The Ebay Game ( Money for nothing )

Off-topic Chatter
1

What is the Ebay game ?

It's a Numbers game based on Ebay's Refund Policy !

It works something like this :

You list an item for sale , ( what ever ) lets call it a Watch for now .

You may have 20 or so in hand , but you make 1000 available for sale .

The first twenty people get their watch and leave feedback , the following 980 people are buying thin air . The seller has no intention of shipping out anything .

Now the game is based on the amount of time you have to make a claim .. ( Used to be 45 Days , dont remember what it is now )

Anyhow , by the time a month has gone people may start making refund claims , the seller happily makes the refunds .

By the time that " Time has run out " to make a claim (?) a certain amount of people will have failed to make a claim ( Way to trusting a folk ) .

And because they waited too long , they are left out of pocket .

This is the Ebay game ( Money for nothing ) , because Ebay wont let you make a claim , you are blocked from making the claim ( Legally ) Because you waited to long .

And this could amount to thousands of dollars if the seller plays the game well . And I am finding more and more Ebay sellers that appear to be playing the game .

So dont be afraid of asking for that refund when your stuff does not show up after a month or so ...

2015 has seen me buy more off Ebay than ever before , not only for the convenience / Price / but also the product choice ...

But the more I buy , the less stuff that shows up ( Never ) .

And the excuses etc are always the same :

Like its held up by customs (?) = Really , who's customs ? Why would Chinese customs stop product from leaving ?

My customs only stops prohibited items ... Not toys , or Dash cams - or fishing lures ...

So this excuse is one I have heard too many times ...

Then there is the standard response with the refund , please pay for the item when it shows up . OK I dont mind doing that ! But to date not one single item has shown up after 40 days and then making a claim ... Not one , what are the statistical odds of that ?

More plausible is that nothing was shipped ! Hence it never shows ...

I post this as I had to make two claims yesterday , with one seller making up several BS excuses in 3 separate responses but still made the refund ...

The other just very promptly refunded my money with no excuses .

I din't want my money back - I wanted what I purchased , and it just makes me sad all over that people do this rubbish .

2

I experienced this recently but on paypal I opened a dispute and the seller refunded the money after 3 hours.

I received it 2 weeks later, sent the money to the seller.

3

Nice to read of some decent morals for a change!

4

I bought a gaming mouse a few months ago. The seller had 100% reputation on over 70 sales and had been a member since 2013.

After I purchased it, I waited for about a month before inquiring back to the seller about the delivery.

No response. Oh-oh!

Checked the vendor’s reputation - down to 57%! What the heck! Every single feedback for the last month had been negative, because of no product delivery.

I still had a couple of days to go before the anticipated delivery date. As soon as it hit that date, I filed a claim with eBay.

eBay had me do the contact seller thing. Pro forma, I complied.

After the prescribed waiting period, I followed up on the claim.

eBay decided in my favor within 48 hours and refunded me my money.

I don’t know how many people this seller cheated, but my guess is in the hundreds. Multiply that by anywhere between $30 and $50 a pop and that guy might have absconded with over $10 grand.

5

I thought Ebay extended the dispute period ?

6

Yup. Always make a calim.
Its not dangerous to make it even a bit early if you think you will get fooled. You can always lift it if stuff appears and give that positive feedback…

Nowadays I buy less and less from eBay :frowning:
More from other places

7

Most of the time on e-bay you will see that they have sold a lot of cheap products and the feedback on them is good. Then you will see that they list a bunch of more expensive products and then the Game begins. There are lots of variations on this game as well.

There is also the Game where the buyer abuses the system to either get free stuff or extort partial refunds. E-bay totally jacked up sellers when they no longer were allowed to leave negative feedback to sellers who do this kind of thing. You can set up your listing to not sell to people who have too many negative feedbacks. Well if sellers can’t leave negative feedback to scammers how will this work?

To make a living selling on e-bay you must have good feedback (Star system is all counted as well). It’s not just the single % number either (99.9), it’s where your listing shows up and that is based on stars. If people don’t see your listing because it’s been buried it will not sell. Unscrupulous buyers know this and take advantage of it. I sold thousands of guitars on e-bay and kept a 100 positive rating for the first few years. Then after the rule change I started to get a bunch of people who bought guitars and then would send me e-mails saying they wanted a partial refund or they would leave me negative feedback. I countered by offering a 45 day unconditional cash back (minus shipping) policy. That helped but it didn’t solve the problem. E-bay needs to allow sellers to once again leave negative feedback to scammers.

Unscrupulous buyers have the power and they know it. There are plenty of sellers who are scammers as well but e-bay and paypal will lock them out and do their best to keep them out. It’s not always possible to stop them from coming back, especially if they are overseas. The problem with banning sellers from paypal, is that when you get Buyers who are scammers they can jack up a seller and get their account closed as well. I have seen many good sellers go down permanently because of buyers getting pay pal accounts closed.

I still have my e-bay account but I only use it to buy with. I no longer sell anything at all on e-bay. They have totally and completely jerked over the hard working American Sellers. It’s not just this feedback system either. Their fees are sky high and E-bay actually took part in and lobbied for a Shipping Agreement that was pushed through by USPS (who has the right to enter into treaties of it’s own) to allow the Chinese to practically ship for free! (China and other nations get charged a single bulk price, so it’s the same charge if it’s 10,000 packages that weigh 100lbs or ten packages that weigh 100lbs, there is no individual package charge once it hits the US boarder) No American Seller can compete with China when it cost them tons more to ship from one state to the next than it does for China to produce and ship the same item. The only advantage American Sellers have is that of proximity and the new e-package deal negates a lot of that as well. The e-package is part of the China/e-bay/USPS “treaty”, it’s fast and it costs China next to nothing to ship that way, plus they get a free tracking number too!

I wonder how much money USPS loses each day as it delivers hundreds of thousands of tiny packages for free? Shipping for the rest of us has gone up to compensate for this too. So remember that when you ship a package to your Mom in Kansas or wherever that you are directly subsidizing cheap shipping from China. Part of the cost of your package goes to pay for China’s package delivery. So you are not simply getting cheap stuff from China this way. You are paying for it, you just don’t see the bill until you go to ship your packages or when you buy from a US seller who added in his extra cost of shipping.

8

This has happened to me too, on Ebay and Aliexpress.
Most recently a parcel turned up after 102 days. I had opened a dispute and been refunded, but the poor seller is no longer online…

I send postcards to random vendors…

9

I think I will be the follow 980 people,maybe I just can buy the thin air,give me more time to control myself.

10

Kind of irritating when paypal and ebay both know the vendor is scamming people because they pull the persons account …but when you’ve waited too long to file guess what ? paypal just says …sorry charlie … go figure this one out … they knew the guy was a scam artist before the time was up and his account was jerked … but you still take the punch to the head . it’s not like paypal doesn’t have a computer that has this figured out or anything .paypal got paid …why the hell should they care about you.?
their fees are insane . their protection sucks and both ebay and paypal plat games with both the vendor and customer using fear of too many claims to keep both in check …like insurance … you gotta have it …but just don’t use it !!
money changers …

Didn’t jesus drive these parasites from the temple with a whip ? …

11

12

Some of the scammers are getting prosecuted:

“He had the eBay/PayPal/parcel insurance scam chugging away, with dozens of accounts set up to file claims on packages. In actuality, the packages were empty boxes, sent to switched addresses, that purportedly never showed up.”

“A federal grand jury had indicted Jawa on 13 August 2015. He’s now facing between 2 (minimum) and 20 (maximum) years in prison.

He’ll be sentenced on 12 February 2016.”

13

Kind of scary that !

Being able to steal a identity and then access LEA data ... ( Makes you wonder just how many have access already )

For all we know , the FBI data base could be an open book to way too many people !

14

This happens all the time on BLF. Some BLF shill posts a “too good to be true” product like a 100-200 dollar nitecore item for 25 bucks. Says, I’ve bought it! it has 6 items sold and he has something like 88-92% feedback. But the first few people who bite on it realize, they never gonna get their items. It’s too late now cuz 10-20 fellow BLFers also bite. The account or paypal is closed. Nothing ebay does, almost no refund you get nothing in the mail. This is one of the reasons why i’ve almost stop refering to any ebay listings on BLF cuz of fellow scammers who are registered or keeps registering on BLF, you never know if they’re shills for ebay scams or 20 sock puppet accounts for 1 egotistical crazed flashlight fanatic.

Lesson learned from this:

1) Never trust a fellow BLFer if his account has less than 3 years on any thread.
2) Never trust an ebay account, as it could be loaned unless it has over 10,000+ feedback or 96% with 300+ transaction.
3) IF it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Unless they are counterfeit items, when they are 25% to 35% of the original price.
4) Always check the shipping times on ebay products, if it’s gonna be shipped from China and it’ll take longer than 2 weeks it’s probably a seller who doesn’t have the item.