Don't do what I did! Scam

[mcd0we11]

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 time
Do 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.

[tressygirl]

Yep, you were had,  as you say easy to slip up when rushing things,  and in that moment to forget, you had nothing to return !

How is the seller even mentioning '  after the return was attempted' ?  Nothing was sent, what were they expecting to be returned?  

@mcd0we11 

[plpmr]

" I said I could do a return and that would cancel the order"

why would any buyer star a return request for an item they did not receive?

In any event a return request does not cancel an order. 

[mcd0we11]

I know I had nothing to return but in my fantasy world that smells of roses the seller would have instantly had the item returned as it had never left them and would issue me a refund (obviously something they could have done anyway - I don't sell much so didn't know for sure).

[mcd0we11]

'why would any buyer star a return request for an item they did not receive?' - Trying to be helpful! Whoops.

[tressygirl]

---

@mcd0we11 wrote:

I know I had nothing to return but in my fantasy world that smells of roses the seller would have instantly had the item returned as it had never left them and would issue me a refund (obviously something they could have done anyway - I don't sell much so didn't know for sure).

---

When I hear peeps say what you just have......'   I didn't know for sure ',  how I wish they came to us here first,  if not sure,  and asked here, before taking any action !

Expensive lesson ! 😶

@mcd0we11 

[mcd0we11]

Hmm, I know that now, no need to be condescending.

[pegr-834437]

Right I'm a little confused here, you purchased the item, were sent nothing then cancelled it and didnt get the item or a refund? Cant you just open a claim with your bank or paypal and the buyer wont have any delivered tracking and you have the messages that they are asking you to cancel. It seems like a pretty easy win to me or am I being stupid and missing something here?

[mcd0we11]

I guess I could try the bank route.

I did a return request (yes, yes, why would I do it for an item I didn't have..., why didn't I ask in the community..., my bad, that ship has sailed though) and that meant that after the seller denied it eBay will do nothing more as a return is the last option in the sales process.

[tressygirl]

No one can put their hand up and say..... ' I've never made any mistake in my life ! ' 🤗

Yep,  turn to your payment provider see if they can help,  fingers crossed !

@mcd0we11 

[pegr-834437]

Its not your fault for not asking this place, scams wouldnt be a thing if we all done the right thing first off. I'd 100% go the bank route, the seller doesnt have proof they sent anything and you have proof they asked you to cancel it. If it was £20 I'd probably see it as a expensive lesson and no takeaway this weekend but the price you paid I'd be going straight to the bank. Surely eBay should also see no tracking and the conversation its a slam dunk easy win and a scammer kicked off their site.

[mcd0we11]

Cool, will give it a go.  The loss was £75 after the weird partial refund so not the full £200 mentioned above.  Maybe the scammers handbook says if you lower the lost amount people will not pursue it so hard.

[pegr-834437]

Probably the case, still for £75 its worth 20 minutes on the phone to your bank. No idea why but in my head I was thinking it was a fair few hundred but still you shouldn't just have to accept a loss, eBay should have had your back.

[goodibags]

I agree. I'd ask for the full 100% refund, seeing as there is no proof that the item was sent to you and you were explicitly asked to cancel.

Not sure if Ebay would necessarily take action tho'. If it's a private seller then there are buyer fees to collect.

(In my case I was scammed by a buyer who listed the same thing for sale that he'd claimed he hadn't received from me - as far as Ebay was concerned it was just 2 lots of selling fees!)

[pegr-834437]

The buyer fee is of little interest to eBay as a single entity, they are more bothered to keep people happy than getting £7 from a single sale. Obviously £700k over a 50 angry sellers on the forums is different they want that money and dont really care for a selection of forum posts. Plus if the seller has tried this scam once they'll most likely have tried it multiple times, eBay is known for scams but dont want to be known for doing little to stop it too.

[goodibags]

I should have elaborated that my buyer demanded I sell the item to him buy it now and used 2 different usernames so he could buy on one and sell on the other. Oddly enough, it was a box for a toy car that he wanted to match to a car he had for sale. It would have been less obvious but for the suspicious behaviour and luckily the box was not in mint condition and had flaws that could easily be identified.

Having got nowhere with Ebay I challenged him directly for pocketing both item and refund and he suggested it had 'arrived late' and sent it back to me. Ebay were as much help as a chocolate doorstop in a heatwave.

They do work in mysterious ways tho and we have no idea of the good deeds they do behind the scenes, only the rampant profiteering. As for keeping users happy, I'm getting the strong impression that oldie got thrown out when the new strategies came in. This is no longer that kind of place.

[pegr-834437]

With cases like that it all depends on who you get, if its just a random in Philippines you've got no chance as they only care about getting you off the call. If you get Ireland then you can get somebody who is willing to go the extra mile and do basic research and find out you're right.  

They have to try and keep us happy, I'm far from one to always stick up for eBay but its not exactly an easy job when people want everything their way and for free to keep those happy. People complained when the biweekly promos were meaning they could only list every 2 weeks, now they complain its free but a bpf or simple delivery, then say vinted is better which has less protection, simple delivery and bpf. A lot of people just complain because something has changed.

Like I said here on on another thread eBay use the carrot too much, it needs to be the stick, punish those breaking rules/policies/law and this site would be sweet, issue is that takes a lot more effort than just changing the rules for a type of account.

[goodibags]

In my case it was very much thanks for all the info/evidence you've collected and no thanks. I blocked both the buyer's usernames and that was it. This was about 15 years ago but I suspect the corporate rationale is still that 2 sales are better than 1 and 2 lots of buyers fees (if no seller fees) are better too. Now compounded with 2 lots of simple delivery proceeds, another revenue generator.

On top of which you have Ebay's optimistic estimated delivery dates and the complete lack of follow up or interest in the meltdown when there was no post office tracking 2 weeks ago. Worryingly, there seems to be more potential for scams now than there was back then.

As long as they bring in additional revenue and the investigations are just too much hard work it must be tempting for Ebay to not do much about them at all? 

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"They have to try and keep us happy"

They need to try harder then 😏