@ltguass wrote:
I wish I stopped by here before I sold my used iPhone on eBay.
So I listed a used working iPhone on eBay with good description and lots of photos. A few weeks latter, I get a buyer for the phone on eBay. Once I get a notification from eBay to ship the phone, I get two emails from two different eBay members with low or non-existent feedback to send it to another address. I became suspicious when they came from different eBay members, but both messages had a image of the new ship to address in Wilmington Delaware.
Those are routine scams using messages from throwaway accounts and are not connected with your actual buyer. They are generated via a bot process and sent to sellers of recently-sold items in high-scam categories. In addition to the bogus story, and address shown in a photo (as a way to evade eBay filters), you might notice that the exact phone you sold is never mentioned in those messages; they generally call it "the item" or similar as they are sending out those messages in bulk, and want to reach as many sellers as possible before eBay nukes their account.
Anytime you get a message like that from a user ID that is not that of your buyer (who probably knows nothing about it), you can ignore it.
As for the address in Delaware, that's probably a reshipper for offshore accounts. The only reason you're finding it on-line as a supposed scammer source is because the scammer is offshore. Thousands of legitimate buyers use reshippers in order to purchase from sellers who themselves do not sell internationally, but no one goes on-line to loudly announce that their sale/purchase to that address went fine.
@ltguass wrote:
I told the seller that I would mail the iPhone to his original address to protect myself and the seller.
You ship to the address received with the payment and nowhere else, yes.
@ltguass wrote:
I ship the phone from the post office and take lots of pictures of the bubble wrapped phone, and the sealed box.
It's a popular strategy, but unfortunately eBay is not interested in photos of what you packed, as those do not prove what you actually shipped, nor what the buyer claims to have received.
@ltguass wrote:
Now I get eBay message from the seller that the camera does not work. Funny that, I used the one-year old phone's camera right up to when I put it into the box. Of course I do a Apple factory reset the day I mailed it out.
Again, I contact an eBay employee to tell her of my suspicions. I also file a complaint with eBay against the buyer.
Filing a complaint of some sort against the buyer (what complaint did you file, exactly?) is probably not going to affect the outcome of a return request, if the buyer chooses to file one. If he does, respond to the request case by selecting the option of saying that the phone must be returned first. The return label that eBay will send will originate from the delivery address of the purchase, so if it did go overseas, the buyer will need to get it back to his reshipper in the U.S. first.
@ltguass wrote:
So now I am waiting on eBay to make a decision.
If you do not respond to a return request in a case that has been filed, eBay will find in the buyer's favor every time. Assuming that there is indeed a case already open, you need to make a response (such as Return for Refund) before your deadline.
@ltguass wrote:
A few things:
1) The ship to address is a business in Wilmington Delaware. A internet search showed multiple complaints of a dishonest phone buyer in Delaware.
As above, that sounds like a reshipper, who deals in hundreds of packages a day. The fact that scammers can use it as well gives the impression that the address is that of the scammer himself, which it is not. I've shipped items through freight forwarders (reshippers) frequently over the years and never had a problem, though I also have never dealt in high-scam items such as laptops or smartphones.
@ltguass wrote:
2) If the buyer sends the phone back, what will I get? An empty envelope with a altered tracking number? A fake or broken phone? Or the original phone back, but it is locked and unusable (bricked)?
It doesn't seem likely that your phone really broke on the way, so the scammer is probably fishing for a refund and a free phone. I would at least make him work for that by sending the phone back. It is certainly possible that he might return the proverbial rock, yes.
Technically, if you can prove that the phone was sent to a reshipper/freight-forwarder, the buyer gives up his Money Back Guarantee by doing so, but you may have a bit of an uphill battle in proving that. I would start by responding with a Return for Refund answer, and see where things go after that.
mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
