Scammers Sending Postage Messages After Sale!

[macbooksurfer]

Over the last couple of months, have bought and sold several high value items such as mobile phones and laptops.

However recently, when said items have sold and have been shipped, I get several direct eBay messages from random eBay accounts asking "when will it be posted" and the like.

Its clear that these are scammers attempting to redirect packages and most are in African addresses!

Is it just me or is anyone else getting this recently? 

[4_bathrooms]

Anybody can watch an item and therefore will know when it sold. This does mean a scammer can message a seller as soon as an expensive item has sold despite not being involved in the transaction.

You need to report the attempted scam messages by clicking the three dots to the top-right of the message window, selecting "Help and report" (the only option) then "Submit report".  

[*vyolla*]

You do sometimes get chancers who haven't bought an item contact a seller and try to get the address changed, in the hope that the seller won't notice that a) it's not the real buyer contacting them and b) that they are daft enough to go ahead and send the item to a different address.

And I have seen a few sellers fall for it.

[macbooksurfer]

Must be a fairly new gambit, as have been selling for several years and only just recently started receiving these...

[akemp1]

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@macbooksurfer wrote:

Over the last couple of months, have bought and sold several high value items such as mobile phones and laptops.

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It's so easy for scam buyers to repeatedly use the normal ebay buyer protections to get unjustified refunds then I wouldn't be selling anything high value here anymore it's just not safe IMHO.

[4_bathrooms]

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@macbooksurfer wrote:

Must be a fairly new gambit, as have been selling for several years and only just recently started receiving these...

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I've seen a few posts on these boards where sellers have fallen for such scams; it certainly isn't a new thing. 

I would never send an item to a different address than the one provided with the order even if it was the buyer messaging from the same account they used to purchase. I've seen posts where sellers have lost expensive items that way, too.