Hello everyone,
I'll start off by saying that I am a long-time eBay seller and buyer, but I sell infrequently. I stupidly sold a CPU on October 21, to a buyer with zero feedback, against my better judgement. The CPU was brand new and sealed. Shortly after the sale, I discovered that eBay had suspended the buyer's account.
About a week after the item was delivered to the buyer's PayPal address in San Diego, the buyer filed an INAD claim on PayPal, stating that "the item i received is a defective item. it will not power on at all. i checked everything but it just doesn't work. i power it on but nothing happens, not even any beeps that indicate it is running. it is completely dead on arrival." Yeah, right (sarcasm off).
The buyer provided a USPS tracking number, a shipping label was created with origin in "Islandia, NY" wth, NY? To cut a long story short, I never received the item, and according to the Post Office, the item was delivered to a different address within my zip code. Very old scam, which I sadly found out about too late. My local post office cannot provide a scan of the address that the package was delivered to, due to privacy concerns. In the meantime, the buyer was "refunded" their payment, and I am out a nearly $400.00 CPU. And to add insult to injury, the payment was deducted from my PayPal account.
I have filed police reports in San Diego and my local town. I have also filed a report with the US Postal Inspectors, the CA Attorney General's office, and IC3.
Has anyone encountered this scam recently, or a variation of it? If so, were you able to successfully get your money back?
