Strange buyer behavior experience - anyone else?

[rei-npkrlma]

Had a buyer do the most odd thing and when I saw it, red flags went up all over the place.

Here's what happened. I get a sale. Great! I go to start preparing it for shipping and I get another and another... boom....boom...six purchases OF THE VERY SAME ITEM one after the other.  Six was all I had left, so now I know this is going to stop. I was logged in, I saw this all going on and by this point, I'm getting extraordinarily supsicious.

I go to "view my sales" and lo and behold  the name and address is exactly the same on each sale. BUT, each sale had a different variation of the buyers user name. In other words, there were 6 different user names, 6 separate purchases, all for the same item.  I found this odd and frankly, was afraid to process the orders out of a horrid fear of some serious trouble brewing.

I really didn't want to process those orders so I called eBay CS. Luckily I had someone who took a look at what happnened and actually understood my concerns. He said the only thing I could do is process each order separately to fulfill my sales but I was so worried I asked if I could cancel them instead w/o any negative repercussions. He said sure, I could do that and to use the "Something wrong with buyer's address" when I cancelled.  He also suggested I pick one user name out of the six (CS rep said the person used the same email address) and send a message informing the buyer I was cancelling (right-o, makes sense) and requesting the buyer purchase all 6 in one purchase so I could combine the shipping.

Oh - the CS rep also sais this buyer was using the guest checkout. But still, why not just put 6 in the quantity and get them all in one shipment? Who would want to do six separate transactions for the very same item from the very same seller?

I did message the buyer as the rep suggested. Then I proceeded to cancel each sale. I never heard back from this mysterious buyer. I haven't relisted the item as yet because I don't want this character to do this all over again, but I'm really wondering:

1) What is the buyers end game?

2) Has anyone else experienced this and if so, how did you handle it?

I'm super concerned that this is a scam of sorts, but for the life of me, can't figure it out.  A couple of days prior to this occurence I had a similar situation but the person only bought 2 of the same item to the same address with different user names and I did follow through shipping them, but I'm still  concerned something is going to come back to bite me on them.

Thanks if you made it through this whole post - I tried to condense but I seem to have trouble doing that sometimes. . .

[plumbingspecials]

The game is to open an unauthorized charge in Paypal (not in eBay) after the item is delivered. Seller is protected, buyer is protected, so who's paying for these fraudulent orders? Paypal, and then maybe they will understand that people are not always honest, and they can take proper steps to make our accounts more secure!

Beware of this, though, for the time being, especially with pricey items. I've had a slew of problems with a particular type of item I had listed. Three dozen fraudulent orders, eBay and Paypal have been made aware, but the theft does not stop. 

[sharingtheland]

Additionally, it is unlikely you would receive a response to your message when a member is having difficulty navigating the site as it appears was the case here.

Why is this shopping site so difficult to navigate in the first place(now)?

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Every year at this time I am shopping on websites, many for the first time, based on the lists presented to me by the offspring.   I don't have a clue what those F buttons at the top of the keyboard do/mean but I somehow manage to navigate and purchase, with ease, as a guest at those other places.

[gramophone-georg]

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@sharingtheland wrote:

Additionally, it is unlikely you would receive a response to your message when a member is having difficulty navigating the site as it appears was the case here.

Why is this shopping site so difficult to navigate in the first place(now)?

-------

Every year at this time I am shopping on websites, many for the first time, based on the lists presented to me by the offspring.   I don't have a clue what those F buttons at the top of the keyboard do/mean but I somehow manage to navigate and purchase, with ease, as a guest at those other places.

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Amazing, ain't it? Only eBay requires study and experimentation to use. Only  eBay!

[ted_200]

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@ittybitnot wrote:

but I feel that you may have been given inappropriate guidance on these transactions...

Ya think?   

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I think he thinks cancelling 6 sales is "sub-optimal" for eBay.  I don't think CS giving advice that results in 6 defects for the seller is really much of a concern. 

Apparently no one ever gives any thought at all to making eBay work in a manner that would entirely aviod issues like this to begin with. 

[castlemagicmemories]

Sounds weird, I know, OP.

But this might be someone who just doesn't know how things work, OR they bought one, and then thought of someone else, and so on, and so on...

Hard to say.  

[chicboutique31]

it does sound very odd but possibly they are buying to resell them at a higher price and with different ID'S you wont be able to notice???? hhmmm,,,,

[buyselljack2016]

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@chicboutique31 wrote:

it does sound very odd but possibly they are buying to resell them at a higher price and with different ID'S you wont be able to notice???? hhmmm,,,,

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all shipping to the same address

[femmefan1946]

The best part was my mother's immediate response while being held at gunpoint in front of 100 people.  She looked at my father and said, "What have you done now?"

A sign of a happy marriage.

I've gotten DH out of a few tickets (speeding on empty roads, headlights off, that sort of thing) by bawling him out when the cop approaches the car. If the cop is married, DH only gets a warning.

[berserkerplanet]

Did you check out the address? Is it deliverable? (Google Earth, USPS address checker, FedEx label page address check, etc)

Curious what happens if you google buyer's name, address, and/or email address, or see what the website I showed above says about the name or email address. Most of the time nothing shows up, but sometimes it does.