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Seller is playing games, selling the same thing over and over, but never shipping it
I have been trying to buy a carburetor, item 285283071300, from a seller, neverup66 for months now. Each time I buy it they send me an automated message with some vague language about them having discovered some problem with it or it having gotten lost in shipping, and that they will refund my money and I should place a new order with them. They continue to keep the item actively listed. I have done this three times now, and each time I get a similar message from their "chat bot", and they ignore whatever I write in reply. They give me a choice to either re-send the product or get a refund, but no matter what I say in reply, they cancel the order and claim it was cancelled at my request, which it wasn't. Since they refund my money (I hope) each time, I have no recourse through ebay's automated "item not received" system.
I am done trying to order from them, but what is the scam that they're running, and how can I get through to somebody real at ebay to get them to look into this? They obviously don't have the product and yet they're repeatedly taking orders for it. Are they scamming me out of money somehow?
inceptions
Mentor3 years agoI would have been done trying to order from them after the first time, but better late than never.
You can report the seller here for violating policy:
https://www.ebay.com/help/action?topicid=4022
The seller is misrepresenting the reason for the cancellation. Each one of those "requested by buyer" cancellations are recorded on you account. To my knowledge, eBay currently does nothing with them, but it makes you look like you make excessive cancellation requests so it's better to report the seller and stop trying to buy from him.
dsengr
OP3 years agoGood info about the "requested by buyer" being a strike against the me. I suspected something like that, but I still don't see how they make money via this scam.
inceptions
Mentor3 years agoI wouldn't call it a strike against you. Again, to my knowledge, no action is taken, But eBay collects data, and data is analyzed to use for decision-making. That's why I bring it up. And that should be an incentive to report sellers who are abusing the cancellation process. Each time the seller cancels an item that he decides not to ship is required to use the reason that the item is out of stock or damaged. He earns a defect on his record for that. Too many, and he can lose his selling privileges. Your seller is probably not just cancelling your orders but others and he is getting away with it if reports aren't submitted.
As for making money out of this practice? The only thing I can think of is that the listing drives business to his listings and perhaps that increases his sales on other items (or maybe that's just in his mind).