Buyer from Russian Federation keeps buying items using different accounts

[ironbreed]

Over the last 2 days, a buyer from Russia makes single purchases every 20 mins or so using new and different user named accounts.  I know it's the same person because they are using 2 different Oregon shipping addresses.  They have now purchased 19 individual (same) items in different colors using different accounts.  I have been cancelling and blocking each name after they purchase but they just continue to make a new account and make single purchases of the same item.  

I went into my listing and changed all of the prices to crazy amounts to get them to stop.  I don't know if they plan to move on to one of my other listings and continue or not.

I don't know what their intention is of doing this when I keep cancelling every purchase they make to try and deter them from doing this.  It makes no sense

Has anyone else had this same problem before?

[px_455]

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@ironbreed wrote:

You must be out of touch.  I did what eBay told me to do.   They agreed that this was suspicious activity and said to cancel and block these transactions.  Why the rudeness?

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Because as a buyer I've had nervous nellies cancel my purchase for "reasons."

It is incredibly frustrating, I can't even leave feedback!

I am sure that makes you feel all good inside thou.

Think how it makes legitimate buyers feel.

You can't prevent a scam this way.

[ironbreed]

I'm not a nervous nellie.  I never cancel transactions unless buyers ask me to.  This is something that has never happened to me before and I've been selling on here for over 20 years.

The eBay fraud dept. says that they have been dealing with these Russian trolls that are making low dollar purchases to try and see if they work, so they can use these accounts to make large purchases in the future to defraud sellers down the road.  They can't really control all of this activity with the use of hacking and VPNs. 

So,  BEWARE and keep your street smarts.  If you see unusual buying activity, then you might want to cancel and block them to protect yourself from being part of this.  Especially when they don't respond to your emails and keep making purchases with different accounts every 15-20 mins.

[ironbreed]

By the way, not even 2 mins ago they have moved on to another one of my listings and have started buying again

[beautifulbeauty2012]

I can only think that that buyer wants to build his feedback score and assumes each cheap purchase will get him one. That is the same strategy Chinese (and not only) users do when they want to sell on the platform. ebay became very popular in Russia lately, so many people want to sell on the platform. Shipping forwarders are also very popular among Russians.

As far as scam...I`ve had one really bad buyer from Russia (directly) many years ago, and even worse one from Ukraine (that was EPIC). I proactively excluded many countries (for dishonesty or postal issues), but don`t mind shipping to Russia and shipped quite a few packages without any issues.

[ironbreed]

The eBay fraud dept. says that they have been dealing with these Russian trolls that are making low dollar purchases to try and see if they work, so they can use these accounts to make large purchases in the future to defraud sellers down the road.  They can't really control all of this activity with the use of hacking and VPNs. 

So,  BEWARE and keep your street smarts.  If you see unusual buying activity, then you might want to cancel and block them to protect yourself from being part of this.  Especially when they don't respond to your emails and keep making purchases with different accounts every 15-20 mins.

[femmefan1946]

Purchasing 19 decals individually, when I give discounts when buying multiple quantities, makes no sense.

Just as you find the customers' names hard to pronounce, they may find reading English a slow process.

And may not have understood that they can combine purchases and get a shipping discount.

Even though your decals are not "worth" tracking, twenty of them would have a value of $40 or so. Pack them all together with tracking and pay less shipping to USPS than you would for 20 separate letterpost envelopes.

Also, when you ship to a freight forwarder, the buyer gives up most of his protections under the Money Back Guarantee.

And eBay (@tyler) has confirmed that with a Not As Described dispute, you can demand the return and should eBay decide you must send return shipping, the label goes only to the forwarder.

The buyer must get the purchase to the forwarder on his own dime, and arrange for the forwarder to complete the return.

[beautifulbeauty2012]

Wow, good to know.

[beautifulbeauty2012]

I have to agree with you. I also thought that it could be not knowing about combined shipping, etc.

[todorokitech]

"Just as you find the customers' names hard to pronounce, they may find reading English a slow process.

And may not have understood that they can combine purchases and get a shipping discount."

Even if the buyer were unaware of the shipping discount, and even if the buyer didn't know how to, or was unable to, just order qty 19 at once, that wouldn't explain why each individual decal was ordered through a different eBay account. That's obviously deliberate behavior, not an accident or misunderstanding.

How are you supposed to "pack them all together with tracking and pay less shipping" when each order is from a different account? ironbreed has stated that the buyers aren't responding to messages, and without some form of communication verifying that all of the orders are for the same person, and that the person is fine with them all being shipped together, ironbreed would be making an assumption and going outside of normal shipping protocol without input from the buyer.

[pjcdn2005]

I agree that it does seem odd the way this is happening.  But just throwing another explanation out there….

When a person buys with a guest account I think they may only be able to buy one item at a time and each time they make a purchase, a new ID gets assigned to them.   Also, I’m not positive on this but I don’t think that a guest buyer can send or receive messages.

[walnutcreekhome]

Spot on, Todorokitech! Ironbreed did exactly the right thing by canceling and blocking. A problem with the shipping address works perfectly as the cancellation reason - you can't ship 19 individual items in 19 separate transactions to 19 different users with two names to two addresses without knowing something is seriously wrong. You have to protect your account, no matter what.

Ironbreed, are you tracking any of these user names? If it were me, I might watch them for a while to see if they started targeting someone else, then notify that seller of my suspicions. A lot of sellers automate feedback so it's left upon payment. Then again, they might open new accounts for each seller just like they're doing for every transaction.

A friend of mine lost his eBay business because of a sale to Russia so I wouldn't take any chances, either. It was a seriously expensive laptop and he was hit with an INR. After the INR was refunded, tracking showed the laptop had actually been delivered. I believe it was delivered before the tracking fully updated on eBay U.S., and the buyer took full advantage. My friend lost the laptop and thousands of dollars, overdrawing his PayPal account, and had to shut down. He was a brand new seller and just wasn't in a position to eat that big of a loss. Shortly thereafter, I was invited into GSP's beta program and to this day I won't ship internationally without it. GSP isn't for everyone, especially for decals and other small, inexpensive items, but it works for me and I will not risk the same kind of international fraud I've seen too many times in the past 15+ years.

Obviously, GSP wouldn't have helped in Ironbreed's case since the items were shipping to Oregon. But every time I hear a Russian buyer is involved in something questionable, I take it seriously.

[femmefan1946]

Two accounts apparently.

The multiple accounts started happening when the OP was cancelling sales for no reason. Or as pjcdn says, guest accounts because the buyer(s) do not understand the system.

[postingid7659]

Boy there's a lot of folks here who are going to get the pleasure of a chargeback from their Russian buyers one of these days.  Is it okay if I point and laugh when that happens?

[beautifulbeauty2012]

Bottom line: every seller has to listen to its own guts and protect himself/herself from possible scam. New scams are created every day, and there are no safe/honest countries anymore. 

[cellguy215]

Obviously they are trying to make up accounts for some nefarious reason.

There are legit buyers who use these services. You can check their "feedback left for others" and see their buying history, many are very nice. But some are real monsters.