Let’s say they sell 300 of them and make a few thousand dollars and get caught. They have other sites to sell other $1 trinkets: look into their feedback and see the average cost of an item sold. It is barely worth the cost of a postage stamp.
Once caught, they use another site. If one scam can yield $10,000, it may be worth it to them. There is no criminal follow up or investigation. Ebay de-registers them and they start again. They would be smarter to make the price higher. $14.99? goofy.
Note that they are only open 1-2 years tops. Some were even shorter than that.
keep the item in your “Watched” folder. By tomorrow, or Monday, it will be gone and the seller will be “no longer registered.”
They are counting on customers’ laziness in not opening a case and not following through with ebay. Even in the last few hours, more people have “purchased” the scam.
The other items this particular seller has for sale are also scam priced.
They may ship you an envelop and will even have you sign for it (for the paypal dispute), so make sure you take photo or video!
My wife had a good laugh over the Miami Heat trinket they sent.
The other thing people seem to forget is that when you buy something from someone who’s willing to scam hundreds of people, do you really want them having your name, address, and phone number?
All of those things can lead to identity theft. Even if they don’t try to steal your identity, maybe they’re also going to sell your information to scammers and things like that.
People seem to think, “oh well, I’ll get my money back” or “well what’s $20”, but don’t seem to grasp the followup repercussions from giving their contact information to criminals.
When you become a new seller with paypal, you have a 60 day waiting period, before you are legit, as well as a certain amount of money in transactions that you need to do. If you don't meet the requirements, you can't get your money right away, so they make many accounts and start them out "by the book", so that when the account is "ripe", they can then make their scams and get the money immediately.
It's 60 days, 5 sales and $150.00 in transactions, before you become a legit and trusted seller. During that time period, you have to be "clean", 100% positive feedback, so you have to sell real stuff and really deliver during that time period.
So, once you get that, you can get your money and get out fast. No more waiting periods then and you can transfer your money to your "bank account" as it comes in from buyers. Once the money is transferrred, PayPal can't do a thing to get it back. The seller just drains the bank account, the day it gets in and that's that. No way to get it back. All false ID's in countries that really don't care about that stuff anyhow. Great deal. Well known way to make quick money, sell nothing, for something, on eBay. These guys have tens to hundreds of accounts going and they make more than thousands doing this.
Crap, didn’t knew that That’s why we see too many scams lately. Well, they (PP) definitely need to change that even for trusted sellers (I mean the zero waiting for transfer funds from PP account to bank account, etc.)
Thanks for explanation, Old-Lumens.
I found one more thing.
I looked at the positive feedback of the scammers and found one user located in Russia, but the feedback is left in English and thay are standard Chinese copypaste phrases like “Hope to deal with you again”. So he doesn’t know a signle Russian word. My guess is that they sell to their own Chinese scam partners located umm… everywhere just to accumulate good feedback.
I agree there needs to be something, but the problem is, it handicaps respectable sellers. I know I don’t want to wait for 90 days every time I get paid. That would put me out of the game and the same with many small businesses. There’s no easy answer, never has been one. If we, people, were honest, then it would not be an issue, but fraud has been happening from day one, so I don’t think it will ever be resolved.
If it seems too good to be true, most likeky it isn't true. There's buyers that do bad things too. Scammers acting as buyers, will purchase an item and when they get it, they take a photo of a totally damaged item or a different item (like your coin) and then they do what you do and file for a refund. They get their money and the honest seller just got screwed. It happens all the time on ebay. Sellers can loose a lot of money that way. There was a scam where the buyers would buy expensive gold jewelry and file for a refund, then send back a piece of costume jewelry back to the seller, claiming that was what they got. They get their refund and then sell the original jewelry, for their profit. It is a bad deal both ways, but that's the way we are, (we being human kind).
This means that their 1-2 year build up of positive feedback is gone. They have other accounts and if you wait and search on some of the same items, including TM15, they will resurface under another account.
Now that they are delisted, you can get an immediate refund in spite of the tracking number.
You may have a tracking number that does not go past “electronic notification” or you may receive a package from them which will be very tiny (1/3rd the size of an envelop) with a trinket of junk in it.
In any case, there is no reason to “wait and see” if you want a refund. Paypal and Ebay will not make you wait when a scammer is taken down.
I remember a story about a guy ordering expensive lights or knives, claiming he never received them and just kept them as a collection. I think the stuff was worth a few thousand over the years. I think that even was a german guy..
Scam sucks. And is often possible because people are stupid. Paypal is at fault too, of course. In Germany I cant have a paypal account without confirming that I exist (address and bank account). Shouldnt be too hard in other countries.
Might be interesting to know how many customers scam the sellers.. like Fasttech, Intl-Outdoor, CNQG and so on. Greedy greedy people..
90 is too much, yeah, but hey, why not only 3? More than enough to catch those bastards out.
As for “bad” buyers… yeah, plenty of them out there too I have heard really bad things about how buyers just destroy items for not paying the shipping costs and send the item back to seller :evil: (DOA items, not as described and even items damaged by buyers! Accidentally or whatever.)
I have heard really bad things about how buyers just destroy items for not paying the shipping costs and send the item back to seller :evil: (DOA items, not as described and even items damaged by buyers!