Buyer returned empty box

[retro_hunters]

Sold an expensive item. Once buyer received it claimed pieces that were pictured in my listing were missing. I offered to pay for the replacement pieces to be sent to him and he refused. He said if I refund $85 he would keep it. (Missing pieces were $10.) I told him to return it. 

I got it back yesterday and as soon as I saw the return box which was 1/3rd of the size of the actual item itself and picked it up I could tell it was empty. I called for my husband to come record me bringing it inside and opening it. Sure enough, empty.

I immediately called eBay and the representative I talked to was very kind and said he was going to close the case in my favor and all I had to do was send the pictures of proof of the empty box to the buyer which I did. 

Case closed, no refund to buyer.

25 minutes ago I received a message that the buyer reopened the case and was automatically refunded the full amount from my funds.

I tried filing a appeal and it says the case is final, no appeal. 

So how exactly does one start a police report for mail fraud?

[stuff4divas]

@retro_hunters  the only thing i will add to @mam98031  awesome post:

when u contact the buyer,  say something like "I think you got me confused with a different seller. You sent me an empty box ...  "

u should give them an out to avoid a complete denial and defensive action

it's a long shot, but worth a try IMO

if that doesn't work, go ahead with the letting them know the actions u r taking

[stuff4divas]

@retro_hunters   forgot to add, when picking up a package that seems suspicious, have the postal worker open it in front of u or u open it in front of them. This is what I have done a few times and I have the postal worker immediately document it for me.

accepting it and then later video taping it does not prove u rec'd that same box from USPS upon pick up, it could have been any random box (not implying this is what u did)

[rugerskick]

Also when you talk to ebay again, make sure to get the evidence from usps about the package weights not being the same/approx the same.  You mailed out a package at a certain weight.  Empty boxes will not weigh what you sent them and usps weighed the package he sent back to you, and they have that informstion from scanning and weighing the return box.  The weight measurements will be grossly mismatched, and since usps did the weighing, that is unbiased factual evidence that proves buyer could not have sent the orginal item you sent, back to you.  Include this info when you talk to ebay again.  Also usps takes photos of the package and ask them to confirm there was no evidence of return package being opened or broken into, so any false claim scam buyer would make about "it must have been stolen during shipping" will be disproved.  They take photos at initial scan and at a destination hub, so they will have start and end type photos, if nothing changed, no one broke into the package.

[duffy4444]

   I'm very sorry that this has happened to the OP.

   For the benefit of the thousands of other sellers, especially the newer ones to this forum, here we go again...

   NEVER, EVER  sell, and especially ship, any higher value item anywhere online, that you and your business model are not prepared to lose, along with your payment for it, on a stupid eBay refund that is way out of line with common sense. Sell it locally for CASH only via the local options that are available in nearly every community in the country.

    Many other seasoned sellers here follow this selling limit because eBay still does next to nothing to protect them against the behavior of scamming buyers who are essentially in control of eBay's broken INAD/returns/refund system... along with the dreaded CC chargeback as the ultimate nearly 100% successful scam.

    Stop listing such higher-value items until eBay puts the necessary teeth back into what they refer to as "Seller Protections".

   Sellers do not join eBay to have to fie police reports, USPS fraud complaints, ic3 reports, or go to court for such slam-dunk cases based on common sense.

Cheers, Duffy 

[adkhighker]

I haven't had to deal with a return in ages, knock on wood, so I have some questions that relate to the issue the OP is having.

Question 1:  When a buyer gets a return label for the package they are returning, does ebay send them the return label after the seller okay's the return, or does the seller have to send them the return label?

Question 2:  Once the buyer gets the return label to print off and stick on their return package, is there a weight already printed on the label of how much the package is supposed to weigh, or is the weight part of the label just blank, such as the type of label that simply covers the cost (taken out of the sellers pocket) no matter the weight?

Question 3:  If the OP had taken a photo of the unopened returned package with the label on it with a ruler across the top of the box, wouldn't that have helped them prove that there was no way their item could have fit into that box, since the OP said the box was 1/3 the size of the item?

[gurlcat]

I don't see the point in giving the OP a devastating answer that also suggests they lack common sense, I mean way to put salt in a wound.  And is "selling high-dollar items is unsafe here" really common sense?  Why would it be common, when appearances indicate luxury goods commonly promoted and sold here, and having language like Seller Protection?  Why would a new seller not assume it's safe and that eBay will protect them against fraud?  

[adkhighker]

"NEVER, EVER  sell, and especially ship, any higher value item anywhere online, that you and your business model are not prepared to lose, along with your payment for it, on a stupid eBay refund that is way out of line with common sense. Sell it locally for CASH only via the local options that are available in nearly every community in the country."

Maybe I've just been lucky, or maybe it's because I don't sell in the electronics categories, but for every item I've sold on eBay over the years of higher value without any problems, some in excess of a thousand dollars, I've never had a problem yet, knock on wood.  Had I sold any of those items "locally for cash" as you suggest, I would have been lucky to get maybe a third of the amount of money that I got on eBay.

The only advice that I would give to someone who is apprehensive about selling an expensive item on eBay today, would be to consider doing a fixed price listing with the Make Offer option.  Price it higher than you think it's worth so buyers will make an offer rather than paying the full BIN price.  That way you can at least check out the feedback of the person who's making the offer before selling it to them.  The 100% positive means nothing, but you can tell a lot by the type of feedback they leave for their sellers and by the number of items they've bought on eBay over the years.  For example, if I received only 2 offers that were both very tempting, one offer of $550 from a buyer with zero feedbacks or hardly any feedbacks and another offer of $520 from someone with 868 feedbacks, I would choose the $520 offer any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

[mam98031]

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@rugerskick wrote:

Also when you talk to ebay again, make sure to get the evidence from usps about the package weights not being the same/approx the same.  You mailed out a package at a certain weight.  Empty boxes will not weigh what you sent them and usps weighed the package he sent back to you, and they have that informstion from scanning and weighing the return box.  The weight measurements will be grossly mismatched, and since usps did the weighing, that is unbiased factual evidence that proves buyer could not have sent the orginal item you sent, back to you.  Include this info when you talk to ebay again.  Also usps takes photos of the package and ask them to confirm there was no evidence of return package being opened or broken into, so any false claim scam buyer would make about "it must have been stolen during shipping" will be disproved.  They take photos at initial scan and at a destination hub, so they will have start and end type photos, if nothing changed, no one broke into the package.

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You are absolutely correct, which is why in my post I said "Get your other evidence together too.  Ebay won't look at a video of you getting or opening the package.  But the weight and size of the package would be VERY important info."

[gurlcat]

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@adkhighker wrote:

"NEVER, EVER  sell, and especially ship, any higher value item anywhere online, that you and your business model are not prepared to lose, along with your payment for it, on a stupid eBay refund that is way out of line with common sense. Sell it locally for CASH only via the local options that are available in nearly every community in the country."

Maybe I've just been lucky, or maybe it's because I don't sell in the electronics categories, but for every item I've sold on eBay over the years of higher value without any problems, some in excess of a thousand dollars, I've never had a problem yet, knock on wood.  Had I sold any of those items "locally for cash" as you suggest, I would have been lucky to get maybe a third of the amount of money that I got on eBay.

The only advice that I would give to someone who is apprehensive about selling an expensive item on eBay today, would be to consider doing a fixed price listing with the Make Offer option.  Price it higher than you think it's worth so buyers will make an offer rather than paying the full BIN price.  That way you can at least check out the feedback of the person who's making the offer before selling it to them.  The 100% positive means nothing, but you can tell a lot by the type of feedback they leave for their sellers and by the number of items they've bought on eBay over the years.  For example, if I received only 2 offers that were both very tempting, one offer of $550 from a buyer with zero feedbacks or hardly any feedbacks and another offer of $520 from someone with 868 feedbacks, I would choose the $520 offer any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

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EXCELLENT points.  It is extremely unlikely to fetch anywhere near the money you'd get on eBay by doing a local sale, because it's a minuscule market compared to the literal WORLD (and just imagine if you live in a small town or out on some rural backroad, so you and/or buyers would have to drive a long way).  And it's not like local sales don't come with any pitfalls.  For every item I've sold locally, I had to sit and wait for nothing ... I'd say an average of 3 times, because the first 2 people were no-shows. And ASSUMING (which nobody should) that everyone has the health and transportation to meet a buyer at some public place rather than their own home, that won't stop a desperate addict or whatever from just grabbing the item and taking off.  Oh, and buying valuable items to fence is one of the top ways counterfeiters turn their fake cash into real cash. 

I too have sold tons of high-dollar items on eBay with no problem, so the idea that it's just not worth the risk of a scam buyer doesn't track with me either.  That said, there are definitely patterns regarding actual statistical risk, with electronics being the clear frontrunner category.  But even that is something I wouldn't expect a new seller to have "common sense" about.  
 

[sacrux]

Does USPS rewrite a return labels weight compared to what it weighs at before they print them off? That's if someone was using the QR code option where USPS prints the label out. If someone uses an option outside of USPS then they would have to rely on some internal information within USPS that even the OP wouldn't know.

I just did 2 returns using the QR method and I'm still not sure if USPS rewrites a label to the new weight. They scanned, printed, and stuck it on. I never checked the labels for any weight updates. I know the print at home/download option showed the weight of the package that the sellers used when they sent it to me. The tracking #'s also didn't reflect any weight.

Can anyone clarify if a new scanned weight would be put into their system if one was able to get USPS to do a probe on the tracking information?


That would be awesome if they had that information or if they added it to a label when they did the printing. If not then that would be an awesome tracking feature that would help prevent stuff like this. Unless someone found random junk around the house that equaled around the same weight of the item(s) they stole.

[ebeths_eclectic_collectibles]

“I've also personally noticed that the majority of people who commit this type of fraud do it infrequently enough to stay below ebays radar.” This is the million dollar question. So you eat the refund due to a scammer and take one for the EBay “team” but one never really knows how eBay eventually deals with these accounts. While is is often impossible to prove what you shipped or what the buyer shipped back does eBay aggressively eliminate repeat offenders on the seller end