@lux.ra_14 wrote:
Easy to see how this could work as a simple con. A scammer could send hundreds of messages on just-sold listings.
He "could"? They absolutely do. 😉 They hope that the seller will not notice that the message is not coming from the actual user ID of the buyer. There are bot procedures that simply monitor the newly-appearing Sold listings in various high-scam categories such as smartphones and laptops, and fire off messages in bulk to as many sellers as possible before eBay detects the scam account and shuts it down.
Something I have noticed recently (and this is no more than a vague theory of mine, but): it seems like eBay might be delaying the visibility of recently-sold listings for, say, 12-24 hours or so, perhaps to give sellers the chance to get their sold items on the way to the real buyer before the scam messages have a chance to roll in. I notice that often we'll have a question from a seller about something that they sold earlier today or late yesterday, but when pulling up a list of their Sold items, there's nothing newer than maybe two days ago to be seen there.
