Obviously fake police report submitted to ebay, ebay using it to deny my claim. Any recourse?

[wowsource]

Pretty much at wits end here. Here's what happened:

1) Sold a Garmin Fenix watch on Ebay for $690 to a buyer with an account opened end of September 2020 with no feedback. I'm a top rated seller with perfect 900+ feedback, 10+ year old account.

2) Buyer claims the box was empty on receipt

3) I contact buyer twice for more information, he does not respond.

4) eBay rules in buyers favor, takes $690 from my account. Found out later that he is also using an address that has been reported multiple times. I appeal but eBay say's buyer filed a "police report" so they have to rule in their favor.

5) Managed to get a copy of the police report from eBay. It is obviously fake. The police department doesn't exist, the address is of an empty residential building on zillow, and the phone leads to a voicemail that says "You have dialed police department" in Eastern European accent.

6) Tried to file an appeal and get denied again, they claim that they determined the "police report" was legitimate.

I tried to contact them via twitter, tried multiple times through the phone, and via email. Anyone have any idea what I can do? Does anyone have an experience with small claims or arbitration against ebay?

TL:DR : Buyer submits obviously fake police report to eBay, eBay claims it is legitimate and uses it to steal $690 from me.

[jonathankirkland]

---

@onnius wrote:

Bump for an important thread that needs more attention. I am dealing with a variation of this scam where a fraudster used an AirBNB address in Wilmington, DE instead of a freight forwarding service. I hesitate to provide all the details because it's a double-edged sword: potentially valuable to less experienced sellers, but also valuable insight for would-be scammers stumbling on threads like this from a search engine. I could write a book on all the scams I've had to untangle just to stay ahead of them, and there are constantly new ones. There are entire Discord groups and russian forums dedicated to providing fraudsters with cookie-cutter ebay scam templates, many involving fake police report templates to get a case closed in 60 seconds by an unwitting eBay CSR.

I love the eBay platform. I love bringing value to it. I love hearing from happy buyers about how much they love their items. And I understand fraud risk is just part of ecommerce. And I also understand there are bad apple sellers that eBay has to protect buyers against.

But I cannot understand - or fathom - why eBay continues to seem to allow any mickey mouse "police report" template to potentially instantly decide a case - and a fraudster instantly getting their money back  - without at least an extended hold/review period for a proper investigation to play out. Can. not. understand.

---

You would be much better off creating your own thread rather than piggingbacking on an existing one.

[onnius]

I appreciate the suggestion. I still have to let the process play out a few more days, and will then decide if I can package the sequence of events in a way where a dedicated posting on it would provide a net-benefit to other sellers facing a similar situation now or in the future. 

For now I still have faith in eBay, the facebook teams, the Trust & Safety department, and am giving them the benefit of the doubt. But I'm simultaneously also preparing to wake up to a "The case has been decided in the scammer's favor" message because he uploaded a fake police report template - which will then upend my entire day where instead of listing and selling items, I'm having to spend hours upon hours formulating and seeking an appeal.

[drydenhei]

I'm new to selling on eBay. After reading posts after posts of awful seller experiences with overseas buyers, I have limited all my listings to buyers who have US shipping addresses in the continental US. 

Your post caught my attention: "It sounds like he had you ship to a freight forwarder so technically that should have voided the money back guarantee."

Is that correct about voiding the money back guarantee if buyer uses freight forwarder? Can you tell me where you read that? Thanks!

[ittybitnot]

Is that correct about voiding the money back guarantee if buyer uses freight forwarder? Can you tell me where you read that? 

@drydenhei 

It used to void the MBG. It is still stated someplace in the ebay polices that the use of a freight forwarder would do that.  However, in practice, it no longer does.  They are international users that use a US shipping address.  

[onnius]

---

@ittybitnot wrote:

Is that correct about voiding the money back guarantee if buyer uses freight forwarder? Can you tell me where you read that? 

@drydenhei 

It used to void the MBG. It is still stated someplace in the ebay polices that the use of a freight forwarder would do that.  However, in practice, it no longer does.  They are international users that use a US shipping address.  

---

The bigger problem regardless of whether the policy is deprecated or not, is that trying to get a MBG voided on the basis of a freight-forwarder/reshipper address is that it was meaningless if you couldn't get an eBay CSR to recognize it as a freight-forwarder. And all but the laziest scammers simply "jig" the address, meaning they make it more google-proof by switching a number of letter in the streetname or #.

I literally spent an hour once trying to explain to an eBay CSR how a scammer using a freight-forwarder had changed "Connor St." to "Connr St." to hide the freight-forwarder from a google search, and that if she simply added an "o" and typed "Connor St" that the freight-forwarder service would come up, company website and everything. She wouldn't budge- "well I'm not seeing that it's a freight forwarder service, sorry".  Super frustrating. 

But these days the MO of the east-euro scammers that favor Delaware addresses is they aren't really trying to exploit MBG loopholes for anything, they've found easier and lower effort return-fraud vectors.

[lite_corp]

Just got a new return case opened today. A buyer with a few feedback (all of them are for cheap items) bought a laptop and it was delivered this Thursday with a signature.  Today they opened return case claiming the box was empty. This reporting style is pretty much the same as how I encountered the first scam. Googled this address (New Castle, DE), which definitely is a freight forwarding warehouse. Let's see how the case goes this time...

[hitsujibalancellc1]

Bumping this up after dealing with this 1st hand today.

The buyer scammed me out of a 620 graphics card by saying missing parts and pieces.
I asked for what was missing and didn't accept the return (which I should have).

I contacted eBay beforehand when I found out he was using a forwarding address and customer support told me not to worry - that the buyer is not covered by this as they used a forwarding service. 

Welp that was a big lie when a mystery police report got involved and they refined the buyer for the full amount.

I'm going to wait on a specialist to get to me, so I can get my hands on that police report so see how fake it is. 

I'm going to follow the suggestions here in regards to filing my own police report + going to reach out to the forwarding company to see if they can help me with more information.

Wish eBay would take the time to actually research police reports and not just automatically accept them when they get them 

[tina287barbieplanet]

I have parameters set on who cannot buy from me, such as no one with 3 or less feedbacks, no new zero accounts....but it still happens all the time. Useless tool.

[itsjustasprain]

---

@tina287barbieplanet wrote:

I have parameters set on who cannot buy from me, such as no one with 3 or less feedbacks, no new zero accounts....but it still happens all the time. Useless tool.

---

That may be because you are misunderstanding how to use it (Buyer Management). You cannot automatically block buyers based on their feedback count. You can block those with 5 or lower from making a SECOND purchase from you within 10 days of the first - but you cannot block a first purchase. Check your settings on this page:

https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/buyerrequirements 

You might also want to get rid of that paragraph about Paypal fees that you have at the bottom of your listings. Managed Payments is handling the money now and Paypal has no more involvement in your sales.

[kh-gary]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.