eBay has become my least favorite place for shopping, especially during the holiday season. In the past year, I’ve bought just 15 items on this site, mostly from well-known sellers. Surprisingly, I still ended up with a scammer when I purchased an extra Google Nest Hub for my kitchen. This is already the 2nd time I’ve got scammed here. The last time happened a few years ago when a seller sent an empty box to my home address. I managed to get the money back but my PayPal account was limited permanently.
How Did I Get Scammed on eBay?
This time, I encountered a new kind of scam. Before purchasing the item, I checked the seller’s feedback ratings; They had nearly 100% positive feedback and he has been eBay member for about a year. I was quite confident with the purchase because I didn’t think I would have bad luck another time. Unfortunately, I soon realized this is another scam.
The eBay seller didn’t respond to my messages and I had not received the product after the delivery date. Since the item was not received, I was covered by the eBay Money Back Guarantee. I went to my eBay order to open an item not received case; It said that if the seller couldn’t show proof of delivery, I would receive the full refund. Suddenly, the seller sent me a Fedex tracking number which shows delivered a few days ago. Of course, I didn’t receive anything and the seller kept ignoring my message. The shipment facts are quite convincing as the package weighs 10 lbs and the city and state are accurate, so the shipment seems to be valid. However, I found it suspicious because it was shipped from a nearby city in the same state as mine.
I contacted Fedex to find the package and figured out it wasn’t sent to my address, it was a nearby address with the same zip code. That means the city and state showing up on the tracking info are still accurate. No one, except the seller, could view the full address, therefore, eBay would still consider this a successful delivery. I tried to ask eBay to step in and help but kept seeing this error:
“Oops, we had a technical hiccup. Please try again later”.
This is a well-known error on eBay but it still hasn’t been fixed for years. The only solution is to call eBay to escalate the case via phone call. This could take hours since you would have to explain the situation to different agents. Some people were lucky to get the refund but some are required to send extra documents like a police report or a mail from USPS, UPS, or Fedex to prove the package was not delivered to the correct address. The eBay customer service is quite terrible and I didn’t waste time with them. A day later, eBay closed the case automatically with an option to appeal. However, eBay would deny the appeal most of the time since tracking showed delivered to correct zip code and didn’t require signature.
How I Got Full Refund in 1 Day?
In case you can’t escalate the case or eBay decide the case in seller’s favor, you can file a dispute with the payment method you used for the transaction. I used PayPal, so I went to Resolution Center, clicked on Report A Problem, selected the transaction, then chose I didn’t receive an item I purchased.
In the final step, I uploaded the eBay order confirmation and added more details on how I was scammed. After I submitted the dispute, PayPal notified me that it would take nearly a month to resolve it.
Surprisingly, PayPal concluded the case just a few minutes later. I received an email saying it was decided in my favor.
We reviewed the case you filed on December 17, 2020 and have decided in your favor. We’ve issued a refund of $128.56 USD to you. It may take up to 5 days for this refund to be reflected in your PayPal account or bank statement.
Obviously, PayPal didn’t manually reviewed this case. Instead, they decided in my favor because this seller committed fraud repeatedly in a short period of time. Tons of negative feedback in the past week also mean a lot of PayPal users filed a dispute to this account; Therefore, PayPal automatically gave the decision to protect buyers.
My guess is that this eBay account was hijacked; The hacker tried to obtain a large amount of money, move or withdraw it to his bank quickly before both of the PayPal and eBay accounts are suspended. He sold products way under market value so he could receive payments as fast as possible.
I was lucky because this seller committed a widespread fraud affecting hundreds of eBay users. The amount of disputes towards this PayPal account is huge and therefore, I received the refund automatically. In case a seller use this trick occasionally, for instance, once every 100 transactions, it will be much more complicated to request the refund from PayPal. The best way to protect yourself is making payment with a credit card via PayPal. By doing so, you will get 3 layers of protection: eBay, PayPal and your credit card company. If you lose the dispute with eBay and Paypal, your credit card company will side with you most of the time.
Have you got the same experience with an eBay seller? Share with us in a comment below.
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Tigh Loughhead says
That’s awesome you resolved this (and that Paypal sided in your favor). While they try, I’ve been having more and more difficulty with scam sellers on ebay, and the post office delays throughout the pandemic have not helped.
Z says
I had the same thing happen to me. Bought an expensive drone from a seller.
I have informed delivery and I knew nothing was enroute to my address when seller posted tracking number. Few days later it’s marked in eBay as delivered but I received nothing.
What the seller does is google earths your address then will mail something to somebody else in your zip code. Seller intentionally will leave your name off the shipping label so you have no right to the tracking info since it’s not to your address or in your name.
Long story short, along with headaches and hours of my time, I won the dispute because the order was of high value and required a signature delivery which of course the seller could not provide.
eBay is aware of this scam but doesn’t care.
One way to solve this scam I would think would be for eBay to require sellers use eBay shipping labels and tracking numbers provided by eBay instead of letting the seller make up their own.
vijay singh says
Happened to me once. Got my money back in 10 days.
Had Enough of the B.S. on Ebay says
Ebay has become so scummy and unregulated in recent times, it has driven me ‘away’ because I have steadfastly found that PayScam who shouldn’t still be affiliated with Ebay according to Ebay now in 2021, is still in the middle of transactions and really doesn’t ride herd on fraud at all. I just bought an item on Ebay from a ‘new’ seller and should have known better, but that seller is fraudulent. As of the 17th of this month (March) Ebay has killed their call center and all you get is the same lame crap online about; “wait till XXX date and then contact us again to get involved..” (translated, this means; “let us scam you for a few more days!!”
in any case, as many times as I have had good sellers on Ebay, I’ve had fraudulent scammers hit me one in five transactions, which is really getting to be another reason to leave them alone and hope they die off finally.
As for PayScum, they really need to be investigated by the U.S. Federal Government but in today’s “anything goes” U.S., no regulatory agency will touch them.
best we can do as consumers is to QUIT USING EBAY ENTIRELY. sure it limits our ability to buy online, but guess what? One fraud episode cancels out a bunch of good deals when you have to spend hours to get your money back from PayScum.
it’s time to say ‘adios’ to Ebay and let them die. They could have protected buyers but they chose to do the fraud. You know that they are reticent to refund the money because that takes away the money they scam. and that’s why they support fraud.
Mehmet says
eBay has become a total cesspool over the years. You can’t even trust a seller with almost 100% approval rates.
I bought a refurbished iPad and guess what, it was nothing like the advertisement.
It said refurbished but it was clearly used and badly used too I returned it immediately. Never touching that website again…
JC DUNCAN says
This happened to me recently. I didn’t use Ebay but I did use PayPal, I was saved a lot of headache just because of people who have already posted about the scam. So I knew immediately to call FedEx Express and confirm that the package did not go to me, but to another name and address in my town. Fed Ex did verbally confirm it wasn’t me but would give no more information. I called PayPal and spoke to them directly, describing the scam, and indicating I had already called and confirmed my suspicions that I had been with Fed Ex. Right there on the phone they refunded me.