Selling on eBay and guarding against fraud

WUSBDesign

I'd like to share my recent narrow experience as a eBay seller, and would appreciate useful thoughts on this. Suggestions leading to eBay and Paypal customer service, protection plan, etc. will not be useful in this thread (explained later). No rantering, pls.

A perfectly legitimate item was listed, clearly stating that bidders with zero/low/negative feedback are NOT welcomed. Several promising bids came in, all with recent good feedbacks. Then one came with an aggressive offer, beat all hands down. I checked the feedback rating of this particular bidder, and found that his account was inactive for over a year.

So, I cancelled the suspicious bid, and all went well until the LAST 40 SECONDS when another bid, from a guy in Florida with feedback of 2, came in! Checked the details of his feedback, and they were all in the last 5 days(!), one from a Buy-It-Now, and the other from a 1-day auction.

So, I am forced to sell this item....But I am going to force my way out, one way or another, despite eBay's "rules", loopholes against last-minute bidders and the highly-probable fraud situation brewing.

Several other UK eBay sellers have complained about eBay/Paypal forcing chargebacks on the seller. Now, as I have heard, lawyers in Bristol(?) are now challenging eBay/Paypal in courts.

Anyone with similar experience out there?

MorningStar

I am not sure what the problem is. I get you are suspicious of this guy but you don't ship the item untill you get paid so what's the problem?
What payment type did you ask for?
I haven't sold anything yet myself so maybe I am being no use

WUSBDesign

The UK "problem" (as I recall) is this: you sell the item, buyer pays with Paypal (credit card fund), you mailed/couriered the item, tracking says item delivered, buyer comes back in 4 weeks' time saying SOMEONE else signed for it, but he himself did NOT receive it, makes a complaint to Paypal, Paypal deducts the refund amount from YOUR Paypal and now you've lost both the item and potentially your money.

66 cases against eBay/Paypal is what I was told by a UK eBay seller.

Scary?

newgrange

You don't say what value the item you were selling is, and if you are thinking of reneging on a deal you should assess whether you think it's worth having really bad feedback on/losing your account for the price of whatever the item is.

I can't see what the problem is in what you have described though - the buyer swooped in at the last minute, well that's how the game is played. He/she had low feedback, well you could have rejected the bid, though everyone has to start somewhere in building up feedback. If there is a problem with his/her payment, then that's different, but from what you have described the buyer has done nothing wrong.

Is it a very high value item? Make sure you use a payment system that protects you.

MorningStar

WUSBDesign wrote:

The UK "problem" (as I recall) is this: you sell the item, buyer pays with Paypal (credit card fund), you mailed/couriered the item, tracking says item delivered, buyer comes back in 4 weeks' time saying SOMEONE else signed for it, but he himself did NOT receive it, makes a complaint to Paypal, Paypal deducts the refund amount from YOUR Paypal and now you've lost both the item and potentially your money.

66 cases against eBay/Paypal is what I was told by a UK eBay seller.

Scary?

I tried to get a refund and it is not easy. If you can prove you shipped the item with a reference number etc... they refuse the refund is the way it looked to me. Items hadn't arrived and I was out cash but hey did arrive a month later so I don't see what you have described working

CuppaCocoa

I've been selling on Ebay for nearly 10 years now and have never had a problem. When Paypal was introduced into Ireland I started accepting it. So far I've had no problems with chargebacks. Maybe I've just been lucky to have honest bidders. I've never had an item go missing on me and never had anyone try to pull a fast one on me. My feedback is excellent so maybe that puts people off.

WUSBDesign

I guess there are many variations in the seller/buyer scenarios, and that UK eBay seller happened to be out of luck.

Having said that, has anyone wondered why some reputed eBay-sellers do the following:
- require overseas bidders to contact seller PRIOR to bidding
- require overseas bidders to pay with Bidpay
- reject all bidders with 0/low/negative feedback

My hunch is that there are loopholes in the system as it is right now. I myself am seeing one, which is disallowing bids from eBayers with 0/low/negative feedback and this guy comes in the last 40 seconds, and I cannot cancel it in time or after the auction.

Oh, I have a good eBay record as well, and I sent all my items using registered post, and haven't seen a problem so far..........until **potentially** now.

Sleepy

In fairness, everyone has to start somewhere in getting their feedback built up. I know I recently just conducted my first transaction on eBay.

If you're *that* worried about this, why not refuse to accept PayPal? There are plenty of other credit card merchants out there.

parsi

In Selling Prefs you can now specify (afaik) that bids from low feedback won't be accepted (autoamtically). This can also be used to block certain countries or whatever.

If you don't want to sell you don't have to. You may get a negative feedback (which you can appeal) but if you feel strongly enough just don't complete the transaction. If he pays by Paypal just refund it. - your basis will be that he didn't comply with the terms of the auction.

So you can go and do a "mutual agreement to not complete the transaction" - if he agrees then its sorted. If not you can cancel the bid.

BigEejit

Dont moneybookers refuse chargebacks? .... i.e. once you paid thats it, its not coming back....

WUSBDesign

With hindsight, that's is what I am going to do in the future for the most costly/risky items.

As for the mutual agreement, I hope eBayers with the intent to fraud do listen. I've just sent the bidder a message to do just that, and the reply I got *conveniently* but distinctly left out the subject header with the exact intention and simply wrote "....call this off." Very sly and non-commiting, but still one big mistake - the exchange was done using eBay's messaging system which added item number tracking.

To all who think that selling on eBay is not a problem, I agree 99.0%. As for the remaining 1.0%, we shall see.

parsi wrote:

In Selling Prefs you can now specify (afaik) that bids from low feedback won't be accepted (autoamtically). This can also be used to block certain countries or whatever.

....snip....

So you can go and do a "mutual agreement to not complete the transaction" - if he agrees then its sorted. If not you can cancel the bid.

WUSBDesign

Sorry, what's moneybookers? They accept credit cards?

bambam

Nice tip on blocking buyers by certain criteria

BigEejit

Ah .... the no chargeback thing is only for their escrow service

http://www.moneybookers.com/app/faq.pl?gid=11&qid=747

WUSBDesign

OK, I was a eBay newbie myself, but I am on the look-out for "interesting" bid patterns. Let me know what people think of the transaction I had:

---

Item title: My Item
Time left: Auction has ended.
Only actual bids (not automatic bids generated up to a bidder's maximum) are shown. Automatic bids may be placed days or hours before a listing ends. Learn more about bidding.

User ID (show email addresses) Bid Amount Date of bid Location* Shipment Status
mr_suspicious ( 2 ) US $91.00 Dec-XX-05 13:44:52 PDT 90999 --
mr_nuclear ( 68 ) US $90.00 Dec-XX-05 05:03:34 PDT United Kingdom --
mr_superman ( 10 ) US $84.00 Dec-XX-05 08:48:51 PDT Australia --
mr_superman ( 10 ) US $68.32 Dec-XX-05 08:48:15 PDT Australia --
mr_magnet ( 16 ) US $50.00 Dec-XX-05 15:04:00 PDT Canada --
mr_superman ( 10 ) US $45.00 Dec-XX-05 06:10:22 PDT Australia --
mr_magnet ( 16 ) US $45.00 Dec-XX-05 15:03:48 PDT Canada --
mr_magnet ( 16 ) US $41.00 Dec-XX-05 14:58:06 PDT Canada --
mr_magnet ( 16 ) US $38.00 Dec-XX-05 14:57:57 PDT Canada --
mr_solenoid ( 1059) US $35.00 Dec-XX-05 14:05:19 PDT United Kingdom --
See how to cancel bids if you need to.

Bid retraction and cancellation history

User ID Action g Explanation Date of Bid and Retraction
mr_dormant ( 20 ) Cancelled: US $100.00
Explanation: Administrative cancellation on inactive accounts (>1yr) Bid: Dec-XX-05 07:01:46 PDT Cancelled: Dec-XX-05 07:37:53 PDT}

---

Sleepy wrote:

In fairness, everyone has to start somewhere in getting their feedback built up. I know I recently just conducted my first transaction on eBay.

If you're *that* worried about this, why not refuse to accept PayPal? There are plenty of other credit card merchants out there.

newgrange

WUSBDesign wrote:

mr_suspicious ( 2 ) US $91.00 Dec-XX-05 13:44:52 PDT 90999 --
mr_nuclear ( 68 ) US $90.00 Dec-XX-05 05:03:34 PDT United Kingdom --
mr_superman ( 10 ) US $84.00 Dec-XX-05 08:48:51 PDT Australia --
mr_superman ( 10 ) US $68.32 Dec-XX-05 08:48:15 PDT Australia --
mr_magnet ( 16 ) US $50.00 Dec-XX-05 15:04:00 PDT Canada --
mr_superman ( 10 ) US $45.00 Dec-XX-05 06:10:22 PDT Australia --
mr_magnet ( 16 ) US $45.00 Dec-XX-05 15:03:48 PDT Canada --
mr_magnet ( 16 ) US $41.00 Dec-XX-05 14:58:06 PDT Canada --
mr_magnet ( 16 ) US $38.00 Dec-XX-05 14:57:57 PDT Canada --
mr_solenoid ( 1059) US $35.00 Dec-XX-05 14:05:19 PDT United Kingdom --

OK to understand this, you need to understand how ebay bidding works. It does not mean that mr magnet made 3 bids within minutes of each other. It means he bid an amount, was told someone (mr_superman) had bid higher, so he increased his bid a little, was told the same, and increased again, up to 45.00. Then mr_magnet bid 50, and so on.

I don't see what you are saying is suspicious - the last minute bid? I've done that myself, it's the fun of auctions.

NotMe

I don't think it's that suspicious. There's really no way to know. I just started using ebay a few weeks ago. Now I have 8 feedback but most of the things I bid on I did it in the last 20-30 seconds so the bid history would look just like that.

parsi

ANother way of reading it:

Item was bid up to €23.34
Mr_we_think_is_bad put in a maximum bid of €78.98

So everytime anybody else bids a new bid comes in automatically (and is timestamped at that time) until it reaches his maximum bid at which stage he has to bid manually again.

Its quite interesting seeing this happen on one of your auctions - seeing the bid amount increase rapidly because of a maximum bis going in.

WUSBDesign

I think the whole point is completely missed......

In the auction, I clearly stated no bids from eBayers with 0/low/negative feedback, and will cancel these bids as such. mr_suspicious(2) came in during the 40 seconds and his feedback was from a B-I-N (2 days ago) and a 1-day auction (3 days ago). The auction was launched 7 days ago. I am no "profiler" of any sort, but this bid pattern and intent is subject to various interpretations at seller's discretion.

BTW, does anyone out there get un-solicited emails re eBay items, and fairly quickly after that, get a warning message from eBay itself? That's what happened to this auction.

parsi

You can put any sort of conditions you like in your listing _but_ they don't autoamtically apply. If atthe end of it all you have a winning bidder who is against your policy in the listings thendon't go ahead with it. Plain and simple. You can give the reason that he does not comply with your stated bidders profile.

So go into your ebay account and root around and find how to cancel the auction or chuck yer man off. Payapl and the like doesn't come into it unless you have actually already received payment If you haven't then don't go looking for it ! If you have - figure out your plan of action and do a refund.

Edit: Have a look here at the COmmunity Forums - there's a lot of rubbish but some helpful nuggets as well http://pages.ebay.co.uk/community/chat/

MorningStar

I still don't get the problem. A guy bids on an item and you are paranoid that he is scaming and the protections won't work. You added your own restrictions that I am not even sure ebay allow (I'll stand corrected on that).

The bidding does not look strange at all except for the fact a newbie customer acted a bit like somebody used to it. That could mean they have friends who told him how to get the item he wanted.

It really sounds like you are being paranoid. I haven't sold anything but have a bought a lot.

newgrange

BTW, does anyone out there get un-solicited emails re eBay items, and fairly quickly after that, get a warning message from eBay itself? That's what happened to this auction.

What do you mean by unsolicited? Emails about similar items? Requests to sell off-eBay?

No deals should be done off-eBay as none of their protections apply if you get involved in an off-eBay deal, as a seller or buyer.

If someone offers to sell something off-eBay and then eBay send you a warning email about them then the system is working, and someone else has reported the rule-breaking activity.

MorningStar

newgrange wrote:

If someone offers to sell something off-eBay and then eBay send you a warning email about them then the system is working, and someone else has reported the rule-breaking activity.

That is just an automated mail that just repeats the warning it's not like they are actually saying this person is doing wrong.

I understand your concerns but you appear to be over reacting IMHO.

WUSBDesign

Actually, what newgrange said correlated very well with one of my earlier eBay buy attempts. After I have placed my bid (later beaten by anther), I got an un-solicited email with a link to a webpage selling pirated software. eBay's warning email soon came after that.