eBay

vinyltap_11 · ‎05-04-2020

This past weekend I had several - like 90, fraudulent orders placed on my eBay store. They basically bought all of my lowest priced items, and all of the orders were to be shipped to the same address in Doral Florida or Miami Florida. The address and zip code was always the same, but the city was sometimes different, either Doral or Miami. All of the buyers were either brand new, or had very low feedback scores, so they targeted people who don't use eBay that often. Some people realized what happened, and they contacted me or eBay. I received correspondence from maybe 10 or 12 of the orders. I called eBay and they basically told me to ship the rest. They said I had no way of determining for sure if the orders were fraudulent and that I was covered by seller protections anyway. The situation is pretty clear, and there is a lot more to this than I am going to explain here. Bottom line is, what I need help with is this... For the orders that I know are fraud, for those people who did not contact eBay to report the fraud, I plan on cancelling those orders. My question is if I cancel 50+ orders and select 'problem with address' as the reason for the cancellation, will that hurt my seller rating?

dhbookds · ‎05-05-2020

Did you talk to trust and safety CS or just CS?............. I think I'd try on Ebay for business facebook page and try to reach someone there........ they are usually more savvy or can get you to a T & S person.......just be sure you follow the rules that are set up there.........

kensgiftshop · ‎05-05-2020

@vinyltap_11 wrote:
But if I cancel the order and choose 'there is a problem with the address', what's the problem? It's technically true.

But there isn't a problem with the address.

I've shipped there and had no problems.

Have a great day

bar-29368 · ‎05-05-2020

Well there's no reason on a cancellation "fraudulent purchase" is there?

OP needs to contact trust & Safety.

vrie39 · ‎05-05-2020

@vinyltap_11 wrote:
So as a seller, if I don't feel comfortable shipping something and have good reason to believe the order is fake, I have to ship it because eBay says so? That's ridiculous. Just because eBay doesn't take fraud that seriously doesn't mean I should play along. The orders are fraud, of that there is no question. If I cancel, no one will complain. My question is if it will hurt my seller rating.

I will say this, last year I had a couple of orders that were highly unusual because of sheer volume.

Someone literally ordered like 50 of something I have never seen anyone order more than 1-2 of...

So I called the buyer on my phone and courteously asked if they could verify the order, which they did.

Turns out one was for a college education project they needed these items for, the other I can't recall but neither order was fraudulent.

Had I chosen to cancel it goes beyond hurting my seller's ratings.

Those buyers would've been left wondering, it can hurt ebay as a whole...

You might try calling one or two, and if that is not possible there exists a setting in our selling preferences where a seller can require a buyer to have a phone number, turning this ON can reduce fraudulent orders.

valueaddedresource · ‎05-05-2020

@dhbookds - in our case, it all came to light just as eBay was shutting down phone service for COVID-19, so our only option at that time was to pursue it through email support.

I have since had several phone conversations with concierge support, T & S, and the Seller Development Manager assigned to our account. All emails and phone calls with any eBay employee about this issue basically just come down to "thank you for reporting the issue. We'll escalate this and take action if appropriate, but we would not be able to give you any details of action taken on another user's account."

They initially took action on some of the reported accounts back on 3/26, but nothing since then and nothing except a polite "thanks, we'll look into it" every time I report additional accounts now.

In our situation, it seems that eBay is willing to wash their hands of the whole thing because the stolen credit card transactions aren't being done on their site. They really don't seem to care that they are facilitating fraud on a massive scale or that every one of those accounts is in violation of eBay's stated drop ship and item location misrepresentation policies at the very least.

Any way, I don't want to derail this discussion by going too deeply into our situation, but it does seem to me that eBay is experiencing some very serious security issues and they are not being very transparent about it.

southern*sweet*tea · ‎05-05-2020

@valueaddedresource wrote:
it does seem to me that eBay is experiencing some very serious security issues and they are not being very transparent about it.

More likely bots stealing dormant Ebay accounts with weak passwords. It's not hard to take over a dormant account anywhere that doesn't have 2FA. If it were some sort of security issue I would imagine these boards would have exploded by now.

The easier you are to offend the easier you are to control.

We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did. - Thomas Sowell

valueaddedresource · ‎05-05-2020

@southern*sweet*tea wrote:
@valueaddedresource wrote:
it does seem to me that eBay is experiencing some very serious security issues and they are not being very transparent about it.
More likely bots stealing dormant Ebay accounts with weak passwords. It's not hard to take over a dormant account anywhere that doesn't have 2FA. If it were some sort of security issue I would imagine these boards would have exploded by now.

I should clarify. I believe it is dormant accounts being taken over as you described. While that might not be as serious as the site actually being hacked, I still consider it a security issue. Maybe not over all site security, but it is at least an issue with the security of those accounts and it raises some serious questions about what eBay is doing to detect fraud and protect sellers.

The fact that the original OP received so many orders in such a short amount of time from compromised accounts that seem fairly obviously connected and eBay doesn't seem to be picking up on it is troubling.

reallynicestamps · ‎05-05-2020

All of the buyers were either brand new, or had very low feedback scores, so they targeted people who don't use eBay that often. Some people realized what happened, and they contacted me or eBay. I received correspondence from maybe 10 or 12 of the orders.

I don't understand this at all.

You are not an occasional seller.

Who do you think was targetted?

Do you mean the accounts used to make the orders were hacked?

If so, cancelling using "problem with address" should not cause you any problems.

But about the Doral/Miami addresses .

Doral is a "suburb" of Miami. Many people will use the larger city's name rather than the more obscure smaller city.

My own municipality is Oak Bay, but I usually say I live in Victoria, because people know where that is (and it's the provincial capital).

Freight forwarders are the second safest addresses you can ship to.

The safest are post office boxes.

When you ship to a forwarder, your responsibility for delivery ends on his doorstep.

You are shipping domestically, he takes care of the international leg.

The forwarder also makes sure that foreign duty and sales taxes are paid, which takes care of a problem some sellers have with buyers who are angry that their country is charging them for buying overseas. (It's not the seller's problem, but that doesn't stop the dimwit buyer.)

Most damage in transit becomes the responsibility of the forwarder, not the seller.

Returns for refund are still possible, but the seller at most pays for return shipping from the US address of the forwarder, not from overseas.

picknparley · ‎05-05-2020

I think I'll back up the seller here. If a seller smells a scam then the seller has every right to act defensively to protect themselves.

It's no different than getting an email from Nigeria asking you for money.

If it doesn't sound right / smell right, it's likely not right.

We give advice to posters about the scam involving gift cards and large purchases. SCAM!

Why is this situation any different? It's a scam!

vinyltap_11 · ‎05-05-2020

Thank you! This is not hard to figure out. As I am dealing with this, slowly but surely more and more customers are contacting me to tell me the orders were not made by them. Out of the 70+ orders, 29 have contacted either me or eBay to report the orders as fraud. Why would anyone assume the other 50+ orders are legitimate?

vinyltap_11 · ‎05-05-2020

I had messaged about 10 or 12 customers when you first responded. Since then I messaged around 30 more. I have received 4 more responses from those contacted alerting me that the orders are fraudulent. I am determined to contact all of them, this will at least give me leverage with eBay if the cancellations do come back to bite me. That's really all I'm concerned about, my seller rating, and letting these people know they have been hacked, if they don't already know.

candd205 · ‎05-05-2020

Good for you. Stick with it.

sin-n-dex · ‎05-05-2020

@candd205 wrote:
Just a thought, you could try contacting the other purchasers who have not contacted you yet and see if they placed the order, they would be appreciative to know their accounts were hacked in some way.

If someone hacks an account and tries to ship to a different address then one that has been approved for shipping to with that credit card, they will be prompted to enter the whole card again. So the hacker needs the eBay ID, password, and credit card number to change where the item ships.

I'm learning this stuff because of my partner's new account. He had to put his credit card in again to ship the coins he was buying to my PO Box.

C.

sin-n-dex · ‎05-05-2020

@vinyltap_11 wrote:
I contacted about 12 of them. But not one has responded so far. I counted and there are a total of 73 fraud orders with the Florida address, 19 have contacted either me or eBay to cancel.

If the account went dormant and a hacker took possession, the hacker is going to be the one receiving the messages.

I think you need to do your best to involve customer service in this. If I were in your shoes I wouldn't want to ship them either, even if it was low priced stuff.

C.

kayne_the_assasin · ‎05-05-2020

LMAO at eBay telling you you are covered by seller protections.

This entire story is just another sad indictment on what has become eBay's customer service and it's inability to protect the sellers in any kind of rational way. Here you are doing all the leg work, and heck many posters even just say to ship the item, like what? Why ship 90 items that suspect could be a fraud, knowing full well not only will you have to fight tooth and nail for eBay to rule in your favor, but then you'll have to do it all over again for PayPal to rule in your favor.

I don't know what will happen to your seller rating, but absolutely do not ship. Anyone advising otherwise is just crazy.

reading these forums, I am finding way way too many of these stories. And yeah while I'm not a new user by any means, I am only in the past year really getting into selling a lot more than usual so seeing these kinds of stories as I read through the forums alarm me and make me think I may need to find an alternative site. I'm just one person and I can't afford to bogus claims.