Don't do what I did! Scam | Buying

mcd0we11 · 2025-08-15T13:16:14.825000Z

I've been using eBay for years... love it! Got scammed for first time so I guess not too bad. I made mistakes that allowed this all to happen, too trusting I guess. So annoyed with myself as much as anyone, we live and learn though. I wanted to write a note here to warn others. TL;DR: If the seller contacts you to cancel the order do not do anything until the estimated time for delivery has past and then raise an item did not arrive case. 1. I purchased (Buy it now) an iPhone and paid for it.2. A tracking number (Royal Mail) was provided a day or so later.3. Later I got the following message from the seller:'Hi good morning,I have the phone ready for postage but as I’ve not long ago realised you choose Royal Mail, usually I use Evri my local Royal Mail has closed down doubled checks online an it’s permanently closed now. If I could ask you to cancel the order and repurchase with Evri that would be perfect sorry for the inconvenience and late response timeDo let me know'4. Although a voice in my head whispered scam I thought how can they make money from this. I proceeded to reply to say I can't cancel the order as it's marked as despatched (as the tracking number is provided), even though the tracking says the item has not been received yet by Royal Mail. I said I could do a return and that would cancel the order (THIS WAS THE BIG BIG MISTAKE). I did a return request and the seller denied it. From this point on I was done for! eBay sees a return request as the buyer saying basically I have the item now and won't have any further dealings with the item once the seller denied the return. The clever bit of the seller was never to mention doing the return, it was all my idea, they never mentioned it themselves. Maybe if they had said to do this I'd have more of a leg to stand on. 5. The seller did do a partial refund... not sure why as it looks to me that they could have got away with the whole lot (only ~£200 so not the end of the world). Also, weirdly, the seller sent a few more messages after the return was attempted... I'd have thought I would have been ghosted from the point I sealed my own fate by requesting a return.

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