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Are fruitcakes running rampant on eBay lately? Selling, buying, listing, feedback, etc...


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Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, lodibricks said:

Just for clarification, who's crossing the ethical line? If we ship out a set like we're supposed to and then get a message that the order was cancelled for fraud, there's no unethical move on the seller's part. 😓 If you mean the buyer's side, or eBay's lack of care in prevention, I get that, but like @TheBrickClique, I'd just fulfill my duty and move on rather than add to the shadiness.

Knowingly being complicit the scam, and "I'll just keep marking up the set and sell them to whomever buys them until they find a cheaper supplier.", would be considered unethical to most. One time is you being fooled, two times is a suspicious pattern, continually raising your price to make more profit knowing it's a scammer crosses the line. So I suggested going all in and cutting the scam buyer out of the loop. And also suggested killing their feedback by:

On 5/30/2024 at 7:23 AM, brickvoyeur said:

I suggest printing some of the shock pictures from the early internet. Perhaps paste a picture of the set in the middle of Goatse's ass?

Both killing their sale, and 100% profit, and also damaging their account on whatever platform they are using to make their dropshipped sale. It's not like they can leave feedback from a banned account. Nothing will get someone to submit negative feedback against the scam buyer faster than a picture of what you ordered inside of a gaping butthole. 

Honestly, I'd be completely unethical until they stopped buying from me due to feedback retaliation and cases against them. Perhaps they're on Amazon undercutting all of us because they're hitting 100% profit by scamming? Would be nice to have a scammer account removed from there. 

Edited by brickvoyeur
Posted

Ahh, Found it.

"The buyer’s payment institution sided with the buyer. The good news is that you’re protected for this dispute under eBay seller protection policy. We won't deduct the dispute amount from your funds. You're not required to take any action at this time."

That's how I sold 30+ 70420 Graveyard Mystery sets in under 4 days. Every single sale was fraud.

  • Like 1
Posted
1 hour ago, brickvoyeur said:

Knowingly being complicit the scam, and "I'll just keep marking up the set and sell them to whomever buys them until they find a cheaper supplier.", would be considered unethical to most. One time is you being fooled, two times is a suspicious pattern, continually raising your price to make more profit knowing it's a scammer crosses the line. So I suggested going all in and cutting the scam buyer out of the loop. And also suggested killing their feedback by:

Both killing their sale, and 100% profit, and also damaging their account on whatever platform they are using to make their dropshipped sale. It's not like they can leave feedback from a banned account. Nothing will get someone to submit negative feedback against the scam buyer faster than a picture of what you ordered inside of a gaping butthole. 

Honestly, I'd be completely unethical until they stopped buying from me due to feedback retaliation and cases against them. Perhaps they're on Amazon undercutting all of us because they're hitting 100% profit by scamming? Would be nice to have a scammer account removed from there. 

Thanks for clarifying. I forgot about the "raising prices" part of the discussion.

1 hour ago, KvHulk said:

Ahh, Found it.

"The buyer’s payment institution sided with the buyer. The good news is that you’re protected for this dispute under eBay seller protection policy. We won't deduct the dispute amount from your funds. You're not required to take any action at this time."

That's how I sold 30+ 70420 Graveyard Mystery sets in under 4 days. Every single sale was fraud.

That's truly insane. 30 in 4 days. I have eBay messages skip my inbox, and I didn't notice that I've had several of these myself, but not nearly at that scale.

Posted
3 hours ago, brickvoyeur said:

Knowingly being complicit the scam, and "I'll just keep marking up the set and sell them to whomever buys them until they find a cheaper supplier.", would be considered unethical to most. One time is you being fooled, two times is a suspicious pattern, continually raising your price to make more profit knowing it's a scammer crosses the line. So I suggested going all in and cutting the scam buyer out of the loop. And also suggested killing their feedback by:

I interpreted that as making sure you're not the lowest priced option to avoid being picked by the dropshippers.  Is he supposed to remove the listing, hoping eBay solves the problem?  This kind of seems like the only defense, while keeping the listing active.  I realize we're splitting hairs here, but it seems better than remaining the most attractive target.

Posted
2 hours ago, fuzzy_bricks said:

I interpreted that as making sure you're not the lowest priced option to avoid being picked by the dropshippers.  Is he supposed to remove the listing, hoping eBay solves the problem?  This kind of seems like the only defense, while keeping the listing active.  I realize we're splitting hairs here, but it seems better than remaining the most attractive target.

Raising prices is my usual mode of operation after each sale (I only list one set at a time) -- typically 2 to 5% after each sale -- scam or not.  This is how I ensure I'm not falling behind the market price.   I don't analyze the buyer to see if it is a scammer and then take advantage of the situation.  The side effect for scammers is eventually they won't find the price attractive anymore and the move on to another source (they eventually do get out-priced which is ironic considering we're assuming it's not their money anyways).  And once the dust settles, I might have to adjust the price back down to market prices after a few months to resume sales.

Being knowingly complicit would be pricing at 2x the market rate knowing only the scammers are buying from you because, for some reason, they find your listings more attractive than the others. 

If they drive the price up 20% ($60 vs. $50) over the market rate, who's to say you weren't underpriced at $50 (maybe they hadn't sold in awhile and the fell down the ebay rankings) and now $60 is the market rate?  I've seen sets that had no sales for months and when I priced compared, I was competitive, but just low on the rankings.  Eventually, after a sale, the rankings improve and the set takes off.

One alternative is I don't raise my prices -- since I never know if the next buyer will be a scammer or not -- and I end up suppressing the market price.  Another alternative is I stop selling sets or double the price hoping they won't buy from me -- which makes even less sense.  Third alternative is ***ebay needs to come up with a better fraud detection methodology***

Out of curiousity, I went back an analyzed the fraud charges for the year to date:

orig  CC      sale
sale  dispute cancel
date  date    date       user         set
05/29 !yet    05/29 (0)  zeffs-91     #9*
04/30 05/07   05/11 (11) baira_4145   #8
03/13 None    03/28 (15) riskec_58    #7
03/10 03/22   03/28 (12) balich_45    #6
03/03 04/11   N/A        ***          #5
02/26 None    03/01 (4)  dengal-9778  #5
02/21 02/25   N/A        ***          #6
02/05 None    02/08 (3)  prewer-7290  #4
02/03 None    02/03 (0)  karcza-97    #4*
02/02 None    02/02 (0)  paten-8416   #5*
02/01 02/04   02/08 (7)  yuenh46      #4
01/30 03/28   02/08 (9)  selph_15     #4
01/30 None    02/08 (9)  sorli-84     #4
01/29 None    01/29 (0)  prawl_84     #5*
01/29 02/07   N/A        beatt84**    #4
01/28 02/21   N/A        gibhuf-0**   #4
01/28 None    02/08 (11) jabhec_0     #4
01/25 None    01/25 (0)  lopau46      #5*
01/25 02/20   N/A        unruec66**   #4
01/24 02/03   02/08 (13) hudo_31      #4
01/23 02/01   N/A        mysaks_3**   #3
01/23 None    02/08 (16) sliter21     #4
01/12 02/07   02/08 (27) urbain35     #3
01/07 03/08   01/26 (19) aluise_29    #2
01/05 02/07   01/26 (21) nehlsg_93    #2
01/05 01/24   01/26 (21) linza-2      #2
01/03 None    01/26 (23) atkkat0      #1

(days from order until ebay cancelled the order)
*   Sale cancelled relatively quickly -- ebay detected fraud
**  No-longer a registered user
*** Still a registered user (hidden)

27 Cancelled orders or CC disputes
15 (56%) Orders cancelled by ebay before/without CC dispute
5 (19%) caught be ebay relatively quickly
6 (22%) cancelled (and removed buyer account) after CC dispute
4 (15%) users cancelled after CC dispute but sale never cancelled
10.5 days -- average time for ebay to cancel an order
13.8 days -- average time for ebay to cancel an order if not caught within 24 hours

What I can take from this is that ebay is catching about half (56%) of the fraudulent orders, but only 19% are caught in my shipping time window.  The rest take about two weeks.

Some orders (15%) are never cancelled, but at some point the buyer's account was removed (I wasn't notified).

The biggest batch of cancellations was around late January/early February.  That's when it started to become apparent what was going on.  I'm guessing that's when ebay at least started detecting more of the fraud and the rate slowed drastically after that.  However, it is evident that some are still slipping through (5 since then -- the first one wasn't instant and took 8 hours to catch, after I shipped it).

Posted
13 minutes ago, TheBrickClique said:

What I can take from this is that ebay is catching about half (56%) of the fraudulent orders, but only 19% are caught in my shipping time window. 

What is your shipping time window? 
I wonder of the half that eBay is catching how many are actually from people contacting eBay to report the charge. 

Posted
5 hours ago, Pseudoty said:

What is your shipping time window? 
I wonder of the half that eBay is catching how many are actually from people contacting eBay to report the charge. 

One day. But I usually pack and ship at 8am anything that has come in. 

2 hours ago, ravenb99 said:

You guys got a lot of free time 

Well we are brickpickers and it is the slow season ;)

  • Like 4
  • 2 weeks later...
Posted (edited)

So I had a real buyer that bought 76905 from me and the same day bought 76896 from a scam drop shipper who then bought the set from me to ship to the real buyer. I contacted the real buyer who gave me the scam seller’s user ID. Although eBay says he is located in Alabama he is actually located in Pakistan. I reached out to the scammer and he blocked me. I reached out to eBay as I had 2 more orders from the same seller where the buyers were no longer registered users when I went to leave feedback and eBay said ship the items. 
 

EBay took away the ability to see the sales history, price and dates, for others listings I can just see the quantity but now I know how to identify these scam sellers easily. The undercut the lowest BIN New Free Shipping listing by 10-20%. are using non-seller accounts with no feedback. It seems like eBay wants the sales on their books and they can account away the losses. eBay could easily stop this by making dormant accounts inactive after a specific timeframe and or requiring 2FA. 
 

Scammer:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/355748350112?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=nuxfmel_qvy&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=Kogj7Ln_Twa&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY


ETA: Iamsu_88 sold it for $44 and drop shipped it from me for $68.

They are doing this on multiple accounts with multiple items not just Lego. 

 

IMG_2345.jpeg

Edited by Pseudoty
  • Like 1
Posted (edited)
9 minutes ago, Pseudoty said:

Not to be confused with the Target dropshipper scam that is extremely prolific. I have all of the details on this one as well but need to hot the pool. 

Target just allows it as well. Lots of credit card fraud going on and the sellers are walking away with the pot, eBay gets to keep its cut, and Target gets hosed. eBay has no incentive to stop it. 

Edited by brickvoyeur
  • Like 1
Posted (edited)
8 hours ago, Pseudoty said:

EBay took away the ability to see the sales history, price and dates, for others listings I can just see the quantity but now I know how to identify these scam sellers easily. The undercut the lowest BIN New Free Shipping listing by 10-20%. are using non-seller accounts with no feedback. It seems like eBay wants the sales on their books and they can account away the losses. eBay could easily stop this by making dormant accounts inactive after a specific timeframe and or requiring 2FA. 

 

just making sure and you probably know though not as easy as clicking the link that they took away you can still access sold items info from an old multiple sold item html link, change the ebay item id to the one you want to look at and pick up lots of details about a item that has sold multiple copies ? I'm assuming the data is valid

I don't sell but I find it useful when seeing how fast a item is going that I don't want to buy just yet lol

Edited by starwarsxpress
  • Like 1
Posted (edited)
23 hours ago, brickvoyeur said:

Target just allows it as well. Lots of credit card fraud going on and the sellers are walking away with the pot, eBay gets to keep its cut, and Target gets hosed. eBay has no incentive to stop it. 

I get at least 3 disputes a week on ebay, all from 0-4 feedback accounts , How can I tell its fraud but ebay has no clue, I imagine they eat 10's of millions a year from this.

Edited by Tonka858
Posted
6 minutes ago, Bricklectic said:

Anyone else get this? Strange increase from my prior 10k limit. ebay hurting? Or maybe a glitch

 

image.png.3447cbc22e7bb330e4bc0f94e3bc369a.png


10K? How did you survive on that 🤣

Last time I looked, probably tax time, I was $250K

No email but now I get 5 MILLION items as well. Nobody has time for that, well except for the Bird. 

IMG_2364.jpeg

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

At one point years ago I don't think my account had limits.  But then a couple years ago they changed the way seller account worked or migrated something and brough my limits down.  Haven't looked at it in a while:

 

ebay-limit.png

Edited by scratchdesk
  • Like 1
Posted
7 hours ago, Bricklectic said:

Anyone else get this? Strange increase from my prior 10k limit. ebay hurting? Or maybe a glitch

 

image.png.3447cbc22e7bb330e4bc0f94e3bc369a.png

I also got this to go up from 25k. I'm considering clicking the "Request a limit increase" to see how many zeroes they will add on.

  • Like 2
  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

Does anyone know if the way in which Toycentric and other drop shippers work in line with eBay policies?

If it isn't, can anyone point me to the relevant section in the T&Cs?

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

WTF eBay is this even real:

“You have exceeded the maximum number of messages you can send. Please wait 24 hours to send more messages.”
 

It reminds me of when text messages cost 10 cents each to send after the first 30/month on Verizon. 

  • Like 1
Posted

 

Tried to list a LEGO Compatible Baseball Set and it was removed for 'Counterfeit Policy & VeRO Unauthorized Item Policy'

Oyo Sports MLB authorized infield set

Item was bought at Target probably 10+ years ago...

The terms LEGO and Minifigure did not appear in my listing...

annoying...

Posted
7 minutes ago, scatmanjack said:

 

Tried to list a LEGO Compatible Baseball Set and it was removed for 'Counterfeit Policy & VeRO Unauthorized Item Policy'

Oyo Sports MLB authorized infield set

Item was bought at Target probably 10+ years ago...

The terms LEGO and Minifigure did not appear in my listing...

annoying...

I've had several removed lately as well... just random anime minifigures from china.  look like lego, but clearly not.  it is annoying since I've sold several before without an issue.

  • 1 month later...
Posted

Yesterday the fruitcake was me.

I put the P&P cost into the But it now price box while listing a £100 set.

Thankfully the person that bought was understanding and said it was fine to cancel the transaction.

  • Haha 1
  • 4 weeks later...

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