Scammy Scam Scam

Sup fam.
So this morning a buyer messaged me about a hat listing I have. The exact verbiage of the message says "Why? Scam,!"

Less than 10 minutes after the message was sent, he purchases one from the listing. Unfortunately my shipping guy came in early this morning and already shipped it out. I already messaged the guy asking if there was something wrong that I can help with and that the package already went out.

I checked and this guy has a 350+ feedback score with 345 feedbacks left. His feedback comments are way more coherent than his message to me. All his feedback comments are similar to this screen shot and he has left zero neutrals or negatives.

My listing he purchased from is an old product that I keep restocking, a listing that has been up since late 2022 and has made almost 400 units sold, received almost 150 positive feedbacks for and no neuts or negs. I sure hope this guy replies to me.

iamalwaysright

5 View listings

Posted 5 months ago · Edited 5 months ago·Last reply 5 months ago

7 comments

iamalwaysright

OP5 months ago

5 View listings

So he replied to me just now with a simple 👍🏻 thumbs up.

I guess I’ll never know what just happened there.

soh.maryl

·5 months ago

110 View listings

Proceed cautiously. That simple thumbs up doesn't guarantee that some kind of case won't be opened.

a_c_green

·5 months ago

4168 View listings

@iamalwaysright wrote:
My listing he purchased from is an old product that I keep restocking,

Only thing I can think of is that before a quantity listing hits zero, the last one available gets a bright red notice next to the Quantity window: "Last one - [Total Number Here] sold" -- adding a nice little bit of urgency for an uncertain buyer to pull the trigger before someone else comes along. It might be that he gets miffed when he feels he's been rushed into grabbing the last one, only to see a bunch more magically appear as soon as you hit the Restock button.

I don't know if that's definitely true in this case; I don't know how quickly you restock things, plus of course he found one to buy after he sent his message. (I'm also assuming here that you're reading the timezone correctly for when the message came in, and it definitely was written before the purchase instead of after it.)

I generally only list 2 units available at most, even if I have a boatload in the basement. If 10+ are showing as available, there's no urgency to make a buy. When 2 are available, someone will soon buy one, and then the next one gets red-flagged, and very often will sell within a day. Whenever I have a Quantity listing hit zero, I let a few days go by before Restocking, so that buyers will know that their purchases are actually on the way.

iamalwaysright

OP5 months ago

5 View listings

@a_c_green wrote:
@iamalwaysright wrote:
My listing he purchased from is an old product that I keep restocking,
Only thing I can think of is that before a quantity listing hits zero, the last one available gets a bright red notice next to the Quantity window: "Last one - [Total Number Here] sold" -- adding a nice little bit of urgency for an uncertain buyer to pull the trigger before someone else comes along. It might be that he gets miffed when he feels he's been rushed into grabbing the last one, only to see a bunch more magically appear as soon as you hit the Restock button.
Hm, I checked and there's still 10+ units for the variation he purchased. I don't restock the quantity shown in the listing very often, maybe once every 2 weeks.

I don't know if that's definitely true in this case; I don't know how quickly you restock things, plus of course he found one to buy after he sent his message. (I'm also assuming here that you're reading the timezone correctly for when the message came in, and it definitely was written before the purchase instead of after it.)
I totally overlooked this and had to check timezones. Thanks for the tip. Originally I saw the time on the ebay messages timestamp and the purchase history page of the listing timestamp. I just assumed ebay would have a consistent timezone adjustment on these pages. I double check that I see that the email notifications sent to my email inbox matches these timestamps exactly. So I'm going to say with quite a bit of certainty that the buyer purchased after he messaged me.

I generally only list 2 units available at most, even if I have a boatload in the basement. If 10+ are showing as available, there's no urgency to make a buy. When 2 are available, someone will soon buy one, and then the next one gets red-flagged, and very often will sell within a day. Whenever I have a Quantity listing hit zero, I let a few days go by before Restocking, so that buyers will know that their purchases are actually on the way.
Wow that sounds like a lot of work and monitoring. Do you do this manually or do you have a software that takes care of this for you? Is it worth the effort to chase the buyers who buckle and give in under that sense of urgency? I just get lazy and set it and forget it. So many of my listings have super high quantity counts.

a_c_green

·5 months ago

4168 View listings

Whoops, sorry for the delayed reply; I missed your post earlier...

@iamalwaysright wrote:
I totally overlooked this and had to check timezones. Thanks for the tip. Originally I saw the time on the ebay messages timestamp and the purchase history page of the listing timestamp. I just assumed ebay would have a consistent timezone adjustment on these pages.

Unfortunately no, some pages use Pacific time and some use your local time zone (as stated by your machine), and not all clearly indicate which time zone is shown. I think that generally, listing pages themselves use your local time zone but summary pages do not. Different pages were coded at different times by different developers, and not all of them were working off the same set of specifications (or reading them 😁).

@iamalwaysright wrote:
@a_c_green wrote:
I generally only list 2 units available at most, even if I have a boatload in the basement. If 10+ are showing as available, there's no urgency to make a buy. When 2 are available, someone will soon buy one, and then the next one gets red-flagged, and very often will sell within a day. Whenever I have a Quantity listing hit zero, I let a few days go by before Restocking, so that buyers will know that their purchases are actually on the way.
Wow that sounds like a lot of work and monitoring. Do you do this manually or do you have a software that takes care of this for you?

Oh, heck, no; no trouble at all. Every now and then (i.e. every few days, maybe), I might go to my Sold Items page and do a quick browser search (in Google Chrome it's Ctrl+F) for any occurrences of the phrase "0 available" on the page. That lets me jump from one to the next and decide which ones can be restocked and which I might leave alone for a while.

My Active listings page is also flagging the Out of Stock items with obvious red highlighting and a Restock action button, so I can scroll down that as well. I'm a little paranoid about doublechecking availability in my stock before banging the Restock button, but otherwise it's quick and easy.

@iamalwaysright wrote:
Is it worth the effort to chase the buyers who buckle and give in under that sense of urgency?

I'm... not sure what you're asking me here. I'm not chasing anyone. The sense of urgency conveyed by eBay's addition of the Last One flagging is their creation; I didn't add it. I can say, though, that when any Quantity listing of mine gets down to 1 remaining and there are watchers, someone very often pulls the trigger to buy that last one within about a day of when the previous one sold. That percentage is high enough to make it worthwhile enough to keep a low availability count showing, rather than to suggest that I have a pile of them and am desperate to get rid of them all. 😉

soh.maryl

·5 months ago

110 View listings

As you are aware, there is no eBay requirement that he reply to your message.

He paid and apparently it's been shipped.

About all you can do at this point is just let it play out.

Presuming that you sell on a different ID?

dirk12955

·5 months ago

13197 View listings

Me? He bought and it's been shipped?

I wouldn't open a dialog with him. I'd let it play out.