Problematic Items

[blue.bird-official]

There are plenty of unscrupulous and dishonest people waiting to pounce on new sellers. To protect our selves and not to fall victim to their scams, What is the best way to avoid getting scammed?

[luckythewinner · Accepted solution]

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@blue.bird-official wrote:

There are plenty of unscrupulous and dishonest people waiting to pounce on new sellers. To protect our selves and not to fall victim to their scams, What is the best way to avoid getting scammed?

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The best way to avoid basic scams is to use common sense.

If a buyer offers you more money than the asking price, that makes no sense.

If a buyer says he can't pay through eBay or needs your PayPal email to pay you, that makes no sense.

If a buyer wants you to violate eBay policy and communicate outside the eBay message system, that makes no sense.

If a buyer wants you to buy a gift card and put it in the package, that makes no sense.

If you get an email that claims to be from eBay (or PayPal) but does not appear in your eBay (or PayPal) messages, that makes no sense. 

If you get a message from someone who is not your buyer asking you to ship the item to a different address, that makes no sense.

If you get a message saying you need to provide a tracking number in order to see your buyer's payment in eBay or PayPal, that makes no sense.

etc.

But make no mistake - there is a risk of fraud with every single eBay transaction, and there is no way to completely eliminate the risk.

[m60driver]

You can't avoid being scammed you can only limit the amount of damage inflicted by not selling anything you can't afford to lose and to have high enough margins to absorb some losses.

[duffy4444]

See my reply #12 under the recent OP's post "More buyer fraud - EBAY".

[kensgiftshop]

@blue.bird-official 

Scammers are looking for items they can make money off of, not cheap junk from China.

[ckimodog]

There are also a lot of unscrupulous sellers on ebay too.  Like the one's who are listed to live in Sri Lanka but drop ship cheap items from China.  That's not fair to buyers and a bad result usually occurs. 

[jscar59]

The best way to avoid being scammed is don't sell.........Period!

[fashunu4eeuh]

You need not worry. You are not a likely target for scammers, who go for high dollar items from inexperienced sellers. The categories you are selling in are not known for fraud, nor are your price points appealing to scammers. You are at much greater risk with starting your auctions off at one cent. If you receive only one bid, you cannot turn a profit, and can end up in a financial hole.

[maxine*j]

You do not have to worry about U.S. buyers because there will be none.   Everything you are dropshipping from China we can get at the local dollar store. 

As for buyers in other parts of the world, I cannot speak for them but will say that I cannot imagine anyone, anywhere, investing time and energy into a scam to cheat you out of the stuff you're selling.

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