OT: Ebay experts

[trader_4]

I had a 6 year old Sony LCD TV that had a failing display so I replaced it and decided to part the old one out on Ebay. I had the stand listed for $49 plus shipping and someone just bought it. Here is the interesting part. The person who bought it is in Norway. Next bad thing is this person has zero feedback. Third bad thing is the person has only been an Ebay member for a day. Fourth odd thing is that it will wind up costing this person $120, you wouldn't think people would be so interested in buying a stand that comes with a TV for that price.

So, you would think it would be a scam. But I don't see how. I sold it as part of Ebays global ship program, where as a seller, all I have to do is ship it to an Ebay facility in the US, they then forward it on and handle the additional shipping costs, custom charges, etc. It was a buy it now and the payment has shown up in my Paypal account to cover the $49 cost and $15 US shipping portion.

So, any opinions? A lot of strange things there, but on the other hand I don't see an angle where a scammer can make any money. Only scenario I can possibly see is some kind of hacking fraud, somebody mad at their roommate, so they bought some thing on their account without them knowing, or similar. In which case, I should be OK, because it's fraud, but not by me.

Any thoughts?

[Retired]

If buyer is new to Ebay, they probably did not even notice the shipping issues. Watch for the sale to be canceled when buyer sees the additional freight costs.

Years ago my son, in California, put a kayak up for sale. First buyer was in Maine. Until buyer realized the shipping cost involved !!

[trader_4]

That's an interesting angle that I hadn't thought of. Someone that doesn't know what they are doing. But, with variable shipping, the way it works for is you put your zipcode/location in and it gives you the estimated shipping cost. I did that for Norway and that's how I got the $70 cost. The way Ebay works now, it looks like it automatically shows you the estimated shipping based on where you are, probably from your ship address in your profile. So, they could have missed the shipping costs I guess, but seems like it would be hard. I would think it would also be shown at checkout, but I guess that's another good question, how they handle that at checkout? I would think Ebay would have made them pay the full $125, with $65 going to me, $70 to Ebay to cover their portion of the shipping. So, it seems unlikely to me that they could have checked out, done the buy it now, paid for it, without knowing that it's ~$120 total.

The mystery continues.

[Taxed and Spent]

How was it paid for? Can there be a hitch? Then the guy sends you a "cashiers check" for more than the price and asks you to send him back the difference. Then you find out the "cashiers check" is bogus.

Time will tell. Please keep us posted.

[trader_4]

Paypal. So, the portion that goes to me is in my paypal account, but it's not cleared until either:

1- 21 days pass 2 - the seller gives me positive feedback 3 - 2 days after tracking info shows it was delivered

Usually #3 applies. But while I don't have it, it is with paypal and the buyer doesn't have it, can't get it back without disputing the deal, etc.

The #3 rule, brings us to another story. A friend bought a rather expensive bike on Ebay that was a good deal. Bike doesn't show up, seller took awhile to respond, finally says something about it was a shipping error, gives him a new tracking number. Still nothing shows up. Finally my friend figures out that he shipped something to a nearby hotel. So he goes over there and they say, yeah, we got two empty envelopes, don't know why, etc. The game this guy was playing was getting access to the money via rule #3. Of course you can only do that once, I guess you could sell as many expensive things as you can, take the money, before it blows up.

PS: I'm familiar with the check for more than the purchase price, send me the difference, etc scam. Then 2 weeks later you find out the check gets undone. The same friend who had the bike experience knows a guy who sold a guitar on Ebay and fell for that scam.

[Frank]

For getting back only a few bucks, I prefer to give stuff to Goodwill or have Best Buy take failed electronic stuff off my hands. There are places that will do ebay transactions for you but one here requires item fetch at least $75 and for low value items take a considerable percentage but you don't have the bother.

[Don Wiss]

I once listed an expensive camera on eBay. Long before Global Ship. An overseas person bought it. They paid for it with a hacked PayPal account. The owner of the hacked account got an e-mail and stopped it. Paypal locked my account for accepting the payment. The buyer hoped that I put it into the mail before I learned the funds were fraudulent. Because I could not accept Paypal for a while, I ended up selling it to a fellow in the neighborhood.

The Global Ship program confuses the buyer. You get tracking info showing it left the seller. They you see it was in an airplane. Then you get tracking info stating it was delivered by courier. No addresses. You think the package should be outside. Nope. That was just the tracking for getting it from the little airport to the big airport where it then gets shipped overseas.

I have one in transit now. But now I know that there are two tracking numbers, and to disregard the first. Looking at the second number I see it is now on AA Flight 107.

Don.

(e-mail link at home page bottom).

[trader_4]

That part I don't get. PP specifically says that there is seller protection against fraud like that. I've seen other horror stories, like a guy that says he had sold a lot of stuff, perfect feedback, so he sells a working smartphone and 2 weeks later, the buyer claims the phone is no good, that he took it to Verizon, they said it's no good etc. The seller knows it was working, so he figures that the skunk was trying to root it, etc and bricked it. He had stated in his Ebay listing that the buyer had 4 days to return it. But according to him, PP will reverse it anyway, up to 45 days later. That's what they did to him, and he was still out the Ebay fees, final value fee, etc. He got back a bricked phone that is worthless.

A friend knows a guy who sells records on Ebay. He's had problems with people who claim the record was scratched, figuring that the seller will just say keep it and refund the money, because it's not worth the cost of paying for return shipping to get a record back that you know the buyer will have scratched.

My package is going out tomorrow, so we'll see what happens next.

The buyer hoped that I put it into

[Don Wiss]

But if I had put the camera in the mail, the overseas buyer would have had a free camera. That is all he cared about.

With the Global Shipping Program presumably the fraud could be stopped before it gets all the way. You aren't going to stop a package traveling through the post office.

Many sellers of cameras and electronics make it clear they do not ship overseas.

Oh look. AA Flight 107 landed and the package cleared customs 22 minutes ago.

Don.

(e-mail link at home page bottom).

[DerbyDad03]

I bought a 10 ft Werner aluminum step ladder on eBay from a seller that lives 350 miles from me. $60, no charge for shipping...because I picked it up.

As it happened, the seller lived about 20 miles from my parent's house. I contacted the seller and asked him if he would hold it for a month if I paid it him for it right then.

He said sure, so when I went to visit my parents for the holidays, I stopped by the seller's house, strapped the ladder to the top of my van and brought it home. I guess he could have ripped me off, but he didn't and I got a great deal on a really good ladder.

[Robert Green]

I've seen that before - someone looking for part X searches Google, finds the item on Ebay, has to join to buy and thus has no feedback. Lots of stuff like this goes for more than you would expect, especially if it's older and someone has an interest in the exact same replacment part for size or other reasons. That could easily be true of a TV inset within a custom entertainment center.

On the other hand, you might get his old broken stand back after he claims you shipped it that way.

I've read a lot of bad feedback reports - and even though I have tons of stuff that I *could* part out - those types of transactions frequently seem to end up in the buyer claiming the "Parts Only" warnings were absent or not prominent.

I just trashed a NEC SCSI 7 disk CD changer that cost about $500 way back when because it's got very little residual value. Tried to set it up as an audio CD player but will only play CDs, not CDR or CDRWs (or MP3, etc.). It's really beautifully engineered, too. My entire inventory of spare PC parts is going that way. Who needs 10Mb Arcnet cards or 250Mb full size tape backups?

[CRNG]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2016 13:38:49 -0700 (PDT), trader_4 wrote in

Looks good t me. Ship it.

[Wade Garrett]

I've sold a lot of stuff on Ebay over the years from high-dollar electronics to $10 items and all transactions except a handful went smoothly. Most of my problems came from really stupid and/or unreasonable buyers rather than scammers.

But this one guy claimed the Macbook I shipped him had a scratched screen and a dead battery. It didn't, and it wasn't.

He filed a claim with Ebay who investigated, looked at my 10 year spotless feedback rating as a seller, looked at his, and found in my favor.

[Don Wiss]

Things like that I give away for free on Craigslist.

Don.

(e-mail link at home page bottom).

[Micky]

That one I think is the banks' fault, for saying the check has cleared in 2 or 3 days, whatever they say, without mentioning what might go wrong.

10 or 20 years ago, the government iirc insisted that they clear checks more quickly, I think because they were making lots of interest on the money while it was in neither the maker or the payee's account, but they didn't tell the banks to describe it like nothing can go wrong.

[Micky]

I bought a bunch of 78rpm record albums. I only wanted the albums but the guy put in records so he could ship a media rate. I thought he sold records frequently, but he put the records IN the sleeves and half of them ripped slits in the bottom of the sleeves (the half where the sleeves were upright and the records pushed through the bottom.)

I complained and he offered to take them back, including iirc the cost of shipping but not the effort, or give me back half the price. I took the second offer but I'm still annoyed. I tried to find matching tape but they look terrible. But I'm tired of shopping.

[Micky]

Do you know what method was used to pay Paypal?

[Don Wiss]

How are you so sure that you won't get stuck with the additional $105 in shipping? I would not have shipped it until I had full payment for all shipping costs.

Don.

(e-mail link at home page bottom).

[trader_4]

It is an interesting problem, especially in a age when you can track a package step by step as it moves around the world. But somehow these check scammers know how to work the system. I guess they can write a phony check on someone's account and then it goes unnoticed until that person notices the money gone and reports it to the bank, at which point it comes undone.

[trader_4]

Seems I said it was PP right there.