Account restricted and payout on hold.

[Anonymous]

I’ve been on eBay for about 5 years but just recently started selling off some stuff I had around the house as I was cleaning up. It was fine until I switched from T-Mobile to Verizon and was given free phones from Verizon to sign up. I had my 4 old phones tha myself and my kids were using so I listed them on eBay. They sold fast and I shipped them quickly. Items were received and all was good. However, my account was locked. Ebay wanted tracking info, my ID and receipts for the phones. Everything is fine except for receipts for the phones. Two of them we bought off Facebook marketplace and the other two I’ve had for years, no receipts. I wrote a letter to eBay but now I’ve not heard a thing. Will I ever see my money or is it just gone to the gods of eBay now?

[mtgraves7984]

It isn't that big of a deal and I assume a lot of people do that. I canceled the sales because I thought at the time that I was being scammed. There isn't an option to cancel because of a possible scam so I chose the next best thing. 

@Anonymous 

Actually, the "next best thing" would have been 'Out of stock/Item no longer available' (the truth), if you didn't intend to ship... and you only get a couple of those per year until eBay takes issue with it. But since that boat has sailed, I'd try to reach out to eBay beginning with a message on the eBay facebook page.

Good luck and good golly...

[Anonymous]

Here is exactly what happened. I listed the iphone 14. Someone would buy it and pay. I would then get a message in my email from ebay saying that another user messaged me about the sale of the item sold and if I wasn't sure then don't respond to them. I clicked into my ebay messages and it was to change the address and attached to the sale page of the item but from a different user. 

[pcmwire]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Again, details not needed now and the sarcasm is not asked for. I looked at phones on ebay and put the price that others were selling them for. If this is such a **bleep** problem maybe ebay should spend a little more time going after these people and not taking 580 dollars from an honest person.

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eBay will not hold the funds indefinitely but they can hold the funds according to their user policy for what you may feel is a long time. That could be 30 days, 60 days, 90 days or even more. They may hold the funds until all return/fraud claim/etc. windows have passed. Hard to say concretely how long that would be. But you agree to all of this including payment holds when you sell on their platform.

[Anonymous]

@mtgraves7984- how would “out of stock no longer available” be the best thing? It was available, they purchased ir but they were a scammer. They asked me to ship it to an address associated with scams. So it’s either a scam or an issue with the address. 

[mtgraves7984]

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@Anonymous wrote:

@mtgraves7984- how would “out of stock no longer available” be the best thing? It was available, they purchased ir but they were a scammer. They asked me to ship it to an address associated with scams. So it’s either a scam or an issue with the address. 

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@Anonymous 

Got it. And I apologize. At first, I thought the sales may be addressed to freight forwarders... sales that I've never had trouble with. My feeling was that it was not a 'Buyer's address' problem.

Not until your other posts did I realize that EVERY time "another user" was contacting you about the sale after the fact. So, yes... that IS a problem with the buyer's address. You did do the next right thing. 🙌

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[wastingtime101]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Here is exactly what happened. I listed the iphone 14. Someone would buy it and pay. I would then get a message in my email from ebay saying that another user messaged me about the sale of the item sold and if I wasn't sure then don't respond to them. I clicked into my ebay messages and it was to change the address and attached to the sale page of the item but from a different user. 

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You should have shipped to the account that bought it and ignored/reported the message from the different user.

It's common for scammers to go through recently sold electronic listings and message the seller, pretending to be the buyer, and asking for shipping to a different address. Sellers that fall for it ship the item to the scammer, and the original buyer is left without the item and filing a claim.

You were smart for recognizing the scam attempt, but it's unclear why you cancelled the orders on the original buyers since they were not part of the scam. Perhaps you did not realize the buyer ID and scammer ID were not affiliated.