Have you ever been ripped off, by a buyer?
By mscott
@mscott (1923)
United States
June 15, 2008 11:43pm CST
This happened to me recently. Guy bought the item and paid through paypal. He didn't want insurance and because it was a low dollar item and I charged very little for postage I didn't add delivery confirmation. Big mistake. Two weeks later he filed a claim saying he never got the item. Despite having the receipt as proof of sending I did not have proof of receipt. Therefore, despite my record versus his he got a refund and I was out the item and the money. Could it have been true he never got it? Sure, but he never contacted me once and when I checked his ebay profile he was racking up negatives all as a buyer. Quite the scam. If you don't use delivery confirmation the person can file a claim against you and win almost every time.
1 person likes this
7 responses
@creationsbyrobin (3071)
• United States
16 Jun 08
No, I haven't. But I have heard of this same scam quite often. I always check the buyers feedback before shipping, if the buyer is fairly new to Ebay, has purchased in a long time or has several negatives, I always ship with Delivery confirmation.
Now that sellers can't leave negative feedback for buyers, I can imagine this will happen more often.
Seller need to protect themselves from these unscrupulous buyers and the high fees of Ebay. I always check who I'm selling to and buying from and I use Delivery confirm. when it makes sense to, along with programs to help make extra money on Ebay.
Sorry about your bad deal, hopefully all of your future buyers will be interested in the item, not getting something for free!
1 person likes this
@creationsbyrobin (3071)
• United States
16 Jun 08
I agree. My hubby used to buy older cards on Ebay and have them put in plastic with grades on them. He said they are much easier to sell on eBay that way. But now everyone is charging $3.50 for shipping on a single card that costs them less than $2 to ship.
The only reason he still sells on Ebay is because he almost always makes enough to cover his fees and still show a profit and he uses a couple of free programs with Ebay that also make money for us.
1 person likes this
@mscott (1923)
• United States
16 Jun 08
ebay is a different place now from when I started. The insertion fees, final fees, paypal fees, increased postage, delivery confirmation all but insure one can't sell a low valued item any longer. People generally don't want to pay more for shipping than the product costs and they tend not to bid when there is ridiculous shipping fees from sellers trying to make there money back off charging high shipping and "handling" fees.
You can still sell more expensive items but 2.00 baseball cards for example just don't sell. Who wants to pay 4 bucks with shipping for a 2 dollar card?
@risris24 (712)
• United States
16 Jun 08
YES and I was not a happy camper. This guy had pictures on his listing that showed an authentic Juicy Couture Sweatsuit that I wanted so I bid o it and won the bid. It was shipped to me rather quick, however the sweatsuit I received was not in any way the same one he showed on his listing and in fact was a fake and a bad cheap one at that. When I trie dcontacting him, he was no longer a user and I had to deal with the fact that I was stiffed because ebay said since he was no longer a user I could not dispute it.
@mscott (1923)
• United States
16 Jun 08
ebay has always had issues like that and they just don't seem to care. Unless you want to pay them the 25 bucks to try and settle the dispute for you. I have gotten negative comments there from buyers who don't even have feedback and last maybe a week. Why should someone screwing around hurt my rating? And now sellers can not leave negative feedback. I understand it was getting very abused, sellers selling inferior junk but not leaving feedback so the buyer wouldn't either, but there are some clowns that need negative feedback as buyers.
@risris24 (712)
• United States
16 Jun 08
I couldn't agree more about the feedback issue. The best is I always had a 100%positive feedback and sold a dress that had about 20 pictures of all different angles of the dress. There was not a thing wrong with it. The person bids, wins, and I send the dress, even nicely wrapped, with a thank you card inside and she send me a negative feedback saying there were stains all over it and the dry cleaner couldn't get them out. I posted a comment in response to her feedback that I have never had negative feedback before, and would never sell anything that even one stain on it and if I would, I would have pointed that out in the listing and with all the pictures displayed of the dress, how come there were no stains and didn't miss not one inch of that dress in the photos. I think she brought it to the dry cleaner and they ruined it and because she was mad about it and couldn't do anything about it, she blamed me.
1 person likes this
@mscott (1923)
• United States
16 Jun 08
It is now a must to use delivery confirmation, the problem is you have to raise the shipping fee to cover this. Yes it is .75 I believe now but you also have to figure paypal is taking their cut of that too. It just amazes me the lenghts at which people will go to to rip someone off, even for a few dollars.
@mscott (1923)
• United States
21 Jun 08
Yes I hate people who charge 4 or 5 bucks to ship something or more and then it shows up poorly packed and the postage was like 1.00. They are just trying to make their money on overcharging shipping fees. maybe they made an extra buck, but I won't buy from them again and I am sure others won't either so it actually costs them money in the end.
@ZephyrSun (7381)
• United States
21 Jun 08
We sold two items last year that we had trouble with. The first buyer bought a laser disc player plus like 6 movies and we shipped it out UPS and the item didn't sell for much I believe $20. A few weeks later there was an email from paypal about the transaction, the buyer claimed the item was received damaged, he never contacted us or UPS. Paypal told him he had to return the item to us within ten days and then they would refund his money, which I thought sucked because it was insured with UPS for up to $100 but he didn't want to deal with UPS. Sounded fishy to me. So we waited 10 days and never got the item the buyer stopped responding to paypal and that was the end of that. He kept the item we kept our money. I didn't leave him feedback he left feedback that was negative saying that it was wrapped newspaper. Well I check his feedback and the day after he bought our laser disc player he bought a better player without any movies. The other time we had trouble it was a scam as well. The buyer first contacted us and asked if we would rent him the camcorder that we were selling and we said no then the person bought it so we insured it and tracked through UPS because we were concerned about a scam. A few days later buyer emailed us and asked for a refund. We didn't offer a refund so we told them to take it up with paypal and they never did.
1 person likes this
@keasling (723)
• United States
16 Jun 08
definitely have to watch this. I bought an item never received it the seller replaced the one that never showed up even though my daughters b day had done past. Yet to this day I have not yet received the item. But the difference. I asked when it was mailed etc before anything else. I truly believe you need to contact the other party before filing anything.
