What to do with drop shipping scammers?

Question

Does Ebay have any policies about drop shipping from Amazon? I've encountered sellers that list things from Amazon at an upcharge and then use their Prime account to ship the item directly to the buyer. Some of them charge shipping even though they're getting it for free from their Prime. There will be no valid tracking number and when it shows up it's in Amazon packaging. I'm not talking re-used boxes, I mean straight from the fulfillment center pouches and cardboard envelopes.

eburtonlab · Answer

@blocarl_i6rhuf6

eBay does not allow eBay sellers to sell on eBay and then, once an item has been bought on eBay, turn around and place a retail order to have an item shipped directly to the eBay buyer.

Unfortunately, just because eBay does not allow that does not mean that some sellers do not try to get away with it anyway.

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.