Selling slightly more expensive items - how to protect against switch and INR fraud

[neryrobert0]

I have a few items of jewellery I want to sell as I don’t wear them.

They are all likely to sell for somewhere between £200 and £1000 per item. If there is a high risk of me losing the proceeds I won’t sell them, but I really would like to sell.

How can I best protect against item not received/not as described receive and switch (for a worthless dupe) fraud? aside from the obvious of sending stuff tracked and insured. 

Selling to a jeweller/auction house/ via Facebook is an option but they have their disadvantages too (low price/ rehection; high commission; Facebook marketplace chancer nightmares respectively) 

The items are irritatingly not valuable enough to qualify for the eBay authenticity thing but also not worthless enough to just take a punt. 

advice gratefully recieved. 

[4_bathrooms]

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@neryrobert0 wrote:

They are all likely to sell for somewhere between £200 and £1000 per item. If there is a high risk of me losing the proceeds I won’t sell them, but I really would like to sell.

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The best throw of the dice is to throw them away.

[vintique*violet]

It's become a sad world we live in today.... Many years back now, I sold a  beautiful gold bracelet - without any issue. It was sent via RM. Special Delivery. I described it in full and invited those interested to view the appraisal by a respected Jewellers. The new owner/buyer was thrilled as they won it at a fraction of the price it would have been new - albeit it was immaculate...I received my funds, feedback etc and all was well. 

I would not risk it today. 

If you really need/ want to sell  on eBay, it could be worth you paying to have appraisals and many photographs of the item ( some you keep for yourself and not upload on the system so you have proof ) AND video the packing of the items so everything is documented evidence, and only post via Royal Mail Special Delivery,  but be aware there are unscrupulous buyers unfortunately, who seek out high value items to " scam"  and there is a risk of you losing both jewellery and your funds. 

If they are gold, gold is at a high right now and it maybe worth you selling them for the gold value alone - that way you know you'll receive some funds in exchange instead of a returned empty box? 

[sheba-knows-best]

Hi.

Whilst I do feel your fear and particularly so with your higher price items, I have regularly sold items (10-12 a year) over £400 and only once had a problem. They do tend to be vintage tweed or leather - so possibly not a high 'scam' item (and rarely over £500). I've heard that handbag and phone fraud, for instance, is more prevalent. (My one bad item, was a handbag the buyer said was a fake, but even that was a small issue, he returned it correctly albeit at my cost. I suspect it was a xmas pressie for his girlfriend who probably pointed out they needed the money for their house deposit. 😃)

When I do sell a high price item, if I have any doubts about the buyer (from feedback, offer pattern, messages) I try and get a conversation going via messages. Make any excuse. I check a sizing detail. You could check a slight scratch or colour or the address details? Be very human, friendly, nice, mention it came from New York and it is beautiful. Whatever. The point is, most buyers who are risking over £500 will want to message. They are as concerned as you are maybe about being scammed or an INR (despite ebay's protection). Scammers, in my experience, do not like communication. They do not want to see you as a real person and hear about your dog dying (probably dont say that 😁). Any doubts, after giving your buyer time to reply, cancel with a genuine sounding excuse.  In truth, I have never had to cancel.  I've had a couple of buyers be bossy, tell me how to pack, how to post etc, but nothing worse.

Another tip? Start with a handful of lower price items and see how you get on... you will learn loads as you go...

@ojewellery  may have some useful advice. Her price point is lower than yours but she sells some higher priced items so may have some useful advice or at least info on prevalence of jewellery fraud. She will be very busy with Christmas sales right now though...

[bravergrace]

There is no magic way to sell anything without risk.

Some buyer, somewhere along the line, will be taking a risk that your item will turn out to be stolen/less valuable than it seems, etc.  Buyers try to reduce their risk by buying in ways that give them buyer protection, or by getting qualified experts to assess the goods.  This expert assessment doesn't come cheap - which is why auction houses charge high commission.  Their costs are high.

Buyers who don't protect themselves, usually end up buying the "bargain" jewellery that is stolen or fake.   

As a seller, if you want to reduce your risks, you will make less profit per item.  

There's no magic way around it.  Buyer protection and seller protection are expensive - someone has to pay for them, and you either accept a lower price in the first place, or pay higher fees for it.

[ojewellery]

As mentioned by Sheba, I sell jewellery - its my business.  I sell thousands of items a year across several platforms.  My current price range is from £16.95 to just shy of £400.  I've historically sold a smaller range of branded Clogau items up to £1000 and some sapphire and diamond 18ct white gold pieces at over £1000.

I've been focused on selling jewellery for about 6 years now.  I've had one switch in all that time across all channels.  The item was an £18.95 amber with sterling silver cap small acorn pendant - the switch was for a plastic very poorly made acorn charm that didn't have a big enough bale to put a chain through. I guess they'd ordered something very cheap and were disappointed so switched - who knows there are odd folkes about.   I did get one repair request, that I did then realised the customer had purchased a later version of the particular item from me.  Sneaky but they'd spent around a £1000, over a year, with me so I didn't make an issue of it.

eBay were actually great about the wrong item returned and ruled in my favour on the buyers case.  They did get me to sign a declaration thing.  The customer had kept all my packaging - gift bag, jewellery box, tissue, cleaning cloth and just returned something I'd never dream of selling.  Not sure how that would go for a private sale but in over  20,000 sales its happened once and its not something that is often bought up on the boards for jewellery so whilst no one can guarantee it wont happen, its not on my radar of concern when sending items out.

Item not received claims is simple - send fully tracked.  At the few hundred pound price point I'd consider using special delivery next day guaranteed as the standard post option.  My first  years I used it for everything over about £40 - but it adds up to eye watering amounts when lost in mail for my royal mail fully tracked services is almost unheard of. 

eBays consistent stance if you upload tracking at time of sending and deliver in the expected window your back is essentially covered is an area they excel at.  Another platform I'm on have a burden on the seller to prove it was put into the customers hand - can't really win that one.

For having your back on a sale and reasonable fairness of policies for both buyer and seller protection, I feel eBay have got it about right.  If you're not in a rush to sell, spend a bit of time on photos and presentation (looks like you've got that well in hand on your other listings,  I think the prices tend to be a bit better than your average auction house.

I'm self editing even less than usual.  My thoughts are eBay is a good avenue to try for your higher value items, take lots of photos especially of any distinct marks/ hallmarks,  then send well packed and fully tracked, remember to upload the tracking or buy postage off eBay so it does it automatically.

[myriad*seller]

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@neryrobert0 wrote:

I have a few items of jewellery I want to sell as I don’t wear them.

They are all likely to sell for somewhere between £200 and £1000 per item. If there is a high risk of me losing the proceeds I won’t sell them, but I really would like to sell.

How can I best protect against item not received/not as described receive and switch (for a worthless dupe) fraud? aside from the obvious of sending stuff tracked and insured. 

Selling to a jeweller/auction house/ via Facebook is an option but they have their disadvantages too (low price/ rehection; high commission; Facebook marketplace chancer nightmares respectively) 

The items are irritatingly not valuable enough to qualify for the eBay authenticity thing but also not worthless enough to just take a punt. 

advice gratefully recieved. 

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You can't. It's that simple. There is no way to protect yourself against a determined scammer. 

[hatsford]

As others have said, you are asking the age old question  - higher price v higher risk.

Albeit selling a different type of thing, we sell some of our stock via all those venues, (well not facebook anymore as if you sell coins on facebook the AI thinks you are money laundering and you get shut down).

There is some excellent advise by others on here, but I believe the eBay risk has been understated a bit. A determined scammer will always win, eBay don't have the ability (or desire) to police the site to stop this, and even in the rare instances they do boot someone off , that scammer just opens up a new account and starts again (which ebay are again incapable of stopping.) 

If you choose eBay auction format you have to contend with non payers as well. In our experience the higher the value of the item, the more likely it is that the winning bidder will not pay. To compound this relisted items almost always make a lot less next time round, as buyers assume there is either something wrong with it, or you were bidding on it yourself last time.

Scammers target items they either covet or can turn into cash easily - phones, designer gear, gold etc. You can see that from other unfortunate posts on this forum, that scammers dont want something obscure (and valuable) as its easier to trace and hard for them to sell. 

As a result we don't put high ticket precious metal items on ebay , those we either sell to trade (or for melt, if the value is mainly the metal value) or via an auction house if a rarer item. Generally, unless items have a particularly rare international appeal we rarely put high end items on ebay at all, due to the risk and hassle, those go to an auction house.

The right auction house, can achieve prices that are close to or sometimes better than eBay nowadays.  Just don't pick the ones which offer a three word vague lot description, with one photo taken from the other side of their warehouse and only allow a 3rd party who charges £80 per lot to post items; nor the ones with rubbish online reviews that are renown for selling fakes and hiding behind sold as seen.

The ones with specialist sales, multiple good photos of each lot,  a cataloguer that knows the subject, and a cheap inhouse postage service, invariably achieve better results .

[game_raid]

Higher priced items can attract the most unscrupulous of buyers but if a buyer wants to try and scam you they will no matter what the value of the item, there are professional scammers and chancers in my experience.

There has been some excellent on advice on here and I would go with getting some more feedback and experience up before selling high ticket items and if you get any issues always get advice before doing anything, scammers will try and bully and intimidate a new seller with threats of reports to eBay which then scares the seller in thinking they will lose their account.

This year we have had a couple of scams where a buyers claims no game disc was inside the sealed game we sold, which is pretty much impossible to happen due to the strict quality control in the factories. We had one just a few weeks, I will post the message so you can see what a scam reads like, the back story is this was delivered 3 weeks before they got in touch with us.

Hi there well I don't know how to start this conversation lol so basically I brought this for my son's birthday today his opened the box and it's actually empty there's no game in the box . Am baffled so I have paid 19.99 for a case lol . My son's gutted so now I got to go out on his birthday to find him this game for his special day not best pleased as U can imagine. Anyway obviously I will be needing a full refund please 🙏 and I don't know wat else to say . Crazy just my luck this lol many thanks in advance with this matter

I saw through this instantly by the tone of the reply as most experienced sellers would so we replied stating that this is pretty much impossible and we will be contacting Sony direct to get the build code for this item because either (a) someone in the factory has stolen it or (b) there is an issue in the factory which they will be able to pinpoint, we also mentioned the game would have been registered as soon as they downloaded the updates which Sony will be able to see, and guess what no reply was received.

[sheba-knows-best]

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@game_raid wrote:

I saw through this instantly by the tone of the reply as most experienced sellers would so we replied stating that this is pretty much impossible and we will be contacting Sony direct to get the build code for this item because either (a) someone in the factory has stolen it or (b) there is an issue in the factory which they will be able to pinpoint, we also mentioned the game would have been registered as soon as they downloaded the updates which Sony will be able to see, and guess what no reply was received.

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Just a note for non-seasoned sellers... in a case like this one, always report the buyer through the 'report a buyer' tab. Whilst it is true that action will not be taken immediately the report will be linked to the account. Meaning that if they try it every time, any reasonable CS will be able to see this. So when a less canny seller rings up in the future for help with the same buyer trying it on, ebay may be able to take the seller's side.

[auctiongabble]

I sell and sold jewellery items from £80 to a few thousand and not had any issues .

Always send special delivery and fully insured

Any piece over £500 will go through ebay authentication so if they try and open item not as described they wont get very far with ebay.   Any returns would have to go back through authenticity process before being returned to you.  To be fair to ebay the support team for jewellery authentication are based in Dublin and always have excellent support from the team there.

Always check a potential buyers feedback and also feedback they have left as a buyer, this can provide you with a good overview of honest buyers or trouble makers.

[papso22]

It's bizarre that with the authentication process it seems safer to sell high value jewellery rather than low value.

[auctiongabble]

Since its been introduced i think it certainly has cut down the number of 'item not as described' cases.  I have had some sellers purchase items as they get the gaurantee it will be verified by authentication.  It had to be done as so many stories over the years with lab diamonds being sold as natural, enhanced diamonds being sold as natural and ive seen alot of foreign gold in the trade that isn't what the stamp markings say it is.  

Ebay for years was a playground for those that were purely out for a quick £££

[sheba-knows-best]

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@papso22 wrote:

It's bizarre that with the authentication process it seems safer to sell high value jewellery rather than low value.

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I'm getting interested. So @ojewellery is at a dangerous price point (most items under £500) but she has experienced few scammers...  I'd think I'd go higher-end too. I'm guessing though it all about shifting volumes. Certainly in my business as soon as you start asking over £150 (unless it is an on trend brand) buyers become a lot more scarce

[vinylscot]

I do wish posters would stop offering advice which has been proven to be wrong on many occasions and on many threads.

Taking photos and videos, even of you packing the "item", proves absolutely nothing. If you stand back and think about it, it's something more likely to be done by a seller attempting to concoct "evidence", before sending a different item.

eBay don't see the item that was sent, and will not accept this sort of "proof". They need to accept the word of their buyers, otherwise buyers would not have the confidence to shop on eBay. The most a seller can do is report the matter to Action Fraud, and eBay MAY issue a courtesy refund.

Unfortunately, that means some sellers will lose out to scammers.

To the original poster - unfortunately, there is no way you can guarantee your sale will go without a hitch. It is probably best to heed the advice which states "don't try and sell anything you can't afford to lose".

To the poster offering false hope - please stop doing this; you're not helping anyone.

[ojewellery]

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@vinylscot wrote:

"don't try and sell anything you can't afford to lose".

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 I understand your sentiment, and agree that there is always a risk - over denial of risk is as much of an issue as over obsessing.  Can we really live our lives avoiding all risk?

So many things there are risks either way - I list this item there's a 99% chance its a smooth transaction and 1% that represented by other scenarios i.e. its a return/ gets delayed in post/ customer tries for a discount/ is a scammer and attempts some form of fraud. 

Don't list the item and it takes up space, if its not used does it have value?, you don't have the money to bring other bits of joy and experience into your life.

At my very poorest, single parent two children under three no benefits available because they decided to investigate me, if it wasn't for eBaying and selling things I couldn't afford to lose I wouldn't have been able to put food on the table and buy nappies.  

As for photos and videoing content it gives some posters reassurance in what they're doing - I don't do it, I don't think eBay would or could take these into account but potentially other sources could should a seller choose to pursue.  Not all scammers are hardened criminals - politely challenging their claims with back up, like the example used by @game_raid can result in them ceasing to be an issue.

[vintique*violet]

Taking photos and videos, even of you packing the "item", proves absolutely nothing. If you stand back and think about it, it's something more likely to be done by a seller attempting to concoct "evidence", before sending a different item.

No, nothing to do with " attempting to concoct evidence"   it is exactly for reassurance and other avenues should the need arise ( as per ojewellery states)  ...In my 17yrs I have only had one less than savoury  experience of selling... an item returned to me after nearly a month of what was " purchased for our wedding" and then claimed it was damaged, and couldn't use but failing to let me know on receipt...their wedding date long gone and back from their honeymoon... I accepted it,  but only if they opened a case...what was returned was a very poor example of what was sent out and obviously used for their " magical day"... they also threatened to leave negative feedback if I didn't " refund in full now!"   I  contacted  customer service, who looked at the messages, my listing and shared photos of the item returned etc. eBay actually refunded me so I did not lose out and said if any negative left they would remove , the " buyer" never left any feedback at all.   I suspect they had tried this on with other purchases to reduce the cost of their wedding?  I kept an eye on their account and after about 6 weeks or so it was showing as " no longer registered"...

Ebay introduced videos to use for sellers and the option for buyers to upload a photo  on feedback...personally I have  seen a number of photos alongside negatives  of items which do not match the listing description or some other reason,  perhaps that was not eBays intention for introducing, but it can work for both sides.     So, should I count myself lucky for that one experience? I don't know, probably as it was a learning curve; For a new seller I can see how they can fall " foul" to what may appear obvious to those who have more experience.  So after reading posts  on here  about  " scammers"  ( and being enlightened to the antics) I decided to take  extra measures on items which I think could be " swopped " and only for the past couple of years. 

Each must do what feels comfortable in the running of their account in offering a good  service to our buyers and trust that eBay make decisions should the need arise fairly and accurately...which is not often the case... it is great giving Buyer protection to attract sales ( that is eBays " reassurance" to buyers on the platform)  but often ( as seen on here) it is the seller that loses due to some " mean spirited soul" trying to get something for nothing or trying it on to get a " partial refund"  particularly those who are new to selling.   Of course there are also sellers out there who do not offer a good service, misrepresent items,  and/or with photos of items that they never intend to post or never have in the first place. 

[vinylscot]

I'm afraid you're completely missing the point.

You have no way to prove that the item in your copious photos and videos is actually the item you sent to the buyer.

And think generally, rather than personally. Doesn't OTT behaviour like this fit more with someone concocting evidence than simply going about their everyday business? It's not normal behaviour.

There will always be case where eBay will offer a courtesy refund, often if a buyer has tried it on once too often, or if the matter has been referred to Action Fraud. However, eBay can not take your photos or videos into consideration as they prove nothing. Posters come on here looking for help, and it's really not doing them any good to give them false hope like this.

[vintique*violet]

I'm afraid you're completely missing the point.

You have no way to prove that the item in your copious photos and videos is actually the item you sent to the buyer.

And think generally, rather than personally. Doesn't OTT behaviour like this fit more with someone concocting evidence than simply going about their everyday business. It's not normal behaviour.

There will always be case where eBay will offer a courtesy refund, often if a buyer has tried it on once too often, or if the matter has been referred to Action Fraud. However, eBay can not take your photos or videos into consideration as they prove nothing. Posters come on here looking for help, and it's really not doing them any good to give them false hope like this.

I am not giving false hope and I can only go by my experiences. 

OTT behaviour? What by taking extra photos or a video? That isn't over the top and like I have said previously this only came about due to the increase of  " scam stories" on here for the past couple of years. 

My feedback would show how trustworthy I am in sending out the very item listed - that counts and what feedback was designed for.  

I am not missing the point - I can see what  you are trying to say that someone could video etc and then not send the actual item, but that could be for everyone whether they video/photo or not and it does happen!

 Like I have said before platforms such as these work on trust and integrity. If an unscrupulous buyer or seller has "mean"  intentions then it is going to happen either way. 

It was not a " courtesy refund " the agent could see the obvious differences in the item returned and what was sent out... a picture speaks  a thousand words. 

[vinylscot]

I'm sorry, we're going to need to agree to disagree. Your final line in particular is quite wrong, and, as I have previously stated, just gives false hope to other posters. 

I'm quite sure you are 100% genuine, but eBay CAN'T take photos, or even videos like that into account, or they would basically be giving the green light to all dodgy sellers to behave as I have suggested. There must have been something else which convinced them to refund you.