Gator08041971 • Volunteer Community Mentor 2024
albertabrightalberta | Volunteer Community Mentor
There are some of these shipping scams going around, yes.
But filing an INR will not work as the tracking number they provide eBay shows a delivery and usually gets denied.
What needs to be done is to get an official statement from your local USPS office on their official letterhead stating the package was not sent to your address, and does not match the expected size/weight of your package. They will not tell you where it was delivered in most cases. (they have a rule about that) But they can confirm if it was a real package or if it was a faked/duplicated tracking number, things like that.
Then once you have that information, you have to reach out to eBay here, be sure you mention its a tracking scam:
On each Ebay page there is a link to contact Customer Service at the top of the page and again at the bottom of the page.
I would suggest that you contact Ebay for Business on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter for the better trained CSRs.
Here are your options for contacting Ebay Customer Service. Please be aware that for social media CS, you send them a Private Message and briefly explain what your problem or issue is. Feel free to leave your Name, address, phone number and/or your email address in this message. It is private and secure and it may help to speed up the response for you.
https://twitter.com/askebay
https://www.facebook.com/ebay
https://www.instagram.com/ebayforsellers/
Your options will be on the left. If you use the link below you can only get to the Automated Assistant or Chat box type AGENT in the box and hit enter. You will then get more options. Not all options are available 24/7. It will depend on staffing available. So sometimes you can request a call back and sometimes you can't. Sometimes you have the Chat option available and other times it won't be. If it is important to you to use one of those options, just try back later.
If you use a cell phone or other mobile device, you may need to turn off your Spam filter so that Ebay can call you.
If you are a seller outside of the US or Canada, you will need to use the Chat Option.
https://www.ebay.com/help/eua?id=5275&mkevt=1&mkpid
https://www.ebay.com/help/home
Try not to file an INR at this point. Contact eBay directly first using one of the above methods, be sure to mention Tracking Scam.
Lmao imagine telling customers they need to go to the post office and get official letters and then contact customer service and wait around until cs reaches out. That's absurd. If this happened to me I'm doing a not as described and skipping all the hassle of hours of my time wasted dealing with an issue that isn't mine as a buyer. I learned on this forum that doing a not as described is what gets results. Actually looking at this color coded chart sellers share with each other on here from time to time I might choose missing parts or pieces but the sellers say any of the red ones are the ones that guarantee a return and or refund. Of course reach out to the seller first and see what they are saying about what is going on.
@youn2240 wrote:Lmao imagine telling customers they need to go to the post office and get official letters and then contact customer service and wait around until cs reaches out. That's absurd. If this happened to me I'm doing a not as described and skipping all the hassle of hours of my time wasted dealing with an issue that isn't mine as a buyer. I learned on this forum that doing a not as described is what gets results. Actually looking at this color coded chart sellers share with each other on here from time to time I might choose missing parts or pieces but the sellers say any of the red ones are the ones that guarantee a return and or refund. Of course reach out to the seller first and see what they are saying about what is going on.
Yeah, I went to the post office. I tried that route, when I asked them What address did my package get sent to? They told me to pound sand?
@ab-stuff wrote:I don’t believe I said he was faking tracking numbers, because they are legitimate tracking numbers, just not associated with my address.
This is correct and what the commonly referred to "fake tracking" scam is. A more correct term would be "invalid tracking" as the number is legit but the item is addressed to another address in the same zip code.
@ab-stuff wrote:when postman delivers, it marks delivered, eBay notifies me it has been delivered, just no address associated with it, and the post office won’t give me or you the address to where the package went
You're correct in saying that USPS won't give you the actual name and address to which it was delivered but they are able to give you documentation that it was not delivered to your name and address.
Sometimes you have to reach the right postal employee to get what you need.
@youn2240 wrote:Lol go back to the p.o. and spend more time at the post office to get a refund of money that was scammed from you.... Or just click on one of the red options. eBay isn't going to pay buyers for their investigations into the scammers so I don't know why buyers would waste their time doing so. I wouldn't I'd click one of the red options so fast if I a seller was trying to make me into a victim of a scam. It's apparently all over the sellers feedback they keep doing this. How many hours of customers time in total is needed before eBay kicks off the scammer?
I know you love to argue but there are times when we (as buyers) make mistakes. Yes, there's no doubt that the seller is in the wrong, whether they are a scammer or whether they made an honest error, but in these cases, we do have a bit more work to do.
I recently had my own "fake"/invalid/tracking situations with a UPS scam. Yes, it took more time and stress than I'd wanted but like the OP agreed, this was my mistake for not vetting the seller carefully.
With UPS, I couldn't get a human but through their Facebook, I was able to get the documentation I needed to get my refund:
The thing is, I'm a fairly savvy ebayer and it happened to me. I do wish there was a better way but until there's a better way to prevent the scams, this is the best we have.
