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Another Ebay scam

k90tour

k90tour

pfm Member
Whilst there is a current thread about Ebay, may I just tell you about a likely scam attempt?

I'm selling a SME IV and have excluded everywhere outside the UK unless via Global Shipping Program.

Someone clicks the Buy It Now and promptly pays via Paypal.
They leave a note on the order details with two very dodgy lines.

1. They interpret my item description and ask me to agree to this interpretation.

2. They instruct me to ship to a Spanish address whereas Ebay are asking me to ship to the Global Shipping Program address in the UK.

It looked very suspicious. So I called Ebay to discuss the consequences of my cancelling the order and they have suggested that I do so and let them deal with any bad feedback.
 
Wasn't the idea of Global Shipping program is that you send to that Shipping Program UK address and they do the international delivery.?
 
Indeed.
I suspect the buyer wanted me to ignore that and send to a different address. Then once the item is received or not, claim that it was not as I had said (because I had confirmed their interpretation of that) and raise a claim. For which I have no protection as I've not sent to the correct address.
 
And yet I had a recent Ebay sale where the buyer wanted me to send to a different address abroad rather then use the global shipping programme and not only their shipping address was not their registered eBay address. After discussing with ebay support I decided to ship it which was not a light decision as it was £2k of HiFi. All turned out to be genuine and was due to someone moving house and not updating their eBay info.

But the OP is right to suspect the worst.
 
I only send to the UK, blocked all non UK bidders in the eBay tool, and opted out of the Global Shipping Program. But I only sell bits and bobs (apart from a Triumph TR25W basket case, that upset someone from Denmark trying to buy).
 
When in the US I found a seller on eBay.com selling a high quality copy of the original Yamaha NS1000 user manual. I done the decent thing and told him that although I was registered in the UK I would be looking for delivery to South Carolina. The seller was happy I’d told him and amended the permitted buyers filter to allow me to bid as the value was pretty low. US postal service was pretty crap, I think it took a week to get there!

I think back in the day I put a post on here about buyers from Asia listing the UK shipping address of an Asian courier to bypass the filters. It was pretty obvious eBay weren’t interested in the various ways that transaction could go pear shaped. The company line was if it has a UK pod you’ll be OK, but wouldn’t respond to,”how do I get the item back from Asia if the buyer imported it using their own courier and you’ve authorised a refund”
 
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wow&flutter said:
When in the US I found a seller on eBay.com selling a high quality copy of the original Yamaha NS1000 user manual. I done the decent thing and told him that although I was registered in the UK I would be looking for delivery to South Carolina. The seller was happy I’d told him and amended the permitted buyers filter to allow me to bid as the value was pretty low. US postal service was pretty crap, I think it took a week to get there!

I think back in the day I put a post on here about buyers from Asia listing the UK shipping address of an Asian courier to bypass the filters. It was pretty obvious eBay weren’t interested in the various ways that transaction could go pear shaped. The company line was if it has a UK pod you’ll be OK, but wouldn’t respond to,”how do I get the item back from Asia if the buyer imported it using their own courier and you’ve authorised a refund”
Click to expand...

Ebay buyers using forwarding companies with a UK address to send to the overseas buyer seem to be happening more and more.
 
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Interesting, does UK ebay has more trouble than others? For example, last month I had two purchases on German ebay and asked them to deliver to some German address. There was no questions asked.
 
When the 'sale' was made, the other party were obviously by their computer as we exchanged 4 messages in a few minutes. The sale was cancelled a few minutes after that and not a word from them in protest. So it was clearly a scam.
 
k90tour said:
When the 'sale' was made, the other party were obviously by their computer as we exchanged 4 messages in a few minutes. The sale was cancelled a few minutes after that and not a word from them in protest. So it was clearly a scam.
Click to expand...

Well spotted that one. It did occur that it might have been an attempt to just reduce the post cost for the buyer. I’ve never seen what the buyer sees in those situations but assumed that eBay canes them for delivery charges.
 
I have my own tale of woe. I sold a Naim pre power combo in early April this year. It was collection only, but the winning bidder needed delivery to Orpington. I should have just cancelled the transaction then.

The buyer then tried to pay outside of eBay, I refused, called eBay and they said do not let them pay outside of eBay. So anyway he ended up sending cash by PayPal.

Then he wanted to use his own courier, I said no, and used parcelforce, with insurance, proof of delivery etc.

I shipped everything, remember this is early April. Heard nothing till last week for a claim of non delivery. I thought I’d be fine, since there’s a 30 day limit for claims of non delivery on eBay. What I didn’t now I’d that the similar limit on PayPal is 120 days. I thought not too bad, I can get proof of delivery from the parcelforce website, of course it’s too old a transaction to be available, and the insurance has expired too.

it’s also too late to leave negative feedback.

tomorrow 580 pounds is extracted from my bank account. I am steaming over this, and I will never sell on eBay again. A smart unscrupulous buyer can literally bend over a naive seller and spank their bottom to a nice rosy glow.

anyway, I feel better for writing this down.
 
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