I've been blithely and confidently buying and selling on eBay since 2002. This year I got scammed. Shortly after selling merchandise, I received an eBay message requesting that I send it to the Buyer's girlfriend at a different address. I thought, "what a pain in the neck," but being an accommodating Seller, I replied, "No problem" and proceeded to change the address on the shipping form and mail the package to Wilmington, Delaware. Three days after mailing, I wrote to the buyer to see how his girlfriend liked the perfume. Guess what?
He had not asked me to send the perfume to his girlfriend in Delaware. I went back to look at the message with the request. The user names were not the same, and the hacker had 0 as feedback. So many red flags had come up for me during the transaction, and I had ignored them out of haste, carelessness, and misplaced trust. Googling Wilmington, Delaware, I found posts complaining of this group's scamming dated as early as March 2019. That means at least 10 months of ripping off unsuspecting sellers.
I just refunded the buyer his $55, and it seems like a bargain at the price. What if it had happened when I sold the vintage leather coat for $275 at Christmas? That would have been a hard hit. My faith in eBay's security is not as strong as it was a week ago, but I will still sell with eBay because I haven't found a satisfactory replacement. It's still the biggest auction site around and I've had positive experiences with the company. I'll just be more cautious now. Here is . . .
THE TAKEAWAY:
1. I'll always send to the address on record. If a buyer wants it sent to another address, they can change it in settings to the one on record.
2. I'll pay full attention to the user name on transactions.
3. I'll follow my intuition and question suspicious communications.
