Sketchy or Nah?

[todorokitech]

Is something sketchy going on? After some negotiation, a buyer bought and paid for my entire stock (qty 4) of a hard drive, then sent me the following message:

"Hey there!

We just bought these WD Blues from you.
If you have more of this stuff, we can probably do some good business. We're buying thousands of dollars in stuff daily.

We've been focusing on electronics mainly. Texas Instrument Calculators, Hard Drives, SSD's, Flash/Thumb Drives, microSD cards, lil Wifi Cameras, mini Printers, and more.

Do you have a minute to talk sometime? I'm usually away from my computer so text is actually much better for me... faster too.
What's your phone number so I know the text / call will be from you?

Thanks!
Chip
xxx-xxx-xxxx [phone number]

Some brands we've bought a lot of:
Logitech
SanDisk
Seagate
WD
PNY
Texas Instruments
Casio
Razer
Tile
Netgear
Arris
Fitbit
Motorola"

[krazzykats]

I'd "email" through eBay, and make some "lot" listings for them on eBay.  If you even want to consider it. do everything through eBay so it's legit.

With all the supply shortages, I'm willing to bet, there are shortages of tech, and just like used cars the prices are way up due to demand.

[randysauto01]

I would have to say I agree with this for sure. If by chance he/she is legit, and you have a large inventory, and an opportunity to move all or some of it, and can avoid the 12-14% fee's ebay collects on each transaction...that's more money in your pocket.

I know when people call into our B&M store about an item they are looking for, and I have it, I'm not going to tell them it's listed on ebay, go purchase it there.

That being said, if they did try to buy your whole inventory, I would be cautious of that, for the reasons many have mentioned, could be a scammer, if you sold say all $5k of your inventory in one sale, and it was a scammer who did a CC chargeback, you would be up a creek.

Possibly break it up into smaller sales until you get a better feel for them.

Good luck!

[wrong66]

If you communicate with them outside of eBay, negative feedback could very well be the least of your problems.

[wrong66]

Not good advice.

[iart]

What's different is that they PAID for the items (Are you sure they paid? Or did you get an off-eBay message that they paid?).

Might be a legit sale. Or it might be an update of an old scam. They pay so you trust. They get you off eBay and pull the text me/mail to a friend/buy gift card scam. Then they CC chargeback on the original purchase.

Maybe.

[randysauto01]

They can do that whether he goes offline or not.

[wrong66]

So you're suggesting he avoid eBay fees. and sell outside of eBay? Terrible advice.

[todorokitech]

They really paid, I made sure it was all legit in ebay before doing anything. And for now I'm doing everything by the book and being cautious. I paid for signature confirmation. I'm even taking pictures of the packing and shipping process and sending them to the buyer through ebay messages. With all those measures in place, I'm hoping a CC chargeback won't be feasible for them, or at least will be easier for me to dispute.

They are getting a really good deal on my already discounted items, so hopefully that's good enough for them and they don't attempt to defraud me.

[randysauto01]

So everyone in the world that sells their own stuff privately and not on ebay is making a terrible decision? Guess I will have to rethink my opinions about yard sales.

[randysauto01]

Its not like ebay makes it difficult to get scammed, if anything they are one of the biggest enablers of scams there is.

[wrong66]

Are your yard sales done online? Quite a difference.

[randysauto01]

All ebay is is just an online yard sale. We used to list our engine control modules for 2007 ram 3500 diesel engines on ebay, I had 2 of them listed the same day and the next day both of them were bought. After the customer received them, they sent me a message with a proposition of selling them directly to them any time we got one in. They go for $800 a pop. 

This guy refurbishes them and sells them for considerably more. Why wouldn't I want to sell them to him? Not having to pay 14.35% to ebay everytime I sell one, not having to deal with INADs are 2 good reasons.

Were we risking the chances of a charge back? Yes. Could he have done a chargeback when he bought them on ebay? Yes. So why not take the chance and get my full $800 every time vs. giving up a percentage everytime.

We don't even list them anymore, he gave us a list of specific computers he will buy, every time we get one in, and we oblige him every time we get one in.

[a_c_green]

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@todorokitech wrote:

Is something sketchy going on? After some negotiation, a buyer bought and paid for my entire stock (qty 4) of a hard drive, then sent me the following message:

"Hey there!

We just bought these WD Blues from you.
If you have more of this stuff, we can probably do some good business. We're buying thousands of dollars in stuff daily.

---

They're clearly hoping to get more stuff from you at increasingly discounted prices. If you're getting good business from current eBay sales, I don't see any advantage here to selling off-eBay to someone who is simply going to keep haggling you lower and lower. (Their saying that they're buying "thousands of dollars in stuff daily" does not seem like a good strategic move since they're hoping to negotiate more bulk purchases from you at lower prices.)

That message is clearly a boilerplate text that they send to everyone that they buy from (and, just in my opinion, I really hate that fake friendly chit-chat tone of the message, as if you and they have become close personal friends on the basis of them buying something from you on the Internet).

I would just respond with something vague such as, "Thank you for your interest in our items. We're hoping to have more listed soon!" Inoffensive and non-committal at the same time, and since the original message was clearly being sent out in bulk anyway, I doubt that anyone on their side is really going to pursue you further with invitations for off-site sales, outside of you maybe receiving another copy of that same message if they buy another item from you.

If they really want your items, they will continue to buy them along with everyone else. (Maybe you should consider raising your prices a bit.) Good luck.

[luckythewinner]

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@todorokitech wrote:

Is something sketchy going on?

---

It is against eBay policy to use the eBay system to arrange off-eBay communication and off-eBay sales. 

So attempting to do that definitely qualifies as "sketchy" to me. 

But if you bought a "pay-as-you-go" burner phone, you could get a few hours of entertainment out of this. 

[randysauto01]

I don't believe the buyer was referencing any other listings, just putting it out there that if the seller were to come across or had other items not listed, that they would be interested in purchasing them before being listed. Or at least that's how I understood the conversation went. And then went into specifics of what they were looking for.

So its not really a violation of anything if they are inquiring about unlisted products.

The OP wasn't soliciting items, listed or unlisted to the buyer, and suggesting off site sales.

But I've been wrong before.