Advice on Phone sold last night

[19kings81]

We sold a phone last night the  buyer paid quickly. The problem is the buyer has zero feedback and opened their EBAY account yesterday(Oct 15th). I feel like I am being set up any advice or anything I can do before I ship the phone to prtoect myself from any potential fraud ???

[a_c_green]

I'm not seeing any recent sale by you on this account...? You definitely want to use an account with a high feedback number such as what you're showing here to persuade scammers to look for a newbie seller elsewhere.

All that aside, the new buying account alone is not a scam flag. I would say the majority of buyers, myself included, made their first purchase on their first day, since there's no particular reason why you'd set up an account just for browsing; you don't need to.

Log into PayPal yourself (i.e. not just your eBay Sold Items page, but your PayPal detailed account of the transaction) to verify that the payment is cleared, not just pending (e.g. an e-Check), with "OK to ship" stated. Ship only to the address received with the PayPal payment, nowhere else, and remember that you must add Signature Confirmation if the sale is more than $750. Get back to us here with more details if anything seems to be going weird.

[odditiesandantiquities1]

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@19kings81 wrote:

We sold a phone last night the  buyer paid quickly. The problem is the buyer has zero feedback and opened their EBAY account yesterday(Oct 15th). I feel like I am being set up any advice or anything I can do before I ship the phone to prtoect myself from any potential fraud ???

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Along with what Mr. C. has advised, personally, I would make sure that I had insurance on the item. 

Double check the address in PayPal against the eBay address.  Is this an international sale?

[jonathankirkland]

The biggest thing is to make sure the payment has cleared. A lot of international buyers are using e-checks that take forever to clear and they hope the seller will ship the item while the payment is still pending, and sometimes will even message the seller and encourage them to hurry up and ship it out hoping that the seller will be ignorant about the payment process.

I always use signature confirmation on any lot I send over $100 now (though most are $150-200+). With USPS it's only like $2, and even with FedEx it's only $4 and that is money well spent in my opinion, even more so if it's a $300+ phone.

[phcd1]

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@19kings81 wrote:

We sold a phone last night the  buyer paid quickly. The problem is the buyer has zero feedback and opened their EBAY account yesterday(Oct 15th). I feel like I am being set up any advice or anything I can do before I ship the phone to prtoect myself from any potential fraud ???

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No.

Cell phones (which I assume this is) is one of the highest scammed items on eBay. I have sold many of them and almost every one turned out to be a pain (and I have experience). Good Luck

BTW, I recommend you write down the model, serial and IMEI number so you can report it stolen easily.

[19kings81]

The payment looks like it has cleared ??? How do you know if they did send a e-check or will it say E-check do not ship ? The thing that worries me about this transaction is she said please ship fast as possible...Which is a red flag for me

[a_c_green]

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@19kings81 wrote:
The payment looks like it has cleared ??? How do you know if they did send a e-check or will it say E-check do not ship ? 

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An e-Check will initially show that payment has not yet cleared and that you should not ship. When it does clear, you will see an "OK to ship" for that transaction.

Again, just to be clear: to determine this, you must log into your PayPal account and view the transaction details there. Do not rely on eBay's status page for Sold items. There is an apparent issue these days where a pending payment (e.g. e-Check) in PayPal is actually showing as Paid/Ship Now in eBay. That is not correct, so you want to verify it in your PayPal account just to be sure. (If you're not sure, tell us what you are reading in PayPal for that payment.)

@19kings81 wrote:
The thing that worries me about this transaction is she said please ship fast as possible...Which is a red flag for me

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Yes, scammers can give themselves away like that, as they want to get the item into the mail before the transaction gets rolled back (such as due to a hacked buyer account or stolen credit card).

If you do get stung with an Unuathorized Transaction rollback later on, you need only prove that you shipped to the address provided with the payment; you do not need to prove its delivery. For other disputes (e.g. Item Not Received), you do need to prove delivery.

If they do pay with a stolen credit card, you will get the OK to ship notation, since of course payment has been made and no one knows the card is stolen (yet). However, in a case like that, if or when a chargeback occurs, you should be okay since your transaction and tracking records will show that the item was shipped in good faith to the indicated address. Good luck; keep us posted.

[d-k_treasures]

Again, just to be clear: to determine this, you must log into your PayPal account and view the transaction details there. Do not rely on eBay's status page for Sold items. There is an apparent issue these days where a pending payment (e.g. e-Check) in PayPal is actually showing as Paid/Ship Now in eBay. That is not correct, so you want to verify it in your PayPal account just to be sure. (If you're not sure, tell us what you are reading in PayPal for that payment.)

And do NOT ever click on any links - log directly in.