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I'm aghast at the moment reading comments on Ebay and what has happened the past year alone from ebay's own community forum and seller posts.
I'm seeing hundreds, actually thousands of reviews to where prominent sellers on Ebay for nearly 16 years have decided to abandon it altogether after being scammed by buyers.
From what I am seeing, Ebay always sides with the buyer 99% of the time. But what these buyers appear to be doing is that they temporarily pay for a product, get you to ship it to them, then they damage it...and then either demand a full refund or modify it and send have the seller pay to have it shipped back to the seller at which point it's discovered that parts have been removed (that cannot be seen or proven in the pictures according to Ebay) and are returned broken beyond repair or sale of any kind.
Basically, the buyer steals from the seller, makes the seller think they made a sale, and then Ebay helps the buyer scam the seller, and will go to the extent of taking funds back out of the seller's account to give to the scammer who acted as a buyer. Some of these buyers/scammers even keep the entire product and send fake USPS and FedEx tracking numbers back to the seller, and only when they do that instead of the first method have sellers been able to keep their money in a fraction of the cases where they were actually able to prove it and were very lucky that there was enough information still to do so.
Suddenly, I am not so enthusiastic about selling on Ebay. Worse, I am extremely worried about losing what I am currently selling this week. Normally, I have joint access to a friend's business account and it's mostly digital services that we've sold through his, so we haven't had anything to really lose if they try to take advantage of him.
With this however, it's different because it's not something that can be listed with his account the way I needed to, so I am taking a chance in listing it with my own.
I haven't sold any high-dollar physical items on here on my own account for several years, but always had 100% positive feedback when I did (back in 2009 or 2010 was the last time I sold with it; we've used his account for ebay digital services since 2011, and his wife uses her account for any tangible items of nominal dollar amounts if sold).
So I just listed something 4 days ago under my personal account that will end in an auction in 1 or 2 days, but I'm worried that the statistical likelyhood of being digitally robbed to where the expensive item may be stolen from me is 75% higher than before, and that Ebay will help them do it.
If you are a regular seller on Ebay who does auctions, buy-it-now listings, or you have a storefront with high-dollar items that you sell but cannot insure for damages beyond shipping...how on earth do you protect yourself as a seller?
Fedex and USPS insurance only protects the delivery and shipping. Once it's out of their hands, nothing can be done to recover from that if it was shipped correctly but damaged or intentionally sabotaged by the buyer.
Ebay protects themselves as the middleman, and the buyer is protected by Ebay even if they are a scammer. So what does a seller do to make sure they can protect themselves against fradulent buyers online like this and not lose a high ticket item investment or sale?
Any advice, ideas, or way to obtain 3rd party insurance somehow last-minute to cover an existing sale would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
I'm seeing hundreds, actually thousands of reviews to where prominent sellers on Ebay for nearly 16 years have decided to abandon it altogether after being scammed by buyers.
From what I am seeing, Ebay always sides with the buyer 99% of the time. But what these buyers appear to be doing is that they temporarily pay for a product, get you to ship it to them, then they damage it...and then either demand a full refund or modify it and send have the seller pay to have it shipped back to the seller at which point it's discovered that parts have been removed (that cannot be seen or proven in the pictures according to Ebay) and are returned broken beyond repair or sale of any kind.
Basically, the buyer steals from the seller, makes the seller think they made a sale, and then Ebay helps the buyer scam the seller, and will go to the extent of taking funds back out of the seller's account to give to the scammer who acted as a buyer. Some of these buyers/scammers even keep the entire product and send fake USPS and FedEx tracking numbers back to the seller, and only when they do that instead of the first method have sellers been able to keep their money in a fraction of the cases where they were actually able to prove it and were very lucky that there was enough information still to do so.
Suddenly, I am not so enthusiastic about selling on Ebay. Worse, I am extremely worried about losing what I am currently selling this week. Normally, I have joint access to a friend's business account and it's mostly digital services that we've sold through his, so we haven't had anything to really lose if they try to take advantage of him.
With this however, it's different because it's not something that can be listed with his account the way I needed to, so I am taking a chance in listing it with my own.
I haven't sold any high-dollar physical items on here on my own account for several years, but always had 100% positive feedback when I did (back in 2009 or 2010 was the last time I sold with it; we've used his account for ebay digital services since 2011, and his wife uses her account for any tangible items of nominal dollar amounts if sold).
So I just listed something 4 days ago under my personal account that will end in an auction in 1 or 2 days, but I'm worried that the statistical likelyhood of being digitally robbed to where the expensive item may be stolen from me is 75% higher than before, and that Ebay will help them do it.
If you are a regular seller on Ebay who does auctions, buy-it-now listings, or you have a storefront with high-dollar items that you sell but cannot insure for damages beyond shipping...how on earth do you protect yourself as a seller?
Fedex and USPS insurance only protects the delivery and shipping. Once it's out of their hands, nothing can be done to recover from that if it was shipped correctly but damaged or intentionally sabotaged by the buyer.
Ebay protects themselves as the middleman, and the buyer is protected by Ebay even if they are a scammer. So what does a seller do to make sure they can protect themselves against fradulent buyers online like this and not lose a high ticket item investment or sale?
Any advice, ideas, or way to obtain 3rd party insurance somehow last-minute to cover an existing sale would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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