This is one for the record books, guys. Maniac created/used 6 accounts to retaliate for negative FB

[jacevoid]

I want to start out by saying that the ONLY reason I am posting this is as a WARNING to anyone who thinks eBay will protect their account in any way from retaliatory activity, and to TAKE PEOPLES' ADVICE ON HERE AND USE A SECOND ACCOUNT FOR BUYING!!! Here is my almost month long ordeal of dealing with a real, live psychopath on eBay.

Sorry in advance for how long this is, because of all the twists and turns and how long it's been going on:

Anyway, here goes. October 29th, purchased a listing for some Microsoft software I planned to resell on eBay. A few minutes later, my order was canceled. Sent email asking why my order was canceled, and promptly received brusque reply: "I don't sell to resellers". OK, based on my experienced, that is 99% proof he is selling counterfeits.  I replied back to that effect and did not hear anything back.

Against my better judgment, later that afternoon, I left negative feedback to the effect of "seller canceled order with bogus excuse, probably selling fakes, F-".

A couple hours later that same evening, received a order of one my cheapest store items (older version of Adobe Photoshop Elements for 19.99 with free shipping). Let's say your ship to name on your buying side of eBay was your business name, like Acme Inc, instead of using your personal name. Well, this brand new buyer's ID was basically "AcmeIncsuucks" (looks like he threw a couple extra U's in there to avoid profanity filters). The only way for him to have gotten that "Acme Inc" name was to have sold something to me, namely that order he canceled earlier under his main seller account ID.

So anyway, I knew what was going on now (obviously). I waited, and then shortly afterwards, he requested a cancellation, which I granted. I think what he was planning was to order an item, request and get cancellation, and then leave negative feedback. Apparently he was unaware that this is not allowed when the buyer initiates the cancel request, but he learned quickly, as he never tried it again.

That ID was suspended at some point, I believe by eBay's automated systems (not by a real person).

Over the next week, using his REAL first name every time and a variety of made up last names, he proceeded to order more Elements software and have them ALL shipped to the same address, which was the address on that "AcmeIncsuucks" ID as well, btw. He wasn't even trying to hide, truth be told. He was just trying to avoid auto suspensions from eBay's system. For example, let's say his name was Fred. Well, one of his buying ID's used the name "Fred Frederick". He works at a subsidiary of a very well known, large HMO in Minnesota. Several of his ID's used last names made up from his company's name, like "Fred Humana", for example. The phone numbers were all just stolen out of the yellow pages, some of them from local business a couple miles from where I live. He also even used personal info like my LLC name in one of his buyer ID's.

On top of that, two of those ID's had positive feedbacks left buy the same seller that stated "won and never paid". The other three ID's had penny auction positive feedback from the SAME SELLER in NY, some jewelry dealer. Like I said, he wasn't even really trying to hide what he was doing.

At this point, I pretty much knew what was going to happen and I was talking to eBay constantly in a state of panic. All the reps said don't worry, we know what's going on, we agree this is not right, we'll take care of it. Needless to say, after "AcmeIncsuucks" was suspended, NO other action was taken on his made up accounts.

I want to point out that not all of these accounts were brand new ones. I believe two of them were literally 5 years old, like he kept them in storage in case he needed to wreak havoc with anyone.

So then the return requests started. All of them claiming the item was counterfeit, all written in the same manner (as if by the same person, obviously). Five in total. I was talking to eBay supervisors and reps several times a day. All said we're taking care of it, we're filing reports with Trust & Safety backend, etc etc. At one point, a supervisor actually got TWO of his buying ID's suspended, ONLY TO HAVE THOSE ID'S GET COMPLETELY REINSTATED A FEW HOURS LATER.

Also, around this time, HE GOT THE FEEDBACK I INITIALLY LEFT REMOVED, and I got a WARNING for feedback extortion (!!!). All the people I spoke to at eBay could not tell me why it happened except to say it should not have happened and the feedback I left was totally fine and compliant with eBay rules.

Around now, I got three escalations on three of those returns, all of which were naturally approved minutes later. He never even had to send these ones back, just got a full refund to his fake accounts and kept the items.

The chilling thing about these returns was the cordial, almost conversational tone in the buyer messages. Like you were talking to someone at the coffee stand you buy coffee from every morning. The returns even used phrases like "good evening". It distinctly reminded me of a movie where the bad guy is very polite and cordial until he slits someone's throat because of some minor thing they did to displease him.

I had it at this point. I hired an attorney and had a cease & desist letter created and mailed to his work address (where he was having the fake buyer ID's registered), and his actual home address, which wasn't hard to find. I also consulted a harassment attorney in case more action was needed. Total cost for this: $1600.

I did this to prevent negative feedbacks from being left, and it worked. He didn't do any of that and didn't create more ID's, but he did persist on the returns and got one more escalated (I did not approve that one because one supervisor said that particular return wouldn't be covered anyway under buyer protection, but it was bad info).

So yep at this point, NO ACTION  has been taken against any of these ID's, they are all still active and very obviously the same person (even a two year old could figure this out). My warning to you all: EBAY DOESN'T GIVE A FLYING YOU KNOW WHAT. 3k in fees every month and they just let this psychopath do whatever he wants while they lie to you on the phone and promise to take action and take care of it. About the only think eBay actually did was remove the defects for the escalated cases.

So yep I've talked to what seems like every single person at eBay, I have escalated to a dozen different "backend" departments, I have reached out to eBay's social media team (of course, they promised an investigation etc etc). Not a single thing has been done so far, all his ID's are perfectly fine as far as I can see. Ironically, if you google the ID that started all this, the one I bought from, the only result that comes up is a blog post warning people not to buy from him because he sells fake USB flash drives.

[city*satins]

Half of you people are actually more worried about this psychopath than about the people he victimizes. I bet you don't even think he did anything wrong and it was all my fault. Isn't there something seriously wrong with this picture?

Yes. Your reckless language.

[frenzy.finds]

The OP was never trying to buy fake product.

From the OP's opening post, he only suspected that the seller was selling fake product after the seller cancelled the order, citing that he didn't sell to resellers.  Hypothetically, if one was selling fake product, one would choose to sell to multiple people who might not notice till it was too late, rather than a reseller who would presumably be familiar enough to spot a fake on the spot. Again, hypothetically.

The OP noted in later posts that the pictures shown appeared to be authentic, but he did notice that the one area of the box that would give it away was not shown.

[jacevoid]

Sorry, but where do you get off leaving a feedback accusing someone of selling fakes without having any evidence? That is reprehensible.

There is plenty of evidence he is selling fakes, which I discovered after he did the cancellation

1. other reports I found online of him selling various counterfeit products. (now you can accuse me of "doxxing" him)

2. His refusal to sell to a reseller. Why not sell to a reseller? Because counterfeit sellers know that resellers tend to be able to spot counterfeits easily and create returns and trouble for them.

3. A history of selling large quantities of this item with no legitimate way to acquire these. When I say no legitimate way, I mean there is NO out of channel way to get these things in this quantity and sell them at that price. There is simply isn't, short of stealing them directly from Best Buy's inventory shelves.

The only thing reprehensible here is your behavior and support of this lunatic. You should apologize.

You ran into a seller that wasn't going to let you get away with it without repurcussion

Get away with what? Legitimately leaving feedback that he deserved? I suppose you think he is the victim here? I don't remember what he did being a eBay-condoned method of resolving disputes.

Sounds like you expected Ebay to clean up the mess you created.

It was unwise to leave FB for this maniac, but certainly within my rights, and certainly within eBay's responsibility to clean up the mess HE created (not me).  I suppose you feel he was completely in the right to create accounts in fake names to create fraudulent returns.

What the heck is wrong with you? I would sincerely like to know. Are you one of those people who says a women deserves sexual assault because she was wearing "provocative" clothing?

I agree with you that the guy sounds like a bit of a psycho, but he's not the only one.

Let me me guess, I am the other psycho? I truly wonder about you.

You could have just left a negative saying " Seller cancelled order..." the rest of your feedback was completely libelous.

First of all, my feedback was completely accurate and correct. Second, I am sure Mr. Sanity here would have just left it all alone if I had not put in the part about fakes. Yeah, sure buddy!

[tegr_5867]

General reply: Having read this entire thread, I see two sellers who richly deserve each other

[jacevoid]

Thank you frenzy.finds. At least someone READ what I actually wrote.

I will no longer post on these forums after I get the attention of the eBay employees someone else mentioned. The toxicity here makes the darker areas of reddit look civilized by comparison. The people siding with the psychopath who attacked me should be ashamed of themselves, but are quite obviously no longer able to feel that particular emotion.

[city*satins]

What the heck is wrong with you? I would sincerely like to know. Are you one of those people who says a women deserves sexual assault because she was wearing "provocative" clothing?

Please don't drag sexual assault into this narrative and play what-about with it.

But Hillary's emails!

You are mistaking criticism of your conduct for condoning/defense of the seller's.  That is not what's going on.

[jacevoid]

You are mistaking criticism of your conduct for condoning/defense of the seller's. That is not what's going on.

Really? Because he canceled my order without cause (or rather, a sleazy reason to escape detection of what he is doing), and he sells counterfeits. Which is exactly what my feedback said. So what was wrong with my conduct?

[city*satins]

---

@jacevoid wrote:

You are mistaking criticism of your conduct for condoning/defense of the seller's. That is not what's going on.

Really? Because he canceled my order without cause (or rather, a sleazy reason to escape detection of what he is doing), and he sells counterfeits. Which is exactly what my feedback said. So what was wrong with my conduct?

---

Perhaps if you reread the posts that enraged and outraged you, and look for information instead of a reason to cast aspersions on the posters, this will become evident to you.   It's all right there in the posts. You just have to read for content.

[jacevoid]

Perhaps if you reread the posts that enraged and outraged you, and look for information instead of a reason to cast aspersions on the posters, this will become evident to you. It's all right there in the posts. You just have to read for content.

Apparently my mortal sin was not just rolling over and letting this maniac do whatever he wanted as justified revenge for the neg he received.

You know, your signature is rather ironic.

[city*satins]

You know, your signature is rather ironic.

When you've finished reading the posts for content, we can talk about irony, if you like.  For now, I would advise against spreading yourself too thin.

[jacevoid]

I read every post carefully.

Quite frankly, I'm concerned some of you may take it upon yourselves to "complete" the maniac's work, since you sympathize with him and consider him the victim. I've asked a moderator to close and delete this topic.

[city*satins]

---

@jacevoid wrote:

I read every post carefully.

Quite frankly, I'm concerned some of you may take it upon yourselves to "complete" the maniac's work, since you sympathize with him and consider him the victim. I've asked a moderator to close and delete this topic.

---

The moderator will likely oblige part of your request and close the topic.  It's unlikely that the thread will disappear completely.

[ersatz_sobriquet]

Alright. Since hindsight is always 20/20, let's just say--in the future, why don't you research the seller before purchasing? Because if something is too good to be true, then...it's too good to be true, right? 

You claim that there is no way this seller could be selling this software(?) at that price and quantity  unless it was fake or stolen.

So why oh why were you trying to buy from him? 

Nobody is condoning what he did. But we do have the right to question what you are doing, and why. 

[jacevoid]

I look quickly at feedback and that sort of thing like any other buyer. Most counterfeit sellers are newish accounts anyway, not old ones.

But we're talking about a highly competitive segment where there are ten other buyer/resellers waiting to pounce on the item the instant it shows up on eBay. I know of one guy who uses BIN immediately on everything he sees and just opens returns constantly (and leaves nasty negatives) if he doesn't receive exactly what he "thought" was being sold.

There was no way to know anything about this guy, or how he'd behave, beforehand. His feedback is just fine SPECIFICALLY because he refuses to sell to resellers. That way, six months down the road when that end user figures out his software is fake, he has no recourse!

Obviously I wish I would have left things alone and not triggered this individual. I didn't do anything wrong, but it certainly wasn't wise to do it, either.

[ersatz_sobriquet]

Yeah, I'm just thinking of what you could do differently in the future to avoid this type of issue. I would research the seller quickly before buying. If there's that many fakes out there, researching the seller is a MUST DO before purchasing. Yes I know you want to grab it before somebody else gets to it if authentic, but it's not worth the hassle if counterfeit, so do your homework, even if it takes a few minutes. Minutes spent could save $1600...after all. 

On that note, I bought a windows 10 disc to wipe a computer I've lost the password to. How do I know if it's fake? It looks authentic, well, at least the printing on the disc does...