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Too many scammers
It's getting exausting buying things from eBay, there are way too many scammers. eBay should implement a feature that when you sign up and want to sell something but do not have any sales or reviews yet 1) you don't get paid until your item is delivered 2) you have to deposit a % of the sale price into your account and if you scam the customer by not shipping the item or selling counterfeit items, not only does the customer get their money back but they also get the money you put up as well. I think this would dramatically cut down on fraud.
14 comments
kh-shakhib
·1 year agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
daitho_74
·1 year agoThat's an excellent suggestion! Implementing a payment hold for new sellers and requiring a deposit could significantly reduce scams and enhance buyer protection on eBay.
mudshark61369
·1 year ago@standarsh,
"eBay should implement a feature that when you sign up and want to sell something but do not have any sales or reviews yet 1) you don't get paid until your item is delivered".
As marnotom! pointed out, that system is already in place, but the info about the hold is buried in the getting started info, instead of being one of the first things new sellers are told. That is the number one reason why many new sellers do not ship items from their first sales. All they know is the payment status is marked as Pending on their account.
As for your 2nd suggestion, There are a lot of high volume sellers, mostly from China but some who are from the U.S. who source their items from Drop Shipping providers. They never see or use the products they have listed, and may not know that what they are selling is not as described or even counterfeit. That is especially true of the chinese sellers who are sent pre-filled out information and photos for creating their listings.
"I think fining sellers for scamming customers and awarding that money to the buyer would dramatically cut down if not eliminate scammers and also pay the customer for their wasted time".
The problem with that suggestion is, too many buyers these days do not take the TIME to read every thing on listing pages or to check seller's feedback profile pages. Maybe if ebay instituted eye contact programing to make sure buyers do those things, there would be fewer problems with the buyers who waste seller's time and money paying for returns. How would you feel about a fine, for buyers who want to return an item because they bought the wrong one, or because they missed something that was on the listing?
The unfortunate reality is that as internet shopping has grown in popularity so have the number of scams involved in online shopping. If more buyers did their due diligence when buying online products, the scammers would have a harder time getting over on people.
marnotom!
·1 year agoThat's pretty much how eBay's payment hold system works.
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/getting-paid/getting-paid-items-youve-sold/payments-hold?id=4816
When you file a case through eBay for a not-received item, the money returned to you is the money you paid the seller. It usually doesn't come from a magic pot eBay has for refunds.
eburtonlab
·1 year ago@standarsh
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.
standarsh
OP1 year agoThere are a lot of items where you will see most sellers have no history. There are a lot of listings that are obviously fake, but many not so much. I've bought many items from users with no history without an issue, I've also bought products from sellers with a lot of positive reviews and had many issues. I think fining sellers for scamming customers and awarding that money to the buyer would dramatically cut down if not eliminate scammers and also pay the customer for their wasted time.
eburtonlab
·1 year agoThere are a lot of items where you will see most sellers have no history.
You do not have to buy from those sellers, though.
You can instead choose to buy from sellers that have a proven track record of delivering what was advertised, and that have been around long enough to have a reputation worth protecting, instead of sellers that may have just registered using false credentials and that may soon disappear and reappear in another account.
I've also bought products from sellers with a lot of positive reviews and had many issues.
Looking back, were there any signs that those sellers had sold similar items before, and gotten positive feedback for those sales? Past feedback is one indication of how a seller has performed, but it does not mean that the seller can't make a mistake, or that the account can't be hijacked by someone else. And if you are buying from a seller that uses drop-shippers, there is always a chance that the seller will trust the wrong drop-shipper to deliver something.
I do notice that of the four negatives you have left that I can see, three were for private listings, while the vast majority of your positives left were not private listings, and one other negative and one neutral are for sellers that are no longer registered. So I cannot see the feedback history of any of those sellers that you have left less than positive feedback for.
standarsh
OP1 year agoBottom line, there is a concerning amount of people on eBay that are listing items with no intent to deliver, or are selling counterfeits, especailly in certain categories, it's just a mess in my opinion. Go search for AirPods for instance and you'll see most of the initial results are people with no previous transactions, many are clearly scammers. As a consumer I shouldn't have to worry about buying something off a website and having to figure out if I may get scammed. I know eBay protects your purchase and you get a refund, but it can take a month to get your money back and you waste a lot of time. I think there should be stronger measures to prevent people from doing this. I mentioned a few ideas, I'm sure they can think of even better ones. Etsy for instance doesn't pay new merchants for like a month after they make a sale until they establish some history. eBay needs to take more extreme measures with new sellers to not even make it possible that they could take an order and not ship an item, and I think the buyer should receive some kind of compensation from the seller in the case where they try to scam them. Some categories and fine because they are full of people with a lot of history, but some aren't. Just my opinion.
albertabrightalberta
·1 year agoUnless you buy directly from the manufacturer's website or a legitimate retailer's website, you risk getting scammed.
You seem to forget that Ebay, Amazon, Etsy, Mercari, Poshmark, Bonanza, Facebook Marketplace and a plethora of other sites are venues that allow sellers to list their wares. And on every one of these sites, there are honest sellers and there are dishonest ones.
Every site has some type of money back guarantee if there's a true problem with what buyers receive.
But buyers also have a responsibility to do their own due diligence, check sellers' histories, read description, look at all pictures, enlarging them to see detail, etc.
@standarsh
I'm not intending to victim blame, but it looks like you weren't as careful as you might have been in choosing sellers and items.
Then you hit the back button and don't buy from those sellers! You sound like you think you can recognize a scam or a scammer so it shouldn't be too difficult to skip that listing/seller and move on to the next.
But in the event that you do get something different from as advertised, you file a claim and get a refund. (And it rarely takes a month for the refund to be processed if you return the item in a timely fashion.
Ebay has the same policy when it comes to holds. Maybe you should read about it before jumping to conclusions about what you think ebay doesn't do to protect buyers.
Payment holds
marnotom!
·1 year agoI think that brings up all sorts of legal issues, though, as you're essentially asking eBay to act as judge and jury. Remember, a "scammer" really has to be convicted in a court of law in order to be legally labelled as such, otherwise they're just a suspect. Plus, there's the whole issue of trying to prove intention to defraud a buyer in the first place.
The best way for buyers to combat scammers if they've already purchased from them is to make use of eBay's Money Back Guarantee in order to recover their funds and to pay with a credit card so they have some recourse through their payment source should the MBG process fail. And, of course, there's always the IC3 which may not "solve" your particular case, but will likely get the seller on the FBI's radar if they aren't already.
standarsh
OP1 year agoI know my purchase is protected, but it's a huge waste of time going back and fourth with the seller trying to resolve it and then having to file a case with eBay or Paypal, it can take up to a month to get resolved. In the meantime you didn't get your product, and now have to waste even more time looking through listings to find another. I feel eBay can do better to make it prohibitive for sellers to bother trying to scam people.
trader_ricks
·1 year agoBuying & selling only to legit ebayers sounds great in practice, but in the 13 years I’ve doing eBay I’ve never seen this level of fraud. Examples:
1. Purchased an item. Seller says shipped. Tracking shows it arrived at my address but I never received it. USPS customer service sent me photo of label - went to another address. eBay sided with seller!
2. Sold item. Tracking said it arrived, seller says it never arrived. eBay sides with buyer.
3. sold a brand new item. Buyer sends it back broken. eBay sides with buyer.
sorry, I’m done with eBay. I can’t afford it!
eburtonlab
·1 year ago@trader_ricks
Purchased an item. Seller says shipped. Tracking shows it arrived at my address but I never received it. USPS customer service sent me photo of label - went to another address. eBay sided with seller!
If tracking shows delivery, but nothing arrives, contact the shipping service to determine if the tracking corresponds to a delivery to your address.
If you can obtain hard copy documentation that the tracking does not correspond to a delivery to your address, contact eBay via social media and explain that you have a case of "false tracking" and you should be given the opportunity to provide your documentation to eBay via direct message. This is different than the usual "item not received" case which is handled automatically and which allows the seller to win by providing tracking that shows delivery.
https://x.com/askebay
https://www.facebook.com/ebay
https://www.instagram.com/ebayforsellers/
You can avoid many issues entirely by choosing to only do business with experienced sellers that have a proven track record of delivering similar items as seen by examining the seller's feedback page, and by avoiding inexperienced sellers, sellers with patterns of negative feedback indicating serious problems, or sellers with large gaps in the selling history or recent drastic changes of seller behavior.
Sold item. Tracking said it arrived, [buyer] says it never arrived. eBay sides with buyer.
Did you provide the tracking when you responded to the case? If so you should have been protected if the item was shipped to the address provided with the payment.
sold a brand new item. Buyer sends it back broken. eBay sides with buyer.
If the item was damaged in shipping you may have had some recourse if you purchased shipping insurance.
albertabrightalberta
·1 year agoMy replies are in red above.