More suspicious purchases - likely unauthorized use of buyer accounts

[somanypostcards]

Eleven days ago I reported 16 suspicious purchases.  I reported this to eBay's fraud department but never heard back.  In the past when I made similar reports eBay closed many of the accounts and/or sent me letters indicating eBay cancelled the sales due to the unauthorized use of buyers' accounts.

Today there were 11 suspicious purchases of $1.00 postcards made by 11 different buyers, all with low feedback ranging from 1 to 11, and all old accounts dating from 2012-2017.  All 11 purchases had a shipping address to ***.  There were 2 different recipients (buyer1 & buyer2), neither of which were the purchasers' names.  Buyer1 was also the recipient of 15 of the 16 suspicious purchases reported eleven days ago, so obviously eBay has taken no actions to block this suspicious recipient in ***.

I have 48 hours to decide whether to cancel these sales, which I am 99.9% certain involve fraud, or mail them since I got paid and eBay will penalize me if they are not mailed in a timely fashion.  Any suggestions?

[turtles-trading-post]

We are in aligned markets,  I sell old paper... postcards, covers and such.   Part of my attraction to this, aside from my personal interest, expertise and built in inventory... is that the categories I sell in are fairly fraud proof since they require some collectors knowledge.

I've been a seller since eBay was formed, but took off the last decade.  Just getting back for fun.  I had a joy rider back in August.   First I had someone bid on a few things... eBay sent me a message that my transactions were canceled because they were no longer a member...   The next week I had another user become my best customer!  They bid on 10 things, then refused to be outbid!  There was one postcard up to $20.  I was very pleased.   

Then they didn't pay or respond to messages.  I checked their feedback and they had a negative for non payment.  I sent that seller a message through one of their listings, and he  named my previous bidder and said they were both the same person playing with us!   I let the sales age until eBay said it was okay to cancel for non payment.   Sad thing, that $20 postcard sold for $8 the next time around!

Back in the old days when you had someone playing with you like this, it was most likely a competitor with a bogus account.  They'd buy something, then leave you negative feedback to reduce your competitiveness. 

[mcw1627jed]

You may want to ship these items in the future and save the cost you are incurring and not leave feedback.Then they may stop bothering your account to built up feedback on small purchases.

I haven't read thru all the messages ,but Ebay just doesn't give a crap about its sellers.

[ittybitnot]

  It is clear eBay doesn't comprehend the stress caused by this situation. 

@gwzcomps 

They don't care about the stress, and I am sure by now eBay DOES know about the situation. If nothing else, eBay gets thirty cents x 1000+ transactions that are cancelled.   That is why I posed the option upthread of @somanypostcards  going ahead and shipping.....it would be to the address provided with the payment and therefore under seller protection (for both eBay claims and Payment Disputes)_ ?????  He would be making some bank instead of losing the thirty cents on those $1.00 cards????  

At the very least velvet@ebay  should get  ALL those thirty cent fees refunded to the OP. 

[gwzcomps]

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@ittybitnot wrote:

  It is clear eBay doesn't comprehend the stress caused by this situation. 

@gwzcomps 

They don't care about the stress, and I am sure by now eBay DOES know about the situation. If nothing else, eBay gets thirty cents x 1000+ transactions that are cancelled.   That is why I posed the option upthread of @somanypostcards  going ahead and shipping.....it would be to the address provided with the payment and therefore under seller protection (for both eBay claims and Payment Disputes)_ ?????  He would be making some bank instead of losing the thirty cents on those $1.00 cards????  

At the very least velvet@ebay  should get  ALL those thirty cent fees refunded to the OP. 

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@ittybitnot  Well somanypostcards would have less to lose than I do by shipping.  If eBay doesn't honor their protections I am on the hook for a couple grand on my end.

[ittybitnot]

If eBay doesn't honor their protections I am on the hook for a couple grand on my end.

@gwzcomps 

Understood entirely. 

[somanypostcards]

Velvet wrote:  At this point, nothing has really happened. You've had items purchased and paid for. You can proceed with the sales like normal or choose to cancel them. If you cancel them, then that can affect your metrics as I'm sure you know, but should action be taken against the buyers accounts then we should be able to remove defects where necessary. If they are legit sales, and nothing happens to the buyers accounts, then defects would remain. 

If these are unauthorized use of the buyers' accounts, then the only action to be taken with the buyers would be what eBay states in its letter telling me about the unauthorized use:  "We’re working with the account owner to prevent any additional unauthorized activity."

My current problem is that about 60 of the suspicious purchases are now using what appear to be ship to addresses with real user names, addresses, and phone numbers.  What is suspicious is that these buyers all bought 1 of 2 of the same items in a very short period of time, most have very low feedback scores, yet most show feedback from the same few large sellers of expensive items.  There are only 3 choices when cancelling an item:

1) Out of stock or damaged

2) Buyer asked to cancel

3) Issue with buyer's shipping address 

For 9 months I've been requesting that eBay add a 4th option, Other and allow for a description of the reason for cancellation.  For instance, a faulty phone number or suspicious activity such as unauthorized use of buyer account could be used as a reason to cancel.  As things stand now, I would either have to lie if I select #3,  Issue with buyer's shipping address or I would have to mail items I am sure the buyer has not purchased because fraud has occurred.  I have decided to lie and select #3 when I know there is a problem with the phone number or when people called say the do not have an eBay account or they did not purchase the postcard on Friday, but to mail items I know involve fraud when I cannot provide proof of same.

Here is a summary of the telephone 43 calls I made using the telephone number found under buyer info on the orders:

1 person with a valid name, address, and phone # did not buy a postcard from me or anything from dell in the past month and also did not buy anything from dell or smartresale in the past 6 months.

1 person didn't buy a postcard from me but had to hang up cuz they were driving and a police car was next to them so I could not ask if the bought from dell in the past month or 2 other sellers in the past 6 months.

1 people did not have an eBay account so they did not buy a postcard from me on Friday or 4 items from dell or 1 item from superqualityflags in the past 6 months

1 person did not have an eBay account so did not buy a postcard from me on Friday and also did not buy anything from dell, smartresale, franzarko, and timmims174.1 in the past 6 months or from ez-autowrap in the past month.

10 phone calls received the message:  Call cannot be completed as dialed.  Note:  3 of these were phone numbers with only 9 digits listed and 2 were phone numbers with 11 digits listed.

2 phone calls were the wrong number.

1 phone number was disconnected or no longer in service.

2 phone calls were "voicemail not set up yet" or "not currently set up to receive calls"

1 phone call was "not a working number"

6 phone calls got the message:  "The number you have dialed has calling restrictions that prevented the completion of your call.

10 calls asked me to leave a message, 3 calls had no answer, 1 call was repeatedly busy, 2 calls said to try again later, and 1 call said "I'm unavailable."  So the vast majority of the calls failed.

[velvet@ebay]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

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velvet@ebay wrote:

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

Thank you for the reply velvet@ebay   However, I can say from experience that Trust & Safety absolutely can, does, and should speak to sellers directly about reports of possibly compromised accounts.

Last year when I was dealing with triangulation fraud using hijacked eBay accounts, I spoke directly to Trust & Safety about the issue on multiple occasions to report additional accounts as they were discovered. In some cases they were even able to acknowledge (without disclosing account information) that they linked the accounts I was reporting to other accounts that were showing similar patterns of compromised or fraudulent activity.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Warning-Retail-Arbitrage-Credit-Card-Fraud/td-p/30822324 

@somanypostcards has already tried social support and hasn't had any luck there. At the very least, they need a direct way to contact Trust & Safety so they can explain their concerns and get assistance from the department that should be trained to recognize the red flags and patterns of possibly fraudulent behavior in play here.

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Hmmm, that's not typical, but I'm glad you were able to work with them to catch the triangulation fraud @valueaddedresource.

I reached out to a Trust & Safety teammate to make sure the info I gave was correct and they verified it was, aside from clarifying that when a seller selects the problem with buyers address when canceling the transaction, that triggers an internal review. If the account looks good, nothing comes of it. If not though, and it's a bad account, then action is taken.

This is good because it covers the exact experience @gwzcomps has described, and explains why there is not an option for this in the report buyer flow. It also means that the seller doesn't have to worry about risking a defect for canceling if they don't feel comfortable following through with the sale. There's not a way for us to pre-emptively stop them from buying, but this is the route to take should anymore questionable sales to this address come through. 

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velvet@ebay  thanks for confirming they won't receive a defect, however that doesn't address the fact that the seller will lose $0.30 per transaction every time they do this.  Again, that's not a viable solution.

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Hey @valueaddedresource! In most situations that fee is non-refundable, but this situation is not a typical one, so I'd encourage any seller in a scenario like this to work on order fee credit requests with customer support. 

[gwzcomps]

Seems like a good time for some malicious compliance.  I wonder if somanypostcards is gonna file 300+ individual complaints, or do them in batches 🤔

[somanypostcards]

On Dec. 6, 2021 I reported 29 suspicious sales, all but 4 going to the BEAVERTON, Oregon address.  I mailed the 4 that were going to people whose name, address, and phone numbers looked legitimate, even though it was unlikely that they would purchase the identical item of the other 25 suspicious sales.  I cancelled the 25 sales going to the BEAVERTON, Oregon address.

Today I received a very nice letter stating:  "I am returning the very nice post card you sent ... as I did not order it ... Where the heck did this order come from??  As far as I know I do not have an EBAY account (although I have occasionally ordered items through EBAY) ... If you have any info to enlighten me as to how you received this order it would be appreciated ..."

I called this person and told him about all the suspicious sales I've had in the past month.  I told him he had been a member since since Dec. 31, 2017, and that his account now showed he was no longer a registered user.  In addition to my feedback in the past month, there were 4 feedbacks in the past 6 months, 2 from dell, 1 from microsoft, and 1 from valex-89 (now unregistered.)  He said he had never bought anything from Microsoft, and he had never used eBay to buy from Dell or valex-89.  This confirms that the 5 transactions that occurred that were unauthorized use of this buyer's account.  I am mailing him a copy of his feedback page.

I only had 1 suspicious sale today on my other selling ID of a $1.10 postcard going to the BEAVERTON, Oregon address.  I've now upped my fixed price listings to all start at $1.25 or higher.

[gwzcomps]

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@somanypostcards wrote:

On Dec. 6, 2021 I reported 29 suspicious sales, all but 4 going to the BEAVERTON, Oregon address.  I mailed the 4 that were going to people whose name, address, and phone numbers looked legitimate, even though it was unlikely that they would purchase the identical item of the other 25 suspicious sales.  I cancelled the 25 sales going to the BEAVERTON, Oregon address.

Today I received a very nice letter stating:  "I am returning the very nice post card you sent ... as I did not order it ... Where the heck did this order come from??  As far as I know I do not have an EBAY account (although I have occasionally ordered items through EBAY) ... If you have any info to enlighten me as to how you received this order it would be appreciated ..."

I called this person and told him about all the suspicious sales I've had in the past month.  I told him he had been a member since since Dec. 31, 2017, and that his account now showed he was no longer a registered user.  In addition to my feedback in the past month, there were 4 feedbacks in the past 6 months, 2 from dell, 1 from microsoft, and 1 from valex-89 (now unregistered.)  He said he had never bought anything from Microsoft, and he had never used eBay to buy from Dell or valex-89.  This confirms that the 5 transactions that occurred that were unauthorized use of this buyer's account.  I am mailing him a copy of his feedback page.

I only had 1 suspicious sale today on my other selling ID of a $1.10 postcard going to the BEAVERTON, Oregon address.  I've now upped my fixed price listings to all start at $1.25 or higher.

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Not good enough.  You can't prove these aren't legitimate sales.  Oh wait I don't work for eBay I forgot 🙃

Good to know your price changes worked for you.  Didn't work so much for me.

[sin-n-dex]

@somanypostcards 

You are being targeted by a scammer (scammers). I don't normally advise giving up, but as you are getting 80 sales in one day that are suspicious (and have sufficient evidence to back this up), perhaps migrating the cards to an account the scammers are not aware of might be an option. Postcards are inexpensive and people don't require high FB scores to buy them, unlike more expensive items.

I'd also advise in addition to charging $1.25 that you charge shipping on the order. I'm charging $1.35 in shipping (and my postcards are 1.49 and up for vintage, and 4.99 and up for antique). I sell a few every day. You should be able to do that kind of business with increased prices.

C.

[downunder-61]

@sin-n-dex   Merry Christmas C

@somanypostcards  is actually trying to shut down these scammers and warn other sellers that their accounts may be hi-jacked or hacked.

He is being relentless in his task, and going above and beyond which is great but also b***dy  disgusting in that another eBayer is doing the work eBay refuse to do, and for all the times postcard has advised eBay of these issues they remain silent and dim witted.

Good on you postcards

[janet9988]

Funny that YOU tell this seller to cancel as problem with buyers address YET you cant at MINIMUM guarantee the they get the .30 fee refunded.

I know exactly what I would do in this situation. Send the package and wait for ebay to be held liable for all the unauthorized uses as the seller will have tracking proving delivery.

[gwzcomps]

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@janet9988 wrote:

Funny that YOU tell this seller to cancel as problem with buyers address YET you cant at MINIMUM guarantee the they get the .30 fee refunded.

I know exactly what I would do in this situation. Send the package and wait for ebay to be held liable for all the unauthorized uses as the seller will have tracking proving delivery.

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One thing I am not sure about is if they ship post cards with tracking.  This is something I just started to wonder at least.  That would complicate things for somanypostcards when it comes to claims.

[somanypostcards]

To date I have reported 265 of 266 suspicious purchases made by 261 different buyer IDs, all likely unauthorized use of buyer accounts, most with few different recipients located in Beaverton, Oregon.  When I first researched the feedback of these 261 different buyer IDs, one trend I noticed was that feedback had been left by relatively few of the same sellers.  Dell was the most common, with a total of 535 feedbacks left.  For instance, on Dec. 6, 27 purchases by 27 different buyer IDs showed 47 feedbacks from Dell.  Imagine my surprise when I checked on the recent activity of these 27 different buyer IDs and found that 12 had lower feedback and that 27 of the positive feedbacks left by Dell had vanished - poof, gone, nada.

On the December 22 Community Chat, I asked this question:  "On 12/6/2021 I reported 26 suspicious transactions, likely unauthorized use of buyers' accounts, and that nearly ALL of these buyers had received feedback from dell in the past month and/or past 6 months.  Now I see that many of these buyers either have no feedback or lower feedback scores with the feedback from Dell missing.  What is going on?"

I was essentially told yet again that I could cancel suspicious accounts.  I was NOT told why positive feedback was being removed.   12 of the buyers are no longer registered users, but most of them still showed feedback, including feedback from Dell.  Most of the still active buyer IDs with lower feedback were only missing the positive feedback from Dell.  Removing feedback might be innocent, but it also might be hiding evidence.  All the fraudulent sales involve illegal use of the USPS, and feedback is the only public information that sales have occurred.