It's happening again. eBay buyer trying to scam me for $900+

[purbeast0]

I am 100% done selling on ebay. I sold 10 or so Xbox Series X and PS5 in November/December and the fees are crazy but I was fine with that.

What made me never want to sell again is the following:

1. They are asking for my SSN now (although it gets away from paypal which saves fees)

2. They now require you to pay taxes in my state on any sales over $600 in a year.

Had that shit happened prior to selling the consoles I would have owed a ton of money in taxes and offset anything I made extra.

 

[repoman0]

I am 100% done selling on ebay. I sold 10 or so Xbox Series X and PS5 in November/December and the fees are crazy but I was fine with that.

What made me never want to sell again is the following:

1. They are asking for my SSN now (although it gets away from paypal which saves fees)

2. They now require you to pay taxes in my state on any sales over $600 in a year.

Had that shit happened prior to selling the consoles I would have owed a ton of money in taxes and offset anything I made extra.

I had to file those bullshit taxes one year a few years back because MA randomly required a 1099-K or whatever the form is. So stupid, but it was all used stuff that I didn’t actually make money on so I was able to adjust the cost basis above my sales prices and not actually pay anything (and discount selling fees, etc). Waste of half an hour of my life figuring out how to do that form though.

 

[deadlyapp]

I am 100% done selling on ebay. I sold 10 or so Xbox Series X and PS5 in November/December and the fees are crazy but I was fine with that.

What made me never want to sell again is the following:

1. They are asking for my SSN now (although it gets away from paypal which saves fees)

2. They now require you to pay taxes in my state on any sales over $600 in a year.

Had that shit happened prior to selling the consoles I would have owed a ton of money in taxes and offset anything I made extra.

Yeah, the recent change forcing you to use their internal system is bullshit, I won't be going back.

 

[Captante]

LOL! I remember that pic but it aged poorly. A good DMG Game Boy is easily worth more than a PSP-1001. Heck, a good condition DMG is worth more than an boxed PSP-1001 Value Pack.

Also, the premise that eBay is cheaper than other P2P sales seems backwards from reality.

Edit:
Never would’ve got prices like these on Facebook or Craigslist...

https://imgur.com/jrQEC0G

Methinks thou misseth the point? 😉


*(although as mentioned the BUYER is usually fine on Ebay these days almost no matter what so it could use an update!)

 

[pmv]

Methinks thou misseth the point? 😉


*(although as mentioned the BUYER is usually fine on Ebay these days almost no matter what so it could use an update!)

Well, just have to assume the photo relates to a "returned item" scam. There are plenty of those.

This is a more esoteric one, for example.

Fraudsters hijack eBay parcels in a postcode lottery

Refunds to buyers rely on Royal Mail tracking using postcodes rather than signatures, and it’s helping thieves

www.theguardian.com

Extraordinarily, the tracking update only confirms an item has been delivered to the postcode without specifying the property. There are 53 properties in Siampos’s postcode.

PS I thought CZroe made an interesting/amusing point in itself, even if it was besides the point of the original meme. The value of tech seems to follow a U-curve over time, once the hipsters and nostalgia crowd get hold of it.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I am 100% done selling on ebay. I sold 10 or so Xbox Series X and PS5 in November/December and the fees are crazy but I was fine with that.

What made me never want to sell again is the following:

1. They are asking for my SSN now (although it gets away from paypal which saves fees)

2. They now require you to pay taxes in my state on any sales over $600 in a year.

Had that shit happened prior to selling the consoles I would have owed a ton of money in taxes and offset anything I made extra.

Marketplace facilitator tax responsibilities. States are writing laws where companies that are marketplaces are responsible for collecting and remitting taxes based on their sellers.

You can thank Wayfair vs. South Dakota SCOTUS ruling for that. So it's not an ebay thing.

 

[FelixDeCat]

I used to be a big seller on Ebay, reaching $40,000 in sales in 2004. I was a "Gold Powerseller". My profit margin after all expenses was about 25% so it helped offset the hassle of the occasional trouble I would experience.

One day I woke up to find a giant negative balance in Paypal account. One dude bought bought a few items worth about $3,000 and paid with money that was not his. I had a big fight with PP and Ebay for about a month and managed to get back about $1,200 but had to take an $1,800 loss. This was 17 years ago.

They crooks took orders for expensive custom build PCs, had spotty deliveries and kept the pre-order money as loot. Since Paypal could not recover the money from the crooks, they took it from unwitting sellers. After that bad experience I put in controls allowing no one to buy more than one item w/o permission in a certain time frame, restricted buyers with little feedback or from new accounts, etc.

A couple of years ago I did a search on the people who stole from me and found out the husband and wife spent a few years in federal prison for scamming people out of $100's of thousands of dollars worth of cash and goods.

 

[Ichinisan]

He's back at it.

There are many provably false statements the scammer has made, but I haven't posted them here because I thought he might find this thread and it's better if he can't see how much I know.

Anyway, today I got the notice from eBay that he has requested a refund.

$%#^er.

 

[BoomerD]

It's gotten so bad that I think anyone who sells on eBay anymore is just stupid and begging to get ripped off.

Yes, this kind of shit is probably not very common...but I suspect it happens way more often than eBay wants people to know.

 

[aigomorla]

I only buy on ebay, and so far i have been really lucky.
If i run into any problems i take pictures send to seller to try to have them fix it before i get ebay involved.
I realized by being nice to them, they are more then willing to assist or make things right, rather then going to ebay straight, and filing a complaint.
I have had some bad packages, motherboards which came with bent pins, waterblocks which had major case of corrosions, even a stolen ESN phone, but in all cases, i have had the seller work with me in fixing it.

But yes, i do not think i will ever sell anything on ebay. Its just too difficult to prove that you are in the right, and not wrong.
If i do sell something that expensive tho, i think i would most likely not sell to a low feedback, i would put a restriction on the description stating low feedback bidders will not be honored.

900 dollars is a lot of money to be screwed on.

 

[Muse]

Their "Buyer Protection" in my mind basically equates to: 'fuck the seller'.

I used to sell on Ebay, but haven't for over 10 years. My last listing was never bid on and sits in a box ready to ship. I hoped to get ~$20 for it, a 1/2 liter beer mug, plus I'd need to pay shipping.

I keep thinking I should list some stuff but haven't, partly because I don't want to go to the post office. I figure there are ways I can get pickup at the house but haven't looked into it. I have the impression that Ebay has systems to facilitate sellers shipping, both in terms of ease and cost, but haven't looked into it.

I bought a book about a week ago, a hardback, pre-owned, and "Very Good" and it said "unmarked pages." Received it 2 days ago, there's a lot of badly marked pages in the first ~1/3 of the book, and I did an automated complaint and was INSTANTLY refunded my $. Automatically, obviously. Seller was evidently a thrift store.

Yeah, I don't trust Ebay to protect me as a seller, another real good reason to not be an ebay seller. Besides, I really don't need the money, but I'd like to get rid of some stuff without putting it out on the sidewalk or tossing it.

 

[CZroe]

It's gotten so bad that I think anyone who sells on eBay anymore is just stupid and begging to get ripped off.

Yes, this kind of shit is probably not very common...but I suspect it happens way more often than eBay wants people to know.

It would be stupid to go anywhere else with our typical wares...

Started all of those for a penny and they have days to go.

These kinds of things attract a very specific kind of buyer who probably isn't going to try to scam us.

Edit: WiiDual just had a bid retraction then jumped to more than double what it was! Hi-Def NES is doing MUCH better too...

 

[mindless1]

I only look at sold items. I'm experienced at selling my previous-generation phone after each upgrade and my sales typically out-perform because I know what I am doing. For this item, international buyers consistently pay far more.

A phone like mine routinely sells for over $900 on eBay -- even with cosmetic flaws. Mine is basically perfect. It has Apple Care+ (with theft and loss protection, but that part is not transferable) and an immaculate original box with untouched original accessories.

For items like this, excluding international buyers always drives the price WAY down. Period.

Is it possible that the trend of international buyers paying more, is because a large % of them are scammers requesting refunds later?

If you have theft and loss protection, isn't that exactly what this is? Why would it need to be transferable if the sales agreement is allegedly not met so it it is still your phone and your loss?

I would never sell anything of value to a buyer outside the continental US or new account.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

It's gotten so bad that I think anyone who sells on eBay anymore is just stupid and begging to get ripped off.

Yes, this kind of shit is probably not very common...but I suspect it happens way more often than eBay wants people to know.

It's mainly going to be much much much much much more probable with certain items - phones being a big one.

I personally used ebay for the first time in years a couple weeks ago - got my ACs at the house replaced and had 6 leftover thermostats that I sold (3 Nest thermostats and 3 old legacy ones)



What eBay should really do is when an auction is over - instead of declaring an outright winner - allowing the seller to choose any of the last 3 bids.

If it's a choice between selling to someone with less than 10 feedback or $5 down to the next lowest bidder with way better feedback - I would take the $5 hit anytime.

 

[MtnMan]

There's no way I can get what I think my phone is worth by selling local 🙁

FIFY

 

[CZroe]

Is it possible that the trend of international buyers paying more, is because a large % of them are scammers requesting refunds later?

If you have theft and loss protection, isn't that exactly what this is? Why would it need to be transferable if the sales agreement is allegedly not met so it it is still your phone and your loss?

I would never sell anything of value to a buyer outside the continental US or new account.

The scammers are buying with fake American accounts and forwarding services. Foreign iPhones have always been huge in China. Theft and loss protection is only valid if the phone is still locked down with your AppleID, which it can't be when being sold. Literally the last thing he did was record himself removing his AppleID, wiping the phone, demonstrating that the phone was able to be unlocked/used, wiping the phone again, and packaging it up. It's a necessary step that invalidates your theft & loss coverage. Up until the buyer claimed to get an empty box or perspective was that we sold the phone to a dude in Delaware, and eBay doesn't

FIFY

You broke it, really. Do a little research: You aren't going to sell the same phone for $901 on Craigslist or Facebook Market. You just aren't. People literally buy them locally to sell on eBay specifically because you get so much more. Swappa is a good alternative if you want to trade a little off "top dollar" for some safety but that is not a local market.

Ichinisan doesn't even presume to dictate what he thinks it's worth. The market does that. He lists for a penny.

 

[pmv]

You broke it, really. Do a little research: You aren't going to sell the same phone for $901 on Craigslist or Facebook Market. You just aren't. People literally buy them locally to sell on eBay specifically because you get so much more. Swappa is a good alternative if you want to trade a little off "top dollar" for some safety but that is not a local market.

Ichinisan doesn't even presume to dictate what he thinks it's worth. The market does that. He lists for a penny.

Again, though, the problem is that 'the market' isn't working properly, because of the huge level of fraud (that Ebay does little to stop, IMO). Ergo it's very hard to say what the item is "worth", because there isn't a perfect market in which to sell it and find out. At the moment it's just a guess as to what you'd get if such a market existed. You could argue that what it's "worth" is the amount it generally goes for to foriegn buyers on Ebay - minus a substantial discount to represent the average cost of fraud to sellers on that platform.

 

[CZroe]

Again, though, the problem is that 'the market' isn't working properly, because of the huge level of fraud (that Ebay does little to stop, IMO). Ergo it's very hard to say what the item is "worth", because there isn't a perfect market in which to sell it and find out. At the moment it's just a guess as to what you'd get if such a market existed. You could argue that what it's "worth" is the amount it generally goes for to foriegn buyers on Ebay - minus a substantial discount to represent the average cost of fraud to sellers on that platform.

I get what you are saying, but it’s still “worth” what you can get and you simply get more on eBay than local markets... significantly more. Ichinisan made no judgement about what he thinks it’s worth, only that it sells for significantly more on eBay when you do it right.

The fact that eBay keeps a cut means Ichinisan wasn’t going to get $900 anyway so good thing the difference is significant. 😉

It isn’t just about international versus American buyers only. Just going national means it no longer matters how affluent your local area is.

 

[JEDI]

He's back at it.

There are many provably false statements the scammer has made, but I haven't posted them here because I thought he might find this thread and it's better if he can't see how much I know.

Anyway, today I got the notice from eBay that he has requested a refund.

$%#^er.

update?
did he get his $900 back? (and kept the video card?)

 

[UsandThem]

I would never sell anything on Ebay anymore after getting burned by a scammer on a pair of headphones, and on the very rare occasions that I buy something there, it's a storefront for large companies like Newegg, EVGA, etc.

I'm just at the point where I don't want to deal with headaches in an effort to save (or make) a few bucks, so if I can't find the item available anywhere else, it's down to maybe one purchase every two years or so now.

 

[CZroe]

update?
did he get his $900 back? (and kept the video card?)

It’s a phone but eBay says they have requested information from the buyer and that we’ll have to wait until the 29th.

After we requested their involvement eBay hid our existing correspondence so I only have his replies from my email notices which really need the context of our messages to be enjoyed. Basically, we caught him red-handed manipulating one of our images to pretend he had it in-hand. Ichinisan even recorded himself cropping and rotating his own image to replicate it and comparing to show it was an EXACT match... which he can hopefully share here. It should even have a glimpse of our previous back and forth but that was just before it got interesting as we confronted him about the image manipulation and inability to provide what we asked. Backed into a corner, he threatened to get eBay involved. We welcomed it, unloaded with everything he didn’t realize we knew, then requested their involvement ourselves!

His last message sounded panicked and squirmy:
“Really I don't know. What area are you doing. Let me know what you want? Maybe I can help you.”

Pretty stark contrast to what he said before we unloaded on him:
“Hey I am so busy. I sent everything you want.[*] And everytime you ask me another picture another thing. Please I don't have time for you. I have a lot of customer. Please solve your issue or I will ask eBay to solve this case. Thanks”
*Lies. We literally enumerated what we wanted, all very easy to do if he had the package, and he delivered exactly ZERO of them.

In between those messages is when we revealed correspondence with his forwarding service proving that it was still in transit when he first claimed to have received an empty box. We demanded to know why he never mentioned the involvement of a 3rd party and pointed out that eBay would be particularly interested in litigating since it appears he stocked his cellphone store with phones scammed through throw-away eBay accounts (visible in his first set of images which were not even the same box).

Oh yeah: He even bragged about how many expensive phones he had in his shop and acted like $900 was nothing to him because he buys so many expensive phones wholesale. Anyone else think that this savvy cellphone shop that supposedly buys wholesale wouldn’t be paying top-dollar for a freakin’ used previous-gen iPhone if they weren’t scamming their money back? He’s only digging his hole deeper. If his pics are legit then he has a large operation and eBay should be really motivated to find/prosecute this guy. They can start by subpoenaing his forwarding service to see if he is in a country where they can litigate. After all, he is doing much of this at the expense of their Seller Protection Policy and costing them a fortune... which I made sure to point out. 😉

 

[Hans Gruber]

I have a 100% ebay rating as a buyer. My account is 16 years old. I sold one item ever on Ebay. When I got my GTX 970 it came with The Witcher 3 and the Batman game that was broken. I sold the Witcher 3 on Ebay for around $30. I waited until I received payment and sent the game code. A few days later I got a message from ebay saying they were reversing the charges. Not because the buyer said they didn't receive the code but because the buyer setup a fake account with someone's credit card and went on a crazy buying spree. I actually had a quick conversation with the thief. He said sorry man. To this day I have never tried to sell anything else on Ebay. They never gave me a refund and both Paypal and Ebay were full of excuses.

I used to like buying cheap stuff from China. I have neighbors who watch the mailbox. They get jealous of me getting all these packages like it's Christmas. Anyway, the Chinese scammed me as a buyer. They would either send me the wrong item from China or the item would never arrive. They would say can you wait for the item, we will send you another. They did this to make sure the 30 window expired. It only happened a few times. I do miss the days of no sales tax on Ebay. I used to order 200 packs of magic erasers from China for $3 or 4 dollars. Oversized mousepads for $1.29. I really didn't care. I had a budget of $15-20 a week of Chinese goods.

Ebay was supposed to move to a European settlement payment method other than paypal doing business on America's silk road.

 

[snoopy7548]

I recently sold some medium-value gaming items on eBay and didn't have a problem, but I was concerned about one of them.

I listed a New 3DS XL (SNES edition) with custom firmware, and this was explicitly stated in the description. Some guy from Canada won the auction and I mailed it to him. When he received it nearly a month ago, I got the following message:

Good afternoon,
I picked up your package today, everything looks great and I look forward to using my system.
However, in attempt to access the store, the software was updated, and I receive an error message (“Failed to apply 1 FIRM patch(es)”) every time I attempt to boot up the DS.
I’m not very familiar with modding/cracking devices so I was hoping you could direct me towards a solution. From what I understand, I need to update the modding software so that it’s no longer bricked? Again, I don’t really know what I’m talking about or how to resolve this issue.

Thank you in advance.

I debated whether to ignore him or reply, but I ended up telling him that he needs to just update a couple of files on the SD card, and I sent a link to the GBAtemp forums where this problem is discussed. He hasn't messaged me back, nor has he filed a refund or left feedback, so I think I'm in the clear. This guy just didn't know what he was really buying.

At the same time, I also sold an NES PowerPak and SNES PowerPak to some dude. That went smoothly, though, and he left positive feedback.

I've also recently bought a lot of gaming stuff from eBay and haven't had a problem with any of them.

 

[repoman0]

This has the potential to be a legendary thread if eBay really goes after this guy.

I’ve had my eBay account since 2006 I think, 200+ positive feedback probably evenly split between buying and selling. Surprisingly no/minimal problems so far although lately I’ve been choosing to use forums and local methods whenever possible. I did have one lady return an item as defective (nav computer that drives the infotainment screen for an old car) that I know was in working order. Luckily she packed carefully and returned, it still worked fine in my car when I received, and I resold again for $10 extra to cover lost shipping charges .. new buyer seems happy. I filed a report bitching about it and how I was forced to pay her return shipping, don’t think they cared.

 

[MrSquished]

You guys got me paranoid. I sold a couple watches this year, a phone case, something else and I just sold a second Japanese kitchen knife last week. This time I took photos of it going into the packaging, the package, and then the package with the mailing label on it. I was even going to have the postman pose for a picture holding my box for the camera!

But all my buyers had good feedback, so all is well.