Ebay SCAM - how big it is ?

[Cristian Mihai]

Long story short...Just got scammed on ebay for 2500 dollars. Buyer opened a case saying he received something else, requesting return. After long and many messages one of the Ebay representatives says in one email THAT EBAY IS NOT RESPONSABLE FOR THE ITEM CONDITION WHEN RETURNED TO SELLER... so basically there is no protection for seller. I heard stories about scamming on ebay, but i dont have an ideea if this is an isolated incident or not. Just trying to see if i am the "lucky" guy .

 

[Curtis boggs]

I can't speak to your incident but I will say I don't buy ANYTHING on Ebag any more unless it's local and I can do a face to face transaction.
Just way too much fraud.

 

[Jaime Vallés]

There's a lot of fraud on Ebay, unfortunately. I agree it's better to do in-person sales (in a safe, crowded, public place) if at all possible.

 

[RobMNeilson]

I'm no longer selling on ebay. Had someone buy an easyrig from me, and then claim it was defective "cuz its hard to pull the string down". I accepted the return, which they took two weeks to mail back (as they were using it on a job). So I basically paid $90 in shipping to let them use it on a gig. No shit the string is hard to pull down, it was a 700n arm for heavy cameras. I tried to get ebay to have the buyer pay for all of the shipping fees in return for wasting my time, but I was never able to even get a reply or status update on the case that i opened. Ebay did take my sellers fee, and is going to wait a couple weeks to credit me for it. Total garbage, and I only got scammed out of less than $100.

 

[Robert Hart]

There are too many users and losers ( the brits call them "chancers") out there in filmdom who will short people and take them down in order to make their passion project fly.

The big URSA still lives, so no complaints from me.

 

[RobMNeilson]

Glad to see that the Ursa Major I sold you is still alive and kicking! I recently worked a job where they had one as a studio camera, and the image looked great.

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Maybe a solution is to document every part of the process, including notarisation, and always use serial numbers etc? Or is that not relevant here?

 

[Sebastian Ziegler]

Basically, if the buyer complains or says the item was not as expected then eBay will rule in their favour. If you don't organise return shipping in under 4 days eBay will refund the buyer and they get to also keep the item.

This happened to me as I was out of town working on a project and didn't have the time to follow up on the eBay emails. I would say on sell things that you are prepared to loose for free. I think eBay is a horrible system that puts all the risk on the sellers.

 

[Nick Gardner]

I've bought and sold everything from cars to cameras on ebay. In many many years, I have only had one issue. If you are selling, make it clear that there are absolutely no returns, and stay away from buyers or sellers with negative feed back. The few times I have gotten things that were not quite what they appeared, I contacted the seller and we worked it out.

Nick

 

[Robert Hofmeyr]

I've had one rather unpleasant ebay experience. Purchased a lens. About an hour after the purchase, the "seller" called ebay and pretended to be me (he had my name, address, etc so he got verified). He then opened a case in my name saying the item had not arrived. Once the case was opened, he then told ebay the item just arrived and they closed the case. You only get to open one case, so when I called ebay and they told me I could not open a case since there was already a closed case on the system! I realised I had been impersonated and explained that there was no way I could have received the item so quickly since it was shipped from the West to the East coast. They shunted me around for weeks. I spent many hours on the phone trying to find someone who would help. Some people I spoke to actually listened to the recording of they guy and agreed he had been impersonating me, but not a single ebay employee who promised to get back to me did. It was incredibly frustrating. Eventually, after weeks of daily calls, I got to a higher level of support and was told that it was Ebay's conclusion that it was me who made the phone call. I then asked to listen to the recording of the call and they said they could not let me listen to it because it violated their privacy policy . So they simultaneously contended the call was made by me, and that it was made by someone else! Anyhow, thankfully I had paid via PayPal so I got a refund eventually, but it was an exhausting waste of time and I am much more careful nowadays.

 

[Tim Bradley]

I am always very reluctant to buy anything off ebay unless they are a power seller. I just sold a set of Canon CNE primes via a second hand broadcast gear dealer here in Australia. No fuss and easy.

 

[RuthEllison]

In fact, every purchase on any site like Ebay is a risk. This is not a lack of sites, but a problem in people, in all countries and and sites! x)

 

[Antony Newman]

OMG - I am amazed that Ebay took this stance.

In the EU/UK - if information, digital or otherwise, is stored about you - you can demand that information be shared with you.
(EU/UK) If someone has successfully impersonated you and performed a fraudulent act - there at both regulators (quite a few in the UK), and ombudsmen, and legal units (eg UK Action fraud) that can lean on organisation - especially those that allow untoward activities within their enterprise (I don't know if to what extend ebay are protected - but it seems likely they would be forced to share all details of a crime reported to the authorities that involves their internal and external IT systems).

AJ

I've had one rather unpleasant ebay experience...

 

[Robert Hofmeyr]

OMG - I am amazed that Ebay took this stance.

In the EU/UK - if information, digital or otherwise, is stored about you - you can demand that information be shared with you.
(EU/UK) If someone has successfully impersonated you and performed a fraudulent act - there at both regulators (quite a few in the UK), and ombudsmen, and legal units (eg UK Action fraud) that can lean on organisation - especially those that allow untoward activities within their enterprise (I don't know if to what extend ebay are protected - but it seems likely they would be forced to share all details of a crime reported to the authorities that involves their internal and external IT systems).

AJ

Absolutely. Their "official" position was that there was no crime and that I had for some unknown reason opened and then closed the case (this was after other ebay employees had told me I had been impersonated) and that they could not give me the recording because it would violate their privacy policy. It was totally nuts. They made no effort whatsoever to investigate. They also refused to put their response in writing and ignored multiple emails. Here's one of my last emails to them (to which I did not get a response):

Hi,

As I have explained repeatedly by phone, live chat and email, I DID NOT OPEN OR CLOSE A CASE ON MY ACCOUNT. This has been confirmed by eBay multiple times. Also, nobody stole my password or hacked my computer. Someone called eBay on 1 June and impersonated me. They were then able to open and close a case in my name. Obviously this is a serious breach of your security and it is clearly eBay's fault that my account was accessed telephonically without my permission.

I cannot contact the seller as their account has been suspended. It is obvious I didn't receive the item as the tracking number shows it was delivered to someone else and that it was delivered THE DAY BEFORE I purchased it!

Please honor your money back guarantee and refund me. Also please let me know how I can shop on eBay in the future and be sure that nobody will be allowed to make changes to my account telephonically.

Regards,
Rob