudulent and eBay will evaluate.
When reporting the listing, select these options:
1. Listing practices
2. Fraudulent listing activities
3. You suspect that a listing is fraudulent
A seller does not have access to your card information. That info is sent only to eBay, so no worries there.
The scam is that the "seller" hopes to get paid and disappear before the buyer opens a complaint. Since eBay holds payout on new sellers, or sellers of high end items, the scam doesn't work as well as it used to. But another tactic is to put payment instructions in the description (taking the sale outside of eBay). Those should be reported immediately when encountered.