Legality and technical feasibility of sharing blocked buyers list
Just reeling from another lost $500 from a scam. Thinking about how to avoid future losses, the sort of impossible situation eBay is in trying to tell who is scamming who. It occurred to me that I have a network of a few sellers I trust, each with their own blocked buyer list. What is to prevent us from sharing those lists to cut down the losses, does it violates eBays policies? Is it technically feasible to modify the BBL with the eBay API? Are there other legal entities that might have an issue?
Anybody have thoughts on this?
27 comments
sextons-sweet-deals
·2 years agoElectronics is one of the top 5 targets for scammers!
You have to do your homework on your buyer before shipping. Maybe beat to just sell as pick-up only / pay then.
I could be wrong on this, but I think the charity donation is non-refundable to you.
bennotbill
·2 years agoI can understand sharing blocked lists with friends and family.
But even then it seems pointless unless they are selling similar items, attracting similar buyers.
slyders_finds
·2 years agoYears ago I found a EBay buyer blacklist. It was very basic like an early 90s website. It just had their ID name and a basic problem listed like "chronic returns" or "OCD picky". I guess you could start an IG page, but probably wouldn't be seen by many.
mam98031
·2 years agoThere were tons of problems with sites like that. It was easily abused. Some would add members to that list just because they didn't like them or wanted to curb them for many reason, many were not anywhere near honest. And no one was monitoring it for truthfulness so anyone could post whatever they wanted.
dbfolks166mt
·2 years agoThere were tons of problems with sites like that. It was easily abused. Some would add members to that list just because they didn't like them or wanted to curb them for many reason, many were not anywhere near honest. And no one was monitoring it for truthfulness so anyone could post whatever they wanted.
Not unlike the buyer feedback in some cases.
dbfolks166mt
·2 years agoYears ago I found a EBay buyer blacklist. It was very basic like an early 90s website. It just had their ID name and a basic problem listed like "chronic returns" or "OCD picky". I guess you could start an IG page, but probably wouldn't be seen by many.
There are several sites still out there and active.
mam98031
·2 years agoDo you find that you often have buyers in common with your friends? With 132 million active buyers, it is rather unusual for this to happen. You can only have 5,000 on your BBL. If you collected names from other sellers, you may fill that up quickly with IDs that likely would have never purchased from you. Then what will you do?
fashunu4eeuh
·2 years agoTrying to stave off scammers by attempting to identify them would be very difficult if not impossible. Sharing lists would get names, but no guarantee of safety from doing so. It is simple enough to open a new account to get around a block list.
In the 15 years of selling here, i have never been defrauded by a buyer. To minimize my risk, i avoid listing anything in high fraud categories: electronics, tech such as pc’s, tablets, smartphones, gaming items, luxury designer things like handbags and sneakers. In addition, high-value items being sold by newer buyers can be targets of scammers.
To avoid bogus Money Back Guarantee cases, i offer 30-day free returns, but my overall return history is very minimal, about one return per every 2-year time frame. I also spend extra time describing my goods in Item Specifics and Descriptions so there are no surprises for buyers.
But the most important thing i do to minimize fraud is to spend time learning eBay policies and procedures. Sellers need to be as well-versed in policy as scammers are. Knowing how eBay works will help prevent mistakes that can play into scammer hands.
Good luck to you moving forward.
PS—By the way—you stated the buyer purchased 5 units and then only want refunds for 3? Was the order a set or bundled? In eBay policy, buyer must return the entire order of bundled goods to be eligible for a return. See link below:
â€How to return multiple items
How you request the return depends on how you bought them.
https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/returns-refunds/returning-item?id=4041
dbfolks166mt
·2 years agoThere are already a couple of independent sites out there. I posted a link to them in response to one post and got a slap on the wrist, was suspended from the forum for several days and my post was removed. The sites are not too hard to find using Google search. As to the accuracy of those sites it is pretty much a he said she said situation.
Those sites are 100% independent of eBay and there is no private information only account names and the issues.
robbie31415
·2 years agoEbay obfuscates usernames, and in most cases are only clear to the actual seller.
Referring to them as only usernames doesn't seem completely appropriate.
Nor does sharing them with others who aren't intended to have them.
dbfolks166mt
·2 years agoEbay obfuscates usernames, and in most cases are only clear to the actual seller. Exactly
Referring to them as only usernames doesn't seem completely appropriate.
Nor does sharing them with others who aren't intended to have them.
There is little entitlement on the internet with regards to personal information. ID's certainly are not protected or I would not get the amount of junk email and telemarketing calls that I receive despite being on the national do not all registry. The entries in/on the sites are done by individual sellers along with information regarding the issue.
What is posted on those sites is about as appropriate as some of the buyer feedback and the sellers inability to post negative feedback. Sellers have no other means to try to reduce their risk.
robbie31415
·2 years agoThe legality of it would be based on eBay's privacy policy. Sharing such information could be a breach of such policy, which is a legal binding contract. Governments have cracked down on companies that have abused their privacy policies where customers information has been given to others without permission.
A lawyer would be required to comb over the legal verbiage to determine the legality of such actions.
isaiah53-57
·2 years agoSorry to hear of the crime against you...
I think a lot of scammers have many accounts and can create accounts at will - No vetting, no credit card numbers or payment accounts to get started that can be used for reference - My guess is ease of sign-up is designed to keep active user numbers up and potential buyers rolling in regardless of quality and viability. That makes it hard to keep track of them, so it would be easy for many scammers to get by sellers sharing blocked buyers lists. But anything you can do to protect yourself may help.
We dont list here anymore due to buyer fraud and theft - Our last criminal case of theft was from a buyer who had a years worth of false positive feedback for the same scam they pulled on us - We talked to many sellers about filing reports against them in the hopes of getting the thief(s) booted off the site - We were shocked to find that a large number of sellers over the previous 90 days had already reported them and who knows how many had before that, yet the thief(s) continued to steal with impunity. Many months more down the road and they were still there scamming - they may still be even now - Already disgusted with the site for many reasons over many years, our thoughts about the site soured dramatically at that point leading us to decide it was untenable to continue doing business with them under their current TOS.
sagemontco
OP2 years agoIsaiah53-57 where did you end up selling besides eBay? For the amount we lose to fraud we are close some months to being able to have a lease for a storefront. I really don’t want to do that for many reasons.
isaiah53-57
·2 years ago@sagemontco
Well I took a Part Time Supervisors job at UPS to initially take up the slack which I should have done a long time before - Even when we were selling full time on ebay - The health insurance and savings/retirement programs are incredible.
We mainly deal with collectibles, art, toys, comics, shoes - We decided to quit selling online due to fees and the labor intensive time it takes to list, manage, sell and ship items - We can keep more money in our pocket with A WHOLE LOT LESS effort and risk - We use FB, local venues, fairs, shows, events etc and we have grown a large client base from past sales - We go to 2 Christmas fairs in our area each year and sell out a huge amount of new toy inventory and have brought more each year for the last 4 years - We have been one of, if not the main draw at the two shows for several years...
We keep aside our most valuable items as investments, awaiting a time when it proves to be worth selling online again at some point in the future - It will likely continue to get worse until the situation demands change - Won't get there until the masses quit "adapting to"(as they like to call it here) the exploitations and unfair policies that continue to be dictated with worsening conditions.. If that never happens we'll likely take them to higher end auction houses and be guaranteed no losses due to theft and fraud.
ten_o_nine
·2 years agoScammers are born every day, so it's impossible to create a list of senior scammers and newborns.
stainlessenginecovers
·2 years agoa.) you only get 5000- so would easily be too many
b.) my list, for example- is for a different category than what another person might be selling or doing and therefore, may be for a different reason (shoppers that 'argue about fitment' 'refund' 'neut/neg feedback' 'attempted ChargeBack' 'send lowball UNSOLICITED offers' (I don't have BO) etc. )
sagemontco
OP2 years agoI'd want to include obvious, illegal type fraud for the category I am in, some of the stuff that has happened to our org is 100% criminal activity. eBays policies and TOS protects these criminals, I don't think eBay does it on purpose by they are making alot of the blind, ineffective, tone deaf type policies and decisions that corporations make.
The 5000 limit is real, I was thinking of a browser addon that would scan an orders page for usernames and add some type of icon next to the user name that the user could roll over to click on and see a list of complaints, fraud $ amounts etc.
fbusoni
·2 years agoAnybody have thoughts on this?
Can you share what happened? Maybe some here can offer advice so it won't happen anew.
BBLs would fill up far too quickly with the IDs of people who may or may not be purchasing in the same categories in which I sell. (As @a_c_green notes.)
What WOULD be interesting to see is if there were any IDs that were common to multiple BBLs.
Although perhaps eBay has already thought of that and has those individuals on a special watchlist.
(Yes, hope springs eternal, as they say.)
sagemontco
OP2 years agoSeller requested a return for 3 then only returned one from a lot of 5 laptops.
I am thinking of a list specific to sellers of used laptops. I know that is still an enormous number of scammers. WRT it ever happening again. We are focusing on improving the quality of our posts, we are increasing the prices a little bit and will likely not be selling in bulk again if we can help it, specifically we won't be accepting bulk offers and we will be breaking our bulk lots down a little more based on battery health, specific cosmetic categories etc.
luckythewinner
·2 years agoI do not think it is illegal to share usernames of buyers who have scammed you.
But I suspect it would be against eBay policy to share the personal information about those buyers, like names and addresses.
If you sell in a niche where you and these other sellers you trust are likely to run into the same buyers, I can see that this might help bit. Otherwise, it might not be worth the effort.
But it would not be inconceivable that one of these 'trusted' sellers might take advantage of the rest of you by falsely reporting his best customers as 'scammers' in order to get an advantage over you.
sagemontco
OP2 years agoWe are a workshop for survivors of human trafficking, I am a volunteer of three years, I have never made a dollar on ebay for myself. There are many other "Mission driven" organizations around that get scammed in a similar way everyday. I think there should also be a way to build trust with other sellers, from an invitation only type model, or a paid model, or something.
kensgiftshop
·2 years agoAs a seller, I found the best way to cut down on losses is not to list items that attract scammers.
sagemontco
OP2 years agoChanging what we sell is an interesting idea. We are a career readiness program so computers are ideal because the value of something is easy to evaluate, it doesn't rely on decades of history with something. It's also easier, as a non-profit, to find laptops in bulk, rather than doing alot of driving around thrift stores etc.
vintage-camerastuff
·2 years agoI don't see any sale on this site where you sold anything near $500. However if you purchased something for $500 you can always return for refund.
sagemontco
OP2 years agoWe sold 5 7400s a month or so ago and the customer claimed that they were bios locked, submitted a return for 3 units and only actually shipped one back. I messaged them, hoping they would respond and be reasonable or at very least incriminate themselves, nothing. So I will have to report them in a couple hours, sure, based on other sellers experience on this site, that I will lose the price of the two laptops that weren't actually returned. The computer I got back for the record was locked to the domain of the previous SSDs owner, we bought the SSDs on ebay, switching the SSD out fixed it, this was a new problem for me.
a_c_green
·2 years agoSorry to hear that. What happened?
Well, no, but: Ocean, meet Teaspoon. There are far too many potential scammers out there for one collective BBL to make a difference, unless your collective consists of all the sellers within a narrowly-defined niche market, perhaps.