Hi All, It’s been so great to get back into the hobby. Been working on filling out some wotc collections and also having a blast with Vivid Voltage. I’ve had some experience selling on Ebay but I still feel wary selling really pricey cards as I’ve heard so many horror stories with buyers on ebay filing fraudulent claims. What do members on the forum find helpful to protect themselves from unscrupulous buyers? Make a video packing and shipping? certified/registered mail? Thanks in advance for the sage advice!
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Set eBay user feedback above 10 and you are fine.
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Price high with OBO
Select your buyers
You will sell less overall maybe, but get to pick buyers with good ratings
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How does one do that. Trying to Google and it’s bring up how to leave feedback
It seems to only let me block people who bid last 10 days and a score of 5.
Anything over $100 gets insurance. The ole “the package showed up with nothing inside” is a tough case to beat against any buyer with feedback.
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Thanks that’s all great advice. I like the pricing high and picking a buyer @rickybobby. @0ean, I also couldn’t find an option for a feedback threshold but I have also had issues lately where buyers with 50+ feedback will bid and win an auction last minute then have remorse, ignore the invoice from eBay then eventually request cancellations.
Do people have a threshold when they start sending Certified or Registered Mail? Would that provide an extra layer of protection for really expensive stuff? Way back when I got my wife her engagement ring from a diamond cutter in Texas iirc they sent everything with registered mail.
I was able to weed out most of the unpleasant buyers by not being the cheapest in the market, also I only have BIN prices.
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How hard is it to actually claim insurance for packages like this? I hear people mention it a lot, but if you sell something and then need insurance due to return fraud/faulty claim, will you have a high chance of getting an insurance payment from the postal service?
I also tend to do immediate payment required and don’t sell auctions, I do buy now prices.
Not only do I state that entire packaging process all the way to the post office is recorded, I actually do it. I package AT the post office for ease.
No one has tried assuming I was bluffing yet. Better safe than sorry.
I just started selling on eBay this year and haven’t had any issues besides one that got lost! I list my items as used always even if it’s like a sealed product. Have a threshold in mind when you want to buy insurance and signature on expensive items. I only do BIN listings. I heard eBay does not care if you took a video they will not use that as evidence.
If you’re uncomfortable on selling expensive items you could try PWCC auctions and then you won’t have to worry about the buyer!
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Registered mail does not do anything more to protect you than adding signature confirmation if your buyer decides to open an item not as described case. The purpose of registered mail is to reduce the risk of the item being lost, damaged or stolen in transit. It won’t to anything if your buyer is planning to scam you from the get go. The insurance is fairly cheap, but the package also moves slow. Its really up to personal preference what your price threshold is, but I personally would only consider registered mail for anything $5k+
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Account preferences on ebay (top left of website by your account name). Site preferences. Block buyers who have unpaid item strikes, as well as negative feedback buyers. Not the most helpful, but better than nothing. There is no way to set the minimum feedback metric–I have no idea they got that info from, as it is not possible.
And I second gengarguy. You use registered mail to protect your item. It has nothing to do with seller protection. It is no different from 1st class mail. It just allows for high value insurance in the event the box is lost or damaged by USPS. That is all. Only use it for 1000 and up package values. My personal threshold is about 3-5k. Depends. Many people on here don’t do it unless it is at least 10k. I don’t have that kind of money to play around, especially since registered is so cheap.
that’s not gonna help a lot.
Not a lot you can do unfortunately. Just block problematic buyers.
Sell enough so that one loss isn’t catastrophic
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- BIN only and immediate payment
- No best offers
- No auctions
- No forwarding companies, no PO boxes
- Verified address only
- Tracked and insured shipping
- Do a clear description and pictures, avoid stuff like Near Mint, PSA-quality and so on.
This still won’t protect you much, but will help you to get rid of potential time-wasters
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Thanks everyone, really great info here. I’m starting with the blacklist here www.elitefourum.com/t/e4-master-ebay-seller-buyer-blacklist/15572/1 hopefully this is a good place to start!
I sell around 20 cards a month, usually only 1% of transactions go wrong. In a way I prefer selling on ebay to some random person on social media that I can’t validate as genuine.
In the UK I use stamps for items up to £25, 98% of them arrive with no issues. Occassionally people claim probably because they know it wasn’t tracked. In the long term it is better for me to use this than pay £1.50 extra x50 (for the 98% success rate).
Above £25 I use tracked services and thankfully haven’t had an issue with higher value items yet.
If you are selling at values where you can afford to take the occassional loss then you should be okay in the long term unless you are very unlucky. I think the issue comes when you add up your profits as a few hundred over 2-3 months and you sell items where you could lose the whole profit at once if someone scams you. I probably wouldn’t sell items over £500 online unless it was someone trustworthy in the community.
Other things I do is I don’t provide the tracking number to the seller until they ask for it, that way if they tried to say it didn’t turn up instead of a more malicious excuse like the box was empty then I have proof that it did turn up
Ask for signature confirmation if the order (including shipping and tax) is above $750 for seller protection in the case where the user starts an ‘item not received’ case.
The $750 is specifically stated in Ebay’s policies. A user can start an ‘item not received’ case even if the tracking says the package was delivered (i.e. where someone else took the package from their front lawn, it was delivered to the wrong location, marked as delivered incorrectly by the courier or the buyer said so with malicious intent).
Like someone else had mentioned, this does not protect you from an ‘item not as described’ case but it’s a start in the right direction to protecting yourself.