Problem Ebay Buyer- Need Advice from Auction Vets

[monash65]

Decided to ask at CAG since I find the people here generally more trustworthy than official ebay shills. So anyway, I'm a fairly low volume ebay user, with a perfect feedback score of over 170 positives (from a little buying/mostly selling). I have heard the horror stories about shipping overseas, so all of my auctions are strictly US bidders only.

One of my items closed yesterday for $130. When I got the final closing email from ebay, I noticed the buyer wasn't a persons name but some kind of company instead. I googled the name and to my horror came up with all kinds of online posts from different sellers who have had bad experiences with this buyer. Turns out it is a package "forwarding" type company, with multiple similar sounding user IDs on ebay, that buys lots of different things in the US, using an address on file with ebay based in the US (that's why even though I checked the ebay box that says I don't sell to overseas bidders, the bid wasn't automatically rejected). But it seems the company is actually sending these items on to other customers overseas in Asia.

The buyer has lots of feedback, all positive, but I have learned that this is only because of the stupid policy that prevents sellers from being able to leave negative feedbacks for bad buyers. I know the buyer is shady because there are so many people online who have had problems with them. Basically, even if the seller has proof of delivery, there are many times that the buyer has wrongly convinced ebay/paypal that the item was not received, or not as described, or damaged, and then the buyer demands a full refund. Basically, I don't feel at all comfortable sending the item, after reading various horror stories from sellers who got scammed (i.e. minus the item, minus the money since paypal later refunded it, and given a negative feedback from that buyer). If I do send it, I am fairly confident that there will be a problem down the line where the buyer contacts me again for a refund and I'll never see the item again. Even if I have tracking/delivery confirmation, I know that I'm still going to be at a disadvantage. It seems like it's just not enough; in ebay's eyes the buyer is always right.

Buyer hasn't sent payment yet (apparently, one common thing the previous sellers noticed is that the buyer sometimes takes several days to pay). So my quesion is, what should I do? At this point, with the auction closed but no payment received yet, can I just not send the item, and somehow cancel the sale? And if he does send the payment, I could just refund the money in full. Could I say the item was "broken" or something and that's why I can't send it? And what's the worst that could happen if I don't do my part to honour the sale- the buyer leaves me a negative feedback and ebay keeps the final value fees? Is there anything else ebay could do to penalize me for not sending the item? Wondering what I can do to minimize my losses here. It would be awesome if I could get out of sending this and still get ebay to give me my fees back (about $14) but I don't know how to do that.

I really, really don't want to send the item because of the strong possibility I'll get scammed. But, I also plan to sell quite a few more items and could do without a negative feedback tarnishing my otherwise spotless rep and pushing potential buyers away. First thing I plan to do is put the company and all the different variant IDs on my blocked bidders list, so it can't cause any other headaches for me. This is the first time I've encountered anything like this, so any advice from ebay vets would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Weaver1497]

Hey,

Just recently sold a lot of my games on eBay. Also put up an auction for a gift card, (NEVER do this, EVER) the top bidder on the gift card had hijacked someone else's account and was over bidding on the face value amount. You would then mail/send the code, they would send payment then whomever's account it was would claim they were all fraudulent purchases, would be refunded they money and you would be without the gift card code. 

Here's where the story gets interesting. I did some Sherlocking similar to you and found that this guy I previously described was hijacking the winning account. I called eBay, and explained to them the issue and that I was going to cancel the auction because not only was I being scammed but 4 other users were as well. After waiting on hold for 2 hours and repeatedly being asked to speak with a Manager (Still waiting on the call back, have been for 45 days). I finally was told to "open a case" and simply say the item "was no longer for sale", I chose to not enter any other details which I would recommend, less is more in this case. The winning bidder has about 3 days to reply, if they don't reply the final value credit isn't charged to you and it's like the item was never up for auction.

Now if the winning bidder throws a fit and says "ship it to me", keep saying "it's no longer for sale". That's all you have to say. Hopefully it works out man .The worst part of this story, is I was trying to make the eBay community better by shining a light on a stolen account, eBay wanted NO part of it. I had to handle it myself, like they say no good deed goes unpunished. 

 

[monash65]

Thanks for the input, and sorry you had that crappy experience. Sounds like a similar scam, except with gift card codes instead of physical items.

Unless something else unexpected happens, I'm going to do exactly what you mentioned: open a case, say it's "no longer for sale" (without elaborating any further than that), and see if the buyer replies. In the meantime, if they send Paypal payment at any time, I'll refund in full. Worst case scenario, I get one negative feedback and I'm out $14 if ebay don't refund the fees.

Oh, and I've heard about those ebay phone assistance experiences, one thing I definitely don't plan on doing is calling them. The thing that gets me is how there are all these protections in place that would allow a buyer to get away with something like this. I mean, there are so many non payers and liars and other jerks out there, not being able to leave a negative feedback about a buyer is one of the most unfair things they could do to a seller. If they did allow it, this guys feedback would have been swarming with negatives and I would have been able to cancel his bid before auction end, and I wouldn't be sitting here, worrying about my rep (and potential income) being negatively affected, or about paying a final fee that I shouldn't be paying.

The thing that really makes me mad is, the posts I found about this buyer are from 2013, 2012, and even 2011. Despite most of the sellers complaining to ebay about this and reporting the buyer's behaviour, this company is STILL operating with the same user names (has at least 8-10 different usernames on ebay, some of which are only different by a digit or two, which is sort of a dead giveaway that the buyer is sketchy as hell even without the other evidence). Thanks again for posting.

 

[monash65]

So I opened the case, looks like the buyer has 7 days to respond. And now I wait...

 

[mask.air.raid]

I stopped selling after this kind of crap happened three times within 30 days.

The way I see it now, I was fortunate for my 30+ sales that had no problems.

One guy used a business address as a residential address and he kept the package for a few days then somehow got USPS to RTS. I lost money.

eBay doesn't want to help. They just told me to take the loss and get over it.

Cancel the transaction now if you feel like you could lose this money.

Another reseller tried to get me to use different bubble mailers so he could just attach labels to them and I got negative feedback for shipping a well packaged group of games.

That one got me closer to quitting.

Maybe we should try eCrater.

 

[QiG]

I've been selling on Amazon lately, anyone have feedback on the security of doing business there?

 

[GBAstar]

The reason there are "horror" stories about your reshipper is because they do tens of thousands of transactions a year across their ID's (some do hundreds of thousands). Of course there are going to be problems and most are from sellers who don't know what they are doing--and then blame it on the buyer.

Ship it with delivery confirmation and if you're worried about the package getting lost or damaged add insurance.

I mean buy gets 100's of negatives a month because of their large volume size and I'm sure I'd read about all kinds of horror stories about them but it wouldn't sway me from purchasing an item from their eBay store.

 

[.......]

I've been selling on Amazon lately, anyone have feedback on the security of doing business there?

The buyer is always right, period. If you get a chargeback or an A-Z claim for a "not as described item" you will most likely lose the money (and your item!) and Amazon will give you a mark against your record. This is regardless of whether the buyer is lying or not. Thankfully, most buyers are good, and this doesn't happen very often, but everyone seems to run into a scammer eventually.