Tend to agree with slippinjimmy on this one. While scams can happen just as easily with domestic buyers, and do, it becomes more complex with international sales and your options on any recourse are more limited. You didn't mention the country the buyer was/is in but I took a look at the shipping cost for a buyer located in Canada and get the following. Of course you only control the shipping method to the authentication center. How the authentication center gets it to the EIS hub or EIS gets it to the buyer on the international leg is under their control. Despite the shipping cost I would simply tell the buyer that you only ship internationally through the EIS program and you have no control over what the EIS center uses for a carrier.
For the domestic leg to the authentication center make sure you purchase enough additional insurance to cover the cost of the item. I just finished up my 3rd lost package claim with USPS in the last 6 months.
@caldreamer wrote:No way to tell in advance if customer is scamming you (many different types of scams going around). You should be aware that anyone (domestic or international) can "reverse credit card payment" AFTER they receive your item (keep both your money and your item). If you get scammer EBAY will NOT protect you. But EBAY does NOT protect you from getting scammed.
If you are shipping domestic, and include tracking that shows delivery, eBay will cover the seller on a chargeback claim. We have had two so far this month, both "doesn't recognize charge", and both chargeback notices included that wonderful phrase: "you're covered - you don't need to do anything". From past similar chargebacks, we'll get two more messages a few weeks after the first notification, telling us that the case has been closed. Doesn't matter if the buyer got their money back -- it didn't come from our account, so I'm OK with that.
I would assume, and I'm sure it's a pretty easy bet, that eBay now has that customer 'on their radar', if they haven't already NARU'd them. Never having needed to do a chargeback myself, I don't know if the bank tells the customer who returned the funds or if it just indicates they were returned. If they don't indicate that eBay coughed up the funds, the 'customer' may try it again... and eBay doesn't like it when customers try to pick their pockets (it's not good for the bottom line).
Internationally, go thru EIS and let eBay worry about everything after you deliver the purchase to their domestic processing center.
-Bob.
@dbfolks166mt wrote:Tend to agree with slippinjimmy on this one. While scams can happen just as easily with domestic buyers, and do, it becomes more complex with international sales and your options on any recourse are more limited.
If a seller agrees to change shipping to USPS, how much you wanna bet the next question will be "can you just put $X for the cost? It's a gift for a friend and I don't want them to know how much I really spent."
Which is, of course, illegal - both here in the US and in just about every other country. The buyer just wants to get away with not paying the import duties & taxes... the same import duties and taxes collected on goods coming into the US... which increases the price to the consumer because you can bet your sweet bippie that the retailer and/or importer are going to add it into their cost and therefor their price.
We put a statement into our templates at work, specifically for these cheating customers, and as recommended by eBay. Basically saying, politely, that we only ship internationally via EIS and we list the actual purchase price on any required forms, as required by law. So far, no complaints.
-Bob.
