Ebay is letting tons of scam products slip by

[sivaankg]

Lately fakes and products that don't match their descriptions are ubiquitous.

The "Report item" button has not been working for me, but they don't care much, because they make money off of these frauds.

As soon as buyers start to realize this, sales would slow down, starting with more expensive products.

[eburtonlab]

@sivaankg 

The "Report item" button has not been working for me

If you are using the Legacy version of the Edge browser, try updating to the latest version (80), or try using another browser instead to report items.

https://www.whatismybrowser.com/

[sivaankg]

It hasn't been working for me in Windows on Chrome and on Edge and on Android on Chrome. After clicking the "Report item" button, I have to reenter my password and get to the "File a report" page, on which the first dropdown, "Report Category" is empty. There are no options to select from, and so I can't go on to file a report. For instance if I try this with this item:

Or on Android with this random item:

HTML page code:

[eburtonlab]

@sivaankg 

The drop-down menus are working for me in the US in multiple browsers, and I am currently able to report items. But I have seen others that have had problems reporting items, either menu drop-downs not working or else a message about including an item number of a current item (which I have encountered using an older browser -- Edge Legacy -- or possibly for an item that was in the process of being removed).

[corvettestainless]

Except for a product you may have purchased and have in hand- how do you know they're fakes? 

[sivaankg]

underhood_dressup, you can also tell by user reviews if a product is not as described.

[corvettestainless]

If you are talking about 'feedback', if they get enough negs for 'fake' things, they will not survive here. You can also 'report' an item if you have some type of proof it is not real.

Click the item, scroll down, hit 'report this item'. Know that most of the time stating 'not real' will only be dealt with if there are enough 'others' reporting, as it could be a competing seller 'reporting' so they won't just go off 1 report. 

But.. I would not say 'tons'; probably less than 1/10th of 1% as all buyers are protected by the Money Back Guaranteed by ebay, so selling things to 'rip off' people really won't work. I would say there are way more on many of the 'local pick up' sites, wanting gift cards etc. 

[sivaankg]

Out of my 9 latest purchases, I have had to ask (and got) a refund for more than half of them. If only 0.1% of products were problematic, the probability of me having encountered 5/9 would be 0.000000000015, or 1 in 66 billion (to be fair, only 3 of them were fake/scam/not as described, the other 2 were defective). I must be the unluckiest person who ever lived. Or, there are lots of these items. I don't consider myself to be particularly gullible and yet I was scammed. My only fault was that I wasn't fully aware of the price these items were trending at, and therefore didn't realize these prices were too good to be true.

[eburtonlab]

@sivaankg 

If three of the last nine purchases you made turned out to be scam items, you need to vet your sellers better. Do not rely on eBay to do this for you.

If a listing is too good to be true -- such as a new item that is selling for a fraction of its retail cost -- that is certainly a warning sign. And if a relatively new seller is suddenly selling thousands of dollars worth of multiple quantity listings at fire sale prices with free shipping from overseas with extended handling times and very long shipping estimates, you should be very concerned, particularly if the items are expensive electronics, cameras, musical instruments, tools or outboard motors.

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.

Some scammers have gotten cleverer -- and now appear to be completing a few phony transactions using low or zero feedback accounts to provide positive feedback for their most recent scam items. If you know what to look for, this is easy to spot. Particularly if the seller has just sold a few dozen items in the last couple of days and has already received feedback. In some cases, scammers will provide incentives for buyers to provide feedback immediately to entice other buyers, so if you notice red flags, do not assume everything is legitimate because there are a few recent positive feedbacks -- look at the overall pattern of seller behavior, and how long they have actually been selling such items.

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 a scammer 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.

[sivaankg]

Thank you for the eye opening insights @eburtonlab. The seller I've had the most significant problem with, had 13,000 reviews, with 97.3 positive feedback. Indeed they may have not sold electronics for the most part. Of course, you can't expect all users to be able to do this kind of investigation.

But looking for these seller characteristics is great advice that I'll be sure to apply if I ever trust ebay enough to shop there again.

Note that ebay's algorithms display these problematic items at the top of the page. Ebay could have easily automatically filtered these results or at least placed more credible sellers at the top, but building trust does not seem to be a priority for them anymore. So if your sales go down, now you know that a possible reason is that you are too honest and scammers are stealing your buyers because ebay rewards them by promoting their items.

[picknparley]

"...If you are talking about 'feedback', if they get enough negs for 'fake' things, they will not survive here...."

Thanks for the laugh!  There are obvious scammers here that have several hundred negs for fake products and they're still listing. 

Certain sellers get punished for poor behavior, but it's not the same for all sellers. 

Over seas sellers have figured out how to pad their FB to show hundreds of FB,  but gee, their account was just opened yesterday? 

[corvettestainless]

I'm talking about buyers looking at feedback- if seller has 73% by their name, most buyers will simply stay away- hence- they won't last here. 

[springs_2013]

I agree!  It is not fair for people to report listings as fakes and price gouging unless they are 100% certain they are.   I had listings for items, that I have receipts for, been reported and taken down as prohibited items when they are not and for price gouging when they are not.

I bet if others report their items, how they would react.

[eburtonlab]

@sivaankg 

The seller I've had the most significant problem with, had 13,000 reviews, with 97.3 positive feedback. Indeed they may have not sold electronics for the most part.

That sounds more like a poor quality drop-shipper than a scammer, unless the negatives are all recent, in which case it could be a case of a hijacked account. But that is a terrible feedback percentage -- it means that more than one out of every forty transactions is so bad that it results in a negative.

Of course, you can't expect all users to be able to do this kind of investigation.

Anyone can look at the feedback numbers and draw a conclusion. I agree that many users do not do that, but they could. Scammers count on the fact that they don't.

Note that ebay's algorithms display these problematic items at the top of the page.

Scammers price their items to sell quickly before the scam listings are removed by eBay or too many buyer negatives pile up -- so if you are sorting your results by "what is hot right now" or "what prices are lowest" the scammers will always be at or near the top of the sort.

There is no "sort by credibility of the seller", so if you want to do that, you have to actually look at the feedback of the seller -- not just the number or the percentage, but the actual feedback comments, and decide for yourself what is credible. There are plenty of scammer accounts with 100% feedback right now; the negative feedback just hasn't caught up to them yet. By the time it does, they will have moved on to a new 100% feedback account, with the exact same listings.

Should eBay do more to prevent the scam listings from being posted, and quickly removing the ones that get through? Of course. I spend quite a bit of my time reporting scam listings -- the kind where there is no item, just a phony listing. It is very frustrating to come back the next day and see the same listings have drawn in yet another crop of victims. But eBay and the scammers are engaged in an arms race; a scammer can post hundreds of listings using different accounts, and when eBay pulls a bunch, the scammer can post hundreds more. When eBay gets better at intercepting a certain kind of scam listing, the scammer changes tactics to avoid easy detection.

Scammers are like opportunistic weeds. It is very easy to say that farmers should prevent weeds from leeching nutrients from their soil, but actually preventing weeds from sprouting requires a lot of work behind the scenes, and many of the obvious things that kill weeds also kill crops.

[nkmipgolf]

I've reported a scammer selling gaming chairs for $13.89 + free shipping 5 days ago and eBay has done nothing. 478 sold and still climbing.