Last Monday, I wrote about Six Things I’ve Resold Lately. In that post, I explained my sourcing strategy and shared some recent wins. While reselling has been my main point-accumulation strategy since years ago when I only had a single Capital One Venture card for rewards, it’s not without its pitfalls. This week, we look at someone who tried to scam me over the weekend and how I try to stay ahead.
Ebay/Fleabay
I’ve been buying and selling stuff on eBay since 1998. I’ve bought and sold everything from baseball cards to classic cars. While it can be a great marketplace, it can also be deserving of its other, less flattering moniker “fleabay“. Unfortunately, scammers come out of the woodwork in many forms: there are those who steal credit cards or steal legitimate PayPal/eBay accounts to pay, those who claim they never received an item, those who try to fool you into shipping something to the wrong destination, and those who think of something new tomorrow. This weekend, a scammer tried a new (to me) version of an old scheme.
The buy-and-switch
Over the weekend, we sold an item from my wife’s eBay account. It was a $300 item — not incredibly expensive, but certainly not cheap. She received an eBay message shortly after the buyer paid:
A buyer requesting an item to be shipped to a location other than whatever is loaded into PayPal is a major red flag. eBay and PayPal operate as two separate entities, so you need to be sure you’re within the most constrictive rules for full seller protection. PayPal makes seller protection pretty simple.
On the PayPal transaction details page, you will see the word “confirmed” in green if the address has been confirmed by PayPal (whatever that means). If you hover over the question mark next to “confirmed” for more information, PayPal reminds you of the policy written above:
That’s not very ambiguous. You must ship to the exact address listed on the PayPal payment to be protected. If you ship to a different address and the buyer claims they never received the item, you are likely to lose when they open a “never received” case and you would then be out both the item and the money. That’s not to say that you can’t try to make the argument that the buyer requested you ship it to another address by showing a copy of the eBay message. But the terms of the policy make it clear that you’re not protected in that case.
Of course, PayPal’s protection isn’t quite as good as it sounds. Here’s the “confirmed” address from which I copied the info above:
That’s our buyer who bought the $300 item. Notice that the address includes two different city/state/zip combinations — one in Delaware and one in Wyoming. PayPal says I must ship to that address (goodness knows how they confirmed it) to receive seller protection. In addition to the high probability of the package being lost in the mail if I sent it addressed that way, here is what eBay had to say about printing a shipping label to that address:
And this is where eBay fails the seller. I can definitely see where the casual Ebay seller might not know what to do next. eBay does not provide a clear link to cancel a transaction. The only options shown were to print a label, leave feedback, or contact the buyer. If you didn’t know better, you might think that you can’t cancel and must therefore change the address on eBay and ship to the buyer. It’s a pretty slick move on the scammer’s part — especially picking a smaller seller (my wife) who doesn’t have an extensive eBay history (and who therefore might have fallen for it).
A little homework can save you heartache
Fortunately, I have dealt with this kind of thing (though not exactly this method) before. I immediately noticed the presence of some extra letters and numbers in the address that indicated this order was going to a freight-forwarding company. Overseas buyers sometimes buy an item to be shipped to an address in the US where the item will then be forwarded out of the country to the buyer’s actual address. In and of itself, that isn’t an issue — I’ve shipped many items to freight forwarder addresses without any problem. Sometimes, buyers can just get a better deal in the US and honest buyers know that you’re probably not going to agree to ship it overseas when they contact you directly, so they pay a middle-man. I have also shipped things overseas without issue, both through the eBay Global Shipping Program and individually. An overseas buyer isn’t necessarily a red flag. I like to think that I’m a decent person and that the world has more people like me than unlike me.
But I try to do my homework either when it’s a foreign buyer or a particularly expensive item (selling price of about a thousand dollars or more). I often Google the name and/or address of the buyer and try to see if I can put together a picture of a real human. For example, I sold a high-end watch earlier this year to a buyer in California. I Googled the name and address and came up with information about a real person and public records of donations to political campaigns, etc. I sold a cheaper item (an inexpensive suitcase) to a buyer who asked me to ship it to an address in Latin America. Things checked out — turns out it was a budding teenage pop singer and I was able to cross verify enough information to figure it wasn’t someone trying to scam me on a cheap suitcase. Of course, that stuff can be faked — but if I’m going to lose to a scammer, they are going to have to at least put in some effort to create a fake identity.
In this case, I got this much of the address typed into Google — “308 conn” — before Google auto-filled the rest of the address. That’s probably not a good sign. For those who might assume that Google scraped my email to get it and complete the history, I Googled it from my phone, though we sold it through my wife’s eBay account. Go ahead and Google that much. I think it’ll auto-fill the rest for you and the first Google result will be this reddit thread about the address. That reddit post basically outlined exactly the same thing that happened here — it was clearly a scam.
I stopped my Googling there. Had this been a more expensive item and a less obvious scam, I may have dug deeper, but I didn’t have to in this case.
You have more than three options
Backing up, I said that eBay only showed us three options: print a label, contact the buyer, and leave feedback. This is where I give eBay a big “FAIL” in terms of helping the seller protect himself/herself. Those aren’t your only three options. You can refund the buyer in PayPal. Once you refund the buyer in PayPal, you can view the order details on eBay and un-mark it as “payment received”. Once you’ve done that, you’ll see the option to “resolve a problem” — and from there, you can cancel the sale. In my case, I clicked a box to say that there was a problem with the shipping address as the reason for cancelling the sale and eBay immediately refunded the final value fee and gave me the option to relist it. I included a nice message to the buyer saying that their shipping address was invalid, so I am unfortunately unable to ship the item to them and this I refunded their payment immediately. I like leaving a paper trail electronic trail showing an effort at good customer service should there be any further investigation by eBay in the future.
It’s not always a scam
Remember what I said earlier — I like to believe that most people are honest. However, earlier this spring, I was dealing with an eBay buyer who seemed questionable to me. The whole story gets confusing, but here’s the short shortened version of it:
- I was selling the Segway seen above.
- The buyer made an offer.
- I sent a message to see if we could arrange for me deliver it in person (side note: not always a good idea as you don’t have proof of delivery and could therefore lose a “not delivered” case on eBay).
- Buyer didn’t respond.
- I accepted the offer and sent another message looking to coordinate delivery (I wanted to sell it).
- Buyer didn’t respond
- eBay filed an unpaid item case automatically when buyer didn’t pay.
- I received a message in all caps from the buyer saying, “I NEVER AGREED TO PAY $X,XXX BUT I OFFER $Y,YYY AND YOU DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT $X,XXX SO WHICH IS IT.” or something to that effect, where price “X” was my original asking price and “Y” was his offer (which I had accepted). He asked me to call.
- Buyer made payment before I called.
- I called & left a message.
- The next day, he sent another eBay message in all caps wondering why he never heard form me and angrily telling me to call and coordinate delivery.
At that point, I had a bad feeling that only compounded when I spoke with him on the phone and he had no explanation as to why he made an offer and then didn’t respond to any of my messages or pay for days. He couldn’t explain why he didn’t return my call and then sent an eBay message accusing me of not calling. And furthermore, he was pushy and rude. I explained that I wasn’t comfortable proceeding and that I would refund his money in full and cancel the sale (which I later did). He didn’t like the sound of that and went on about how he would file a complaint with eBay and he wouldn’t accept that, didn’t want a refund, etc. It all seemed odd since he hadn’t responded or paid initially and then this item became remarkably important to him suddenly.
To wrap all this up, he eventually called me again and offered to pay me in cash on delivery (with me personally delivering — he was a few hours away). I had Googled him from the get-go and it returned some odd results — a real estate website that didn’t work, a strip mall address, etc. In the end, it turned out he was just a cranky old wealthy man who owned a strip mall and wasn’t very familiar with eBay (apart from buying his Porsche, which he made sure to park out front and mention having bought on eBay a number of times before I left his office). I didn’t have a good feeling about it, and I sure didn’t like him any more in person than I had on the phone, but he turned out to be legit. In the end, he saved a bundle, I made a bundle, and everyone was happy. And while I think I was right to be skeptical given the circumstances, the point is that not every buyer is a scammer.
On the other hand, not everyone is the real deal. I couldn’t actually find my pictures of the Segway in question when I was writing this post, so I googled the model number. I found the picture above on a classified ad website with an Irish domain….but that is me standing on that Segway in my living room. Some scammer in Ireland stole my picture and is using it to try to fool someone else. Caveat emptor.
Bottom line
When you’re selling (or buying) online via a marketplace like eBay, do your due diligence. If you’re doing huge volume on cheap items, you obviously wouldn’t put the time into researching each buyer. However, I prefer to focus on lower volume / higher margin, which means I often sell items that cost me more than I care to lose. Sometimes, five minutes of Googling can save you he headache of a PayPal fight or money down the drain.
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I have a question. I want to buy a trailer that was listed in the KC area. The seller tells She is in another state And that ebay is in possession of and will deliver the trailer to me. Is there a way to verify this with eBay?
In the past week I’ve received three Amazon packages, two with my name and correct address (both with a unit number) and one in someone else’s name with my address. Does anyone know about this (scam)???
Not off the top of my head, but I did once have someone steal my CC number and order coffee and have it sent to their name and my billing address. I didn’t understand it….called the coffee company and they refunded the money and told me to keep the coffee. Obviously got a new card issued. Weirdest part was that I hadn’t used the card online — it was relatively new and I had barely used it at all. But that was probably 10 years ago and it didn’t happen again.
[…] the news a lot lately. Whether it was the couple that scammed $1.2 million from Amazon, using the two address method, or the return a rock method the reports seem to be on the […]
[…] Avoiding an eBay scammer […]
Nice article, thanks – learned some things here! It was also a major coincidence for me to see the “82718 WY” part of the address – that’s where I live, and we’re only a town of about 30K people – so quite a coincidence to see it!
I had a good 9 months selling and re-selling on Ebay when I started to encounter PayPal problems and unfortunately Ebay and PayPal pick and choose when they act as two distinct companies and when they dont. This is especially a problem when PayPal is the preferred payment method.
I think PayPal needs more regulation as they are unwilling to change on their own. As an unregulated entity, there’s no timetable for dispute resolution. PayPal took money from my account for one transaction twice – within two minutes. Clearly an issue, yet it was 5 months, numerous emails, long telephone waits and promised call backs (unfulfilled) before I received a final decision that the temporary credit would be made permanent. Had this been a bank or regulated industry , I would’ve gotten a partial adjustment within days and final resolution sooner than five months.
PayPal doesn’t believe they have to answer questions outside of their FAQs. Again, I’ve sent emails, most remain unanswered, and tried to get specific questions answered regarding a request for personal information. Since PayPal is largely unregulated, they can choose whether to answer and when.
Finally, eBay doesn’t want to understand that a PayPal problem is an Ebay problem. When sellers can’t get their money the incentive to participate in the marketplace is nil.
A seller on ebay hacked the account of a relative of mine. They purchased a computer from themself for $2000 (a computer worth a few hundred dollars). It was paid directly from his bank account. They shipped it UPS to his address. He was notified of the shipment by ebay and immediately contacted them, they said take delivery, then return it. He told UPS to hold it at the local UPS facility and he would pick it up but before it got there the seller contacted UPS and redirected the package. It took several weeks for his money to get refunded to his account. Ebay wouldn’t tell him much about it, he has no knowledge of what if anything was done the person. It was a seller that he had purchased something from in the past.
another reason i refuse to participate in ebay/paypal shenanigans. Not enough money in the world for the aggravation.
Good post and funny ending. Thanks Nick
+1
what I don’t understand is, how does the scammer actually receive the item if his/her address is invalid (contains 2 states)?
That’s a good question! The time it happened to me, one of my items got purchased and the address showed this odd double address. Then the buyer emailed and said their account was hacked and asked to cancel the purchase. So I cancelled. Then 2 more different ‘buyers’ tried again to buy the same item with the same double address showing up. It was really odd. No message from the buyers that time.It was a cheap $12 item too.
Maybe it’s a Paypal hijack scam? I don’t really know. I guess they could potentially claim item not delivered if it doesn’t get delivered due to the address…
The buyer wanted us to change the address to only ONE of the addresses originally shown (just the freight forwarder). As I understand PayPal seller protection, if I change the address (as the buyer requested), I would be out of luck on seller protection.
The buyer knows that the address will come up invalid that way and eBay won’t let the seller print a shipping label. So they sent a message shortly after buying saying “whoops, it showed 2 addresses….can you send it to this one…?”. They are banking on the seller doing that since the seller can’t ship to the address as-written and eBay doesn’t make it obvious that the seller can refund and cancel.
I actually learned to not stress out so much about buyers I think are sketchy as long as paypal says it’s OK and the item is not incredibly expensive. The reality is most buyers are OK — otherwise the paypal business model wouldn’t work. Also I’ve shipped to freight forwarding places, hotels, etc. I don’t really care.
Agree, I sell quite a bit and most (99% or more) buyers are honest and happy consumers.
Freight fowarding places are the best. I always ship to them. As the seller, we are only responsible to get the item to the correct ship to address. If the buyer ends up having a problem after having the item re-shipped to their real address they are SOL. OF course you CAN get bad feedback… or whatever.. I’ve sold ~10000 $300-$1000 items on ebay over the years … i have had about 10-20 paypal claims… while the buyer has been reimbursed in many of those cases, seller protection has protected me in all the claims.
I have seen the double address a bunch of times…. i just cancel those transactions and refund those payments and move on.
Anne,
Have you had that 6 month scam happen to you? doesn’t paypal have a record once the item is delivered? Does ebay keep that record — once it is shown as “delivered”?
Yes Joe, I did get a claim on Paypal that came through right after the USPS data storage period ended. At this time (it was end of this summer, August) I didn’t know about the need to save my own delivery proof. So I had zero and Paypal was going to stick me with the claim. So I found that the buyer left me positive feedback for the item, submitted proof of that to Paypal and they still wouldn’t give me seller’s protection. I ended up contacting the buyer and asking them if this was a mistake or why there was a claim for ‘unauthorized charge’. The buyer was very nice and said she would contact her bank that it was a mistake. So in the end it wasn’t a scam but I’ve heard others have had it happen. Now I print and save all the delivery on larger items sold.
Ebay saves nothing beyond I think 90 days. Many sellers have complained to Ebay about this as there is a potential to be out high and dry when this happens. Ebay has said through their Ebay for Business facebook page that they are looking into it so we shall see…
did you try to get proof from the post office directly?
Yes and neither my local post master or the 1800 which takes forever to get a live person could help pull up the old information. Supposedly there is a way they can access archived information but I got dead ends both in the local PO and the telephone customer service.
So now (at the advice of Paypal) I print out and save those delivery confirmation. It’s a pain but until Ebay decides to support sellers by keeping the information live on their site we have to do it ourselves.
I think I’m dealing with one of those freight forwarding addresses right now. Address seemed a little funky so I googled it and it looked like a shopping center in FL. Wasn’t sure what to do but PayPal sent an email that the buyer had paid and I’m pretty new at selling, so I shipped it. After a few days, I notice that PayPal still showed the payment as pending, but upon clicking on it it said don’t ship, the payment is not confirmed. Called PayPal, emailed the buyer (who actually responded). Buyer said the bank had accidentally cancelled the payment and would re-issue. It’s been a week and nothing. Not sure yet how this is gonna play out, but I always save everything electronically so hopefully I’ve protected myself. Interesting read. Thanks.
NEVER ship the item until you have the money in your PP account, the address is confirmed, and seller protection is eligible. There are tons of scammers on both AZ and Ebay, so you must stay vigilant. Don’t fall for anyone’s sob story either.
Hey Andy — I hope this one works out for you. Either way, in the future you’ll know to make sure the payment has cleared before shipping. It’s annoying that PayPal operates this way, but I always check to make sure that PayPal says “OK to ship” before shipping (i.e. the money is in my account and not just “pending”). Hopefully, you’re just dealing with an honest mistake and you’ll get it worked out.
I’ve had honest mistakes in the past on Ebay and the buyer has made me whole as promised, so not everybody is a scammer.
Thanks Nick. In going back through my e-mails, I’m now clear that the mistake was on my end. eBay sent me an e-mail saying to ship because the item was paid for. But PayPal’s e-mail immediately after said the payment was pending. So I should have definitely waited. Lesson learned and hopefully I will escape unscathed.
This double bogus address is a common scheme. It’s happened to me twice. Something to note on Ebay / Paypal scams is that Paypal allows buyers to file a claim for up to 6 months. USPS only keeps delivery confirmation data on their website for 3 months or roughly that long. Somewhere in the fine print on Paypal, they will tell you that you need to print and keep or file digitally your own proof of delivery on the item. If someone files a claim and you can’t access the data on USPS because it’s past 120 days you’ll be SOL. And unfortunately, there are a group of scammers out there who know this and wait to file claims until after the tracking info has dropped off of USPS website.
This is true. Best practice is to keep really organized screen shots or print things out and put them in a binder so you have proof of delivery.
I’m not sure why scammers would do this on purpose…. the scammers’ bank’s willingness to refund them after 6 months would be far less. This specific situation would be bad for the seller, but not really help the scammer any. So the scammer is going to argue that after 6 months, they finally realized they didn’t receive the package?
The scammers can often/occasionally/sometimes win their case even when the seller is reimbursed by paypal with seller protection.
I’d have to imagine this is out of the norm. (has never happened to me knock on wood) This is a bit crazy though… I mean if you sell 5/10 items a week you can keep a binder or whatever but if you’re a professional seller who sells 5000 items a week keeping track of delivery confirmation would be insane!
My guess is that you could also get confirmation from USPS that the item was delivered. (maybe via their twitter help?)