I just had a buyer purchase an $8000 item from me. $8000 is quite a bit above market price and I had put up a ‘best offer’ option. My highest offer was ~$5500. I fully expected it to sell for $6k or less. The buyer purchased it outright without using the ‘best offer’ button.
My issue is: the buyer account is a few days old with only 3 feedback. I already have around $3k invested into this item.
If this is a scam it will be a massive loss.
My question is, what would you guys do in this situation? Should I close my eyes and mail this thing? The buyer purchased 4 other smaller items from my store today as well.
Shouldn’t be a problem if you shipped it using a reliable track and signed service(with the extra money just use whatever service which is the fastest) with insurance. As long as the tracking shows delivered, eBay will protect you.
What did you sell for $8k if you don’t mind disclosing? @jj1
They might protect me in case of an item not received case, but there’s nothing to stop him from opening a return and mailing me back a box full of rocks.
my advice is sell it. make sure you insure and track it, and as soon as the money is in ur paypal withdraw it to your bank then you are safe. lets say this guy buys this from you and pays with a stolen card/account or trys to charge back later as long as the money is in ur bank and not paypal you should be ok. if its in paypal and the buyer charges back paypal will take it from you but they cant take it from your bank.
Unfortunately, Paypal will subtract the amount from your account in the event of a chargeback, regardless of how much is there. If you have $0, your account will be negative. They will prohibit your ability to use Paypal, and eventually send the account to collections and charge interest.
but paypal is not a bank so if they try it you can call your bank and say they took this money with no right, you sent the card you should get paid and they will refund it back to you friend. yes ur paypal will be negative but i mean could always make a new one if the worst was to happen lol
A while back I had a strange feeling about a decent sized (for me anyway) purchase going overseas to a brand new seller. I used my phone to literally filmed the items being packaged and posted at the post office. Zero idea if that would have helped protect me but it was advised by an eBay rep.
The real answer that you don’t want to hear is that yes, it’s possible that the buyer can scam you. It doesn’t matter if you use tracking etc, because as you said, he could potentially send back something different. What I would say is that it’s incredibly rare, I’ve sold thousands of cards over the years and have never had this happen. I’ve only ever had items reported as lost when they in fact were according to the tracking. It’s always a gamble, but the plus side is that it’s exceptionally rare. If it does happen, you can go down various avenues to recover the stolen item/money.
Yeah, it’s what I know in my gut but don’t want to admit really.
I don’t think any avenues to recoup money would be successful, tbh. eBay and Paypal are so heavily in favor of the buyer. I’ve never heard of a success story of anyone getting scammed and having the item/funds recovered.
Postage insurance? No, it would be virtually impossible. The postal company would only pay out on loss, damage or theft caused by their own staff. If the contents of the package were claimed to be different, it wouldn’t be feasible.
Also remember that the buyer who returns the package would be the customer of the postal company when returning the item, so the seller couldn’t be the one to make the claim. You can bet that the buyer wouldn’t be pursuing it with the postal company on the seller’s behalf, if they’re trying to scam the seller.
Lot of people said some really good advice above! One of the keys that helped me in the past was having pictures and recording a video before shipping out the item. If a chargeback does happen, aslong as u shipped it with tracking and signature confirmation, u should be safe. I would go ahead with the transaction!
Filming everything is a good idea, but it would only be evidence if you were to take legal action. PayPal doesn’t accept video evidence as proof, they just take the buyer’s word and you then have to escalate it through the legal systems. This can be difficult with international mail fraud. Even then it’s difficult as someone could remain adamant they didn’t scam you and that you just resealed and opened the package again for a video, so witnesses would bolster your case if you had to do it.
Again, it probably would never come to that and I’d personally go ahead. As Robbie said, anyone could potentially do it, although generally a high feedback goes hand in hand with a good reputation. But do whatever you feel comfortable with. Don’t let someone else make this decision for you, just take all the advice and make an informed, personal one.
I’ve just had someone buy a bunch of cards at me for the full $999 without even making an offer. I was hesitant but thought well someone might just really want it and not risk someone else buying it while waiting to accept the offer. So paying full price might not necessarily mean a scam.
A few months ago a guy in my city with 5 feedback bought a base set off of me. I was pretty reluctant then to sell it (even asked about it on this forum). In the end I went to his house in person. Turned out to be a normal guy. He said that he doesn’t use eBay that much but wanted what I have. Of course there’s always a chance of someone scamming you but yeh with that much money on the line I would be cautious too!
Check the paypal address, and the eBay address. If they’re different don’t ship, the only attempt at a scam I’ve had was caught by this. Basically a hacker was using someone else’s account and wanted the items shiped to them. eBay caught it as well and gave me steps to get the item back had I shipped the card.
I don’t know you account, but eBay will take into account your reputation as a seller, if it comes to a he said she said situation. Low feedback buyer, vs a high feedback seller looks shaddy when coming to one saying they didn’t get the item that shows shipped.
Worst case scenerio there’s another option, but I don’t like posting it online because it’s something that could be abused by scammers. It’ll force eBay hand to be the business that takes the loss vs you. I will not share this unless it’s for a high dollar value, and through PM only.
Overall, you’re overthinking everything. Just ship the card with signature tracking, insure it if you can’t afford to lose the value of the item and go through life’s wrinkles when they occur, not before.
I know exactly what you are going through. I shipped an item to the buyer, he opened a case for return and shipped back I was delivered a candle holder in the package ebay decided in his favor and refunded him. I shipped the item through usps insured and I was able to get back all my money by going through the insurance. another situation happened on paypal and the buyer returned garbage and I filed a IC3 form with PayPal and PayPal paid me out the money. You can Always get your money back you just have to jump through hoops. A great idea is that when you mail out you take note of the weight of package and then if you get something different delivered you call up the shipping company for the details on the package weight of the return. In most of these cases the buyer will always get their money back and the seller has to fight the company like PayPal, eBay or shipping company for their money. If this is an international sale I would NOT do it.
