If you’ve ever sold on eBay for any period of time you have probably come across some interesting cases.  There are many signs that give away scams. These can appear in many forms such as messages, miss typed addresses, delayed payments and cancelled auctions to name a few.  I wanted to add a series to my blog to bring some insight on how scammers are trying to exploit sellers.  I want to give you some tips on what to look for and how to react.

Most recently one example I encountered was someone with zero feedback purchased something and immediately sent me a message after purchase.  All of my Buy It Now auctions require immediate payment.  And don’t get me wrong ,all new eBay buyers with zero feedback have to start out somewhere so I’m not knocking the zero feedback.  Some indicators from his purchase raised flags immediately and zero feedback was one of them.

Zero Feedback with account opened in last few days: Everyone has to start from zero, but sometimes certain indicators will show to be a scam.  I personally lookout for weird usernames with zero feedback that were just opened.  If the username also has the issues below the BE ALERT!

Weird Addresses: The way this person’s address was written usually has the word freight forwarder written all over it.  This means the buyer pays a US based company a small fee for the item to be “forwarded” to their out of the country address.  I ship the item to a US address and if there were to be a return I can only provide a return label from that US address.  Usually in this case the buyer would have to eat the return costs.  In this case, if the buyer complains about the item and admits they are not based at the address that you shipped to then you are covered by eBay.  Call eBay immediately and they will cover you.  Stay on the lookout for US addresses with letters after the street name such as (i.e. EC-12113).
Usually this means your item is leaving the country.

Weird Messages: If the buyer sends messages after purchase saying they need the item immediately due to (insert excuse here) a multitude of reasons it could raise flags especially combined with the above issues.  Sometimes these requests are legit but always be on your toes if something doesn’t seem right.

Payment Methods: Most sellers will use PayPal and pay immediately.  Once they pay it immediately deposits into your PayPal account.  Sometimes though the payment is in a held status.  From my experience when someone pays with their debit card or using their bank checking account as their payment method it takes awhile for the payment to clear.  Now not everyone who pays with their bank account is trying to scam you, but the messages that they send you could lead to one.  In this instance in the picture below, the payment was still pending and the buyer sent me a message saying to ship the product right away for his son’s birthday.  I responded and told the buyer I was waiting for payment to clear prior to shipping.  Now if I shipped the item immediately the buyer could suspend payment and I would be out of money and out of the unit should I have shipped early
(photo: payment pending)

These a some of the signs I look for when answering questions or evaluating buyers after their purchase.  Please follow along so you can see some of the potential scams I may encounter and how I vet them out.

Chris
-LiquidationOH@gmail.com