Recent Shipping Scam

[orvmotorsports]

I was recently scammed out of three sales on Ebay. Ive searched the internet and couldnt find similar situations so figured Id reach out to the community.

 I sold an item about a months ago. Printed the label and dropped it in the drop box at a local USPS.  One week later the tracking still said that the package was waiting acceptance .  Figuring it was lost, I printed the label again and shipped another. This time it got delivered to the customer.

  I then received two more higher dollar orders and proceeded to ship them. This time I bought insurance and got a receipt from USPS when I scanned them in person.

 The Buyer contacted me a few days later asking for updates because the package hadnt moved from " Label created".    I checked my USPS receipts and noticed that both tracking numbers did not match the USPS tracking numbers through Ebay.   Both USPS receipts had different states for each package.

 When I printed the labels, I verified the customer addresses and names like I always do.

  EXTREMELY confused about what was going on, I went to the manager at my local USPS.  They showed me a print out of the tracking progress .  One number was untraceable, the other she was able to track to a different state.  After searching for those records, she found that a total of 3 packages from me had been delivered to an address that I never shipped to.

 She then informed me that the if the barcode on the label doesnt match the written address on the label, that they will print the new address and cover the old one on the package.

 In conclusion, somehow, the labels I printed thru Ebay, had my customers info correct, but the barcodes were forwarding them to a scammers address with different tracking. If I printed the label a second time, it went to the correct customer.  All three packages were delivered to a college campus and signed for at the front desk. None of which will give me any names due to privacy rules.

 Im still trying to wrap my head around this and figure out what went wrong and how they were able to do it.

 SELLERS BEWARE!!!  Check your receipts and make sure your tracking number matches your ebay label when you drop off packages!

[dhbookds]

I certainly need more coffee for this one........  Only thing I can think of is that there was a change of address in effect at USPS that kicked in when it was accepted?  But why it wouldn't have also kicked in when you printed the 2nd label? 

edit......another thought.......if ONLY the barcode was changed.....how did the "desk" know to whom to give the packages to, if the names weren't the same?

will be interesting to see what others come up with........

[orvmotorsports]

USPS confirmed the names remained the same but the addresses must have changed based on the barcode scan.   She was able to track down that packages on three different occasions were delivered to the same address and signed for by the receptionist at a college apartment complex.

  There is alot of details that dont add up. Why cant USPS release the name or address of where my packages were sent?  Why cant the apartment receptionist confirm the names that were given to them?  How in the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks is this scammer/kid pulling it off?!?  How have three different labels been shipped to two completely different places but somehow all three ended up delivered to a 3rd location across the country?!?

 Hoping someone with programming experience can chime in. Id love to know what happened so that I can avoid it in the future.

[sextons-sweet-deals]

If you purchased the shipping label thru eBay (not any other type of shipping label service), I don't see how the packages could be delivered elsewhere. 

I always check my buyers out before shipping or accepting an offer. 

1. location

2. all feedback history. Especially what they leave for sellers.

3. Google map / street view address

4. If the item is high dollar, I will ship with signature required. 

What were the city and state destination for each package and where did they actually get delivered? 

Did you ship to P.O. boxes? Could a buyer use a P.O. box and then do a forwarding address request? 

Alot going on and I know I did not cover all possible scenarios. 

[pikabo-icu]

Could the buyer have paid for package redirect?

This is a new one for sure.. 

[pikabo-icu]

@orvmotorsports 

Hold up..

Did you use smart post? Where it starts with Fedex and the last leg is USPS?

If that's what you used and you dropped it a the USPS they seized the packages. 

USPS wont accept those shipments anymore, they must be dropped at Fedex.

That's not what happened here is it? 

[orvmotorsports]

No thats not what happened.  It was a USPS Label, delivered to USPS.  There is a paper trail as well as the USPS office was able to view images of the label to verify that the barcode was different than the information on the printed label.

[iamalwaysright]

The only way I can see this happening is if someone physically replaced your original barcode on the label with a new one (theirs) before you scanned it at the PO.

[nyr134]

It may be helpful if you give us a general idea of what was shipped (for example, electronics, jewelry or socks) and a value estimate.  (That may help determine if this is a deliberate fraud or just some kind of system/mechanical mess-up.)

[sextons-sweet-deals]

I agree. 

The O.P.  has nothing listed for sale or any sale history we can see.

They do have a 1054 rating.????

When I click on their feedback rating, I get this:

Feedback profile

Comment?

Oops. There seems to be a problem loading the page.

Reload the page

[jonathanbrightlight]

That's a bug that's been affecting the links from the forums if the user has changed their username at some point.  This link will take you to their listings: http://ebay.com/usr/orvmotorsports 

[a_c_green]

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@orvmotorsports wrote:

EXTREMELY confused about what was going on, I went to the manager at my local USPS.  They showed me a print out of the tracking progress .  One number was untraceable,

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Wait... "untraceable" how? The number printed on your USPS receipt was not showing up in their system?

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@orvmotorsports wrote:

the other she was able to track to a different state.  After searching for those records, she found that a total of 3 packages from me had been delivered to an address that I never shipped to.

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I am having a hard time following the story here. What records was she searching for? Was she working off a list of USPS receipts with tracking numbers that you gave her?

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@orvmotorsports wrote:

She then informed me that the if the barcode on the label doesn't match the written address on the label, that they will print the new address and cover the old one on the package.

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On what planet? The bar code does not override the printed address. It is not a routing code; the packages are sorted by the address on the label. I know of no stage in the delivery stream where a new address would be printed out and stuck over an existing one while the bar code is left as-is.

Similarly, if you're printing your shipping labels by buying them through eBay, I cannot envision where in that process a bar code could be generated (from Pitney-Bowes, at the time that the address is validated against the USPS database) that would have different embedded data than that of the Ship-To: address. The only thing I can think of (and it doesn't really fit all the symptoms described here) is that somehow your printer queue is reprinting old labels instead of new ones, or (even weirder) that some label elements such as the barcode are getting reused on a later label.