New Seller - Help Understanding Fraud on Ebay

[weflodrip]

Hi I'm a new seller to eBay so I'll start with apologies here. I've sold 5 items and 3 of them seem to be fraud. One was a best offer for 3 of a single item, where the buyer quickly moved the communication to email and text and began requesting things such as that I include a $300 ebay giftcard in the shipment and they'd pay me for it on the back end. In another case, the buyer seemed to have just created an account to place the winning bid on an item and is now unresponsive and has not paid. It almosts seems like an attempt to push my listing from availability.

Can anyone chime in on the prevalence of spam/fraud on eBay and what protections we have as sellers. Will eBay provide any reduced fees for time wasted on a listing by a disingenuous buyer?

[vintagecraze50]

When you are a new seller with very expensive items you are going to get these fraudsters trying to steal from you by asking you to use gift cards, do transactions off ebay. You must use buy it now with immediate payment required to help with this. Also if you are new to selling here start out with more inexpensive items until you build up a reputation. These scammers are relentless on here using these tactics and have been for over 20 years on here, Be careful always. Also report each and every user ID that do this to you on here to ebay so they can continue to track them and remove their privileges here.

[weflodrip]

Thanks for the quick reply! I could understand how my control of initial price point for my first few items could attract fraudsters.

In my case, the items I've listed thus far I consider to be low value miscellaneous items... Phillips Hue Light ($10), Keruig ($25), Christmas Gnome ($10). It's crazy that people will still attempt to scam on such a low value listing. I even intentionally started with lower cost items. As for the reports, I submitted those in 1 nano second after determining I was dealing with fraud. At least for the "can you throw in a $300 gift card" buyer. 😆

Would anyone recommend dropping my price point even lower and offering $1-5 items to build up store credibility?

[jhr-4800]

Couple of things,

1.  Buy personal items, or packaging materials that you need, so you can get some feedback on this account.  As scammers love new sellers.

2.  People that have 100 questions, are not buyers.  

3.  People that have bought from you, will contact you, saying that they did not received their package.  Most of the time, it not true.  As people love to get free stuff.  If the tracking number says, that it was delivered, it was delivered.  If you issue a refund, ebay says that it was voluntary on your part, and you will be out of money and your sold item.

4.  Spend some time in this forum and read...

[caldreamer]

Scammers target new seller and "high value" items.  Scammer can get your item and then "reverse credit card charges" (keep item and your money).  No protection if you get scammed.

Customers also abuse EBAY Money Back Guarantee by claiming "not as described, defective, counterfeit" (you are forced to give full refund) plus shipping BOTH ways.  Customers are not required to prove their claims.  EBAY only looks at return tracking# (not what's inside the box).   Even if customer returns "box of rocks" you are still forced to give refund.

Most customers are honest but there are a few "bad apples" spoil things.

[dentalrprtek2012]

Scammers and dishonest buyers go after all sellers new old whatever because ebay allows them to do it. This is all about the buyers and no concern for sellers be careful

[cstpos · Accepted solution]

@weflodripYou're off to a good start - selling lower priced items and are aware of reporting issues etc. As mentioned, if you buy some things on ebay to get some feedbacks on your account, that will help with the scammers. Only respond on ebay messaging. If they contact you any other way, reply to them on ebay  messages that you saw their call, email (whatever) and that ebay policy states you have to communicate only via ebay messages or both of your accounts could be suspended.

We stopped auctions a long time ago. If you sell Buy it Now and select Immediate payment required, that helps. Immediate payment doesn't count if a Best Offer is accepted.

Out of 4 order this morning, 3 are questionable. It's not usually this bad, but there seem to be more scammers lately.

Also, you should remove your website and personal/business info from your signature here and listings. Ebay will see this as an attempt to draw sales off of ebay and to advertise your own company.

Best of luck to you! Remember, you can always come back here for support.

[gjs_16]

Many people all over the world have no food, are out of a job, no home, living in motels or their cars, haven't even had a shower or clothes washed, the list goes on... We're not talking just 5 or 10 thousand or so, we're talking at least 1 or 2 of every 10 inhabitants and when you have 8 billion people on the planet that means about 1 billion of these people are living in abject poverty.

This type of situation causes some people to feel desperation.  And desperation makes people take these measures, it started quite some time ago and it has been getting slowly but surely worse over the years.  It's everywhere now, every day telemarketers on the phone, dozens upon dozens, here in the USA we have complete government sections dedicated entirely to combating fraud, cyberterrorists using ransomware to take millions of dollars from corporations, nobody can do anything about it.

Eaby is just another target for these folks, and it is rampant and there is nothing anyone can do and it will probably get much, much worse as the world continues to heat up, the weather patterns and wild fires get even wilder and the planet runs out of fresh water.

In summary the age of Pisces is coming to an end and the age of Sagittarius begins, one might also say the time of the last days is concluding and the time of the tribulation is starting.

That's why.