There is no other explanation for getting rid of buyer reputation and providing no protection to sellers. They only want people who don't care about buyer reputation, and have deep enough pockets and the expectation that chargebacks and fraud will occur. If they deal with these larger customers, this increases their selling volume (and fees) and decreases their support costs.
I disagree. Back in the old days when I used to use eBay before they removed buyer feedback, it was considered unwise to ever leave a seller negative feedback because they might turn around and leave you negative feedback in retaliation. By removing buyer feedback, it allows buyers to leave unbiased seller feedback without fear of retribution.
One could argue that seller feedback is much more important than buyer feedback because the buyer has to pay first and then trust that the seller will ship them the item as described in a timely fashion. Ideally, the worst thing a buyer should be able to do is not pay, in which case the seller just has to start over and re-list the item in a new auction. It seems like the problem here isn't a lack of buyer feedback so much as a lack of due process for chargebacks, which ends up enabling fraud.
Are there any of YC companies building "garage sales on internet"?
But I don't agree with your suggestion that eBay-PayPal is doing this just because they are greedy. I think eBay-PayPal is run by people who take the Elite viewpoint - they dislike that the Internet is giving so much freedom and empowerment to the common people. And they want to reverse that.
Ebay originally provided a new and wonderful thing - a facility for individuals to trade easily with each other worldwide. I think that eBay has for a few years now been doing their best to destroy this capability, without being too obvious about their intent.
Another comment I have, is that eBay's practices are a very good proof of the social evils that result from software method and business practice patents. If others could provide a trading service that competed with eBay, but was sane and helpful to customers, eBay would be out of business so fast they'd wonder what hit them. (And same for PayPal.)
Now C is wrongfully in the red, and they need to make it back somehow. Their only options? Either get it back from B's account or take the hit--which can really hurt smaller companies and startups.
What would you do in company C's position? It seems that the real bad guy here is the credit card company, TBH.
Short of legal action, they would not let me get the contact info for the buyers credit card company in order for me to deal with them directly.
If they were to let me limit sales to people with certain types of addresses, purchases of certain value, a reasonable number of feedback, etc, that would be very helpful in reducing a chance of being defrauded
My local craigslist is where my for-sale items now go. Sure, I may get a little less than top-dollar for an item, or it might take a little longer to sell, but I'm never left with some after-the-fact dispute where I have no control (note: I'll only accept cash).
eBay was fun while it lasted, but then it became a giant flea market with basically semi-pro retailers looking to sell things, and a whole bunch of random scammers. Intermixed in all that was the occasional legitimate "amateur" seller.
For the very few times I've purchased something on Ebay in the last few years, it's always been from "pro" sellers with storefront type setups. The hassles of dealing with amateurs selling poorly described items, taking too long to ship, etc. was also not worth the "deal" I was getting.
A true "amateur to amateur" auction type sales website is an area begging for competition...
Really? Because this is the area eBay started in, and they pivoted to more "online retail" than "online yard sale" because (surprise!) there is a lot more money in retail. Really, eBay is more today's Viaweb than an evolution of either p2p sales or auctions.
[1] With all sorts of uncertainties I haven't properly investigated, such as whether there's been a significant shift that would make old-ebay-style auctions much less profitable today than they were 10 years ago.
Keep in mind a LOT has changed since the beginning. When eBay did that pivot, there were far less options for small retails sellers to put their products online easily and efficiently.
Ultimately, I think it would be near impossible to serve both markets well. eBay certainly serves the amateurs poorly, so that area is ripe for competition (IMO). Maybe serving the "pro" market would be bigger overall, and maybe even more profitable, but an "amateur eBay" executed properly would make someone a metric fuckton of dollars.
Our target is to serve the C2C market and make shipping less painless as well as eliminate some of the risk on the buyer's side. With the current climate for buying goods online companies serving the space are at risk for opening themselves up to scams like this one by buyers. The reality for anyone accepting credit cards is that you're at the mercy of the buyer.
But I won't, because I don't want to sign up to be able to window shop...
and I stopped looking at your site after about 15 seconds as a result.
eBay has a fairly reliable system in place, even if there's occasional issues. craigslist is filled with scammers.
You may say you get less for your money than through Craigslist(/Kijiji/Gumtree) but after eBay and Paypal have both taken their cut I often find it is not a huge amount of difference!
Eg. If you have a website / forum devoted to say knitting, being able to simply plug in an auction commerce application would be quite nice.
I am in contact with the police captain in the small town where the item was shipped, but I have very little faith in their ability to recover it.
I will file a local police report as well and try to appeal with paypal.
Meanwhile i want everyone to be aware that the so-called Seller Protection is totally worthless, since thats how Paypal chooses to pursue a legit fraud case.
Contact the state AG and local federal AG's as well, just for kicks.
Note that if you go to file a small claims action, you will actually have to be present in Ohio. They require in-personam jurisdiction.
(You do have the option of filing in local federal district court against the person, but this is very expensive)
Sue them for your money, for the time you spent dealing with them. Check out small claims court limits in your state, and sue them for the maximum.
I bet you will win with all the documentation you have.
I'm happy you are publicizing this, but the thing is, this is happening everywhere, to all kinds of people, and eBay/PayPal are not doing anything about it.
After striking out with appeals and the Better Business Bureau, I believe the only way forward is to pressure the FTC through our government representatives.
+1, this. Please, please file a complaint about Paypal/Ebay with the FTC about this. Enough complaining, and they will be forced to change or leave.
PayPal can be gamed in many different ways, but the credit card is the buyer's shield that even PayPal can't defend against. :(
For cash: gazelle
For slightly more cash (usually just a few percent), in the form of a gift card: amazon trade-ins
http://www.gazelle.com/iphone/iphone-4s/at-t/iphone-4s-64gb-...
vs
http://www.ebay.com/sch/Cell-Phones-Smartphones-/9355/i.html...
With eBay I have to photograph it, write it up, list it, answer ridiculous questions about shipping it to the 3rd world and take payment in the form of casino chips mailed to me in a few months. Then I have to deal with the buyer, ship it, and the whole time I have to be worried about scammers. All the time I'm competing against companies that are listing 50 iPhones a day because that's their fulltime job and my account hasn't been used in 4 years. I wouldn't buy from me in that circumstance.
With Craigslist, things are a bit worse. Not only do you get occasional scammer emails, but I have to meet the person to physically sell the item. I've had people stand me up numerous times, be continually able to schedule, etc. And when I do meet up with someone, they could give me fake money, or just steal the item, or refuse to buy it meaning I have to go through the whole thing again.
With Gazelle I got a perfectly fair bid. I hit accept and in a day or two a box showed up on my door. Put the phone in it, dropped it off at a UPS store, and in a few days I got my Amazon gift card. No weird fraudsters, and I spent a total of about 10 minutes of my time. In return I got a price I was quite happy with, an easy experience, and I was able to use the money to help support my Amazon habit.
Worst case scenario, Gazelle could have said no and shipped the phone back to me. I wouldn't be out any money (unlike if I paid for eBay shipping), and I could have sold it on Craigslist.
Gazelle and Amazon present almost zero risk to the seller, hence the price differential.
I've used the first 2 with excellent results. Obviously you get slightly less than selling on the open market, but you don't have to deal with scammers, and get the cash quickly and without issues.
One day you will get robbed by one of these exchanges, and you will blame bitcoins (or the bad man) and swear to never work with Bitcoins again. But they will be just one link in a chain of exchanges that you've trusted each one, hundreds of times, to bring you music and movies for bitcash, and nobody will write an article about it.
I am a small volume user but I have never been scammed by anybody in Bitcoin, except for that Bitscalper fellow.
Then what?
If the item matches then return to the complainant (buyer) at the buyer's cost + add a service charge. Seller keeps all their money. Buyer's account marked for fraud watch.
If the item doesn't match then refund the buyer with a chargeback, return item to seller at the seller's cost + add a service charge. Seller loses their money. Seller's account marked for fraud watch; selling fees increased.
Items not paid to be returned can be sold on to help cover admin costs for items that buyer's or sellers do not want returning.
Note that in the OP ebay claim to have assessed that the items didn't match the description and so buyer protection is invalidated. But they haven't checked and so are defrauding the seller in respect to this claim.
Edit for accuracy: It's easier to verify the trustworthiness of a seller than that of a buyer.
Back in the day, the formula for an EBay sell-side scammer was to:
1 - Setup a phony account, or network of accounts.
2 - start selling small value things to each other. (Postcards, keychains, digital pictures, etc) Leave positive feedback, including nonsensical feedback (ie. My laptop works great, A++++ for a $0.99 recipie).
3 - Wait a few months for the active links to the auctions to be de-activated by EBay
4 - Start selling a dozen high-value items like laptops. Ship nothing or empty boxes.
5 - Withdraw funds asap.
Now the same scheme works, but only in reverse for high-value items that have immediate cash value.
Solution: Never use EBay for anything.
I buy on Ebay all the time, you can find all kinds of things there really cheap.
That is just plain silly... I'm "paranoid" and don't want to be ripped off $500 or $1000.
Biggest I was ever scammed was $70 (it's ok, I can stomach that).
So I don't use eBay for big transactions which I have no recourse on in case something bad happen (e.g. I'm not a famous blogger so it's unlikely eBay / PayPal would ever help me like they helped OP).
But I do still use eBay a lot:
- for tiny transactions / items I really want that are cheap (e.g. some cheap but rare to find obsolete hardware I need to fix one of my old-but-cool printers)
- for big transactions where I can go to the seller's place to pay in cash and take delivery of the item.
Saying "don't use Ebay for anything" doesn't make sense, even if you're paranoid.
The buyer's profile showed he was frequently buying and selling cell phones, both working and broken.
Much more pleasant for both buyer and seller. No more news stories of people getting mugged after an online ad, no more scammy eBay purchasers, the lot.
USPS already provide "witness" services for packages that are picked (for free!), just add an escrow account for 1 to 5%.
Counterparty risk is definitely a hard problem to solve but this situation seems easy to solve: if the buyer is complaining "not as described", there should need to be some sort of attempt to return the item (at seller's expense or split).
Exactly. I'm extremely confused as to why this does not appear to have been brought up by any of the parties in the OP's case.
I was thinking about upgrading my phone and ebaying the old one. After reading this, I'm thinking maybe I'll go the craigslist route, or one of the online trade-in deals.
Does gazelle have this same issue? I'm not sure if Gazelle the company buys the product and sells it, or if they just connect me with a buyer like ebay does.
Swappa.com had six for sale, with asking prices averaging around $450 (there was an outlier at $360).
A quick look at Craigslist Boston shows recent asking prices of $380 to $550.
Of course, I don't have data on what prices the Swappa and Craigslist sellers are actually getting.
I think, if I were really lazy, I'd sell to Gazelle. Otherwise, I would use Craigslist, cash only, meet in a public place.
My Dreamybids.com site for example, is an awesome service that uses the quibids model. It allows anyone to host their own auctions for products or services. Meaning a graphic designer could auction $200 of services. 10 people pay $20 to participate in the auction, one person wins and gets $200 of graphic design for $20.
Good luck getting traction with that if you aren't in the tech crunch, mashables, stanford, in club.
That doesn't seem like an auction and to be honest I don't really like the idea either.
The gist for those that do now know: you buy bid-packs. A bid costs .60$, per BID. This doesn't matter if you "win" the item. If you do "win" (gamification abound), then you pay what the bid was brought up to. The other scam-note is that bids increase usually by $.01 so you see shit like "XYZ WON AN IPAD FOR 2.73$ !!!". While in reality, the "winner" pays $2.73+$40 in bids, along with everyone else to get the permission to bid.
If you type in quibids in google, the top auto-fill is SCAM. Just go look it up.
Btw UnFundedHype: I hope your scam of a business fails, and fails hard. You know better than this shit.
I would say, this type of fraud is exclusively targeted at cellphones, ipods, netbooks etc. If you're selling something like an antique grandfather clock, you should be fine. Of course anything that requires collection, or couriering is going to be more traceable and secure.
I have sold hundreds or maybe thousands of items on eBay. The only one I ever had a problem with was trying to sell an old iPod. As soon as it was listed the scamming started by fraudsters.
Paypal orders buyer to destroy antique violin:
- General Delivery is a big red flag, paypal confirmed or no.
- You should check buyer feedback in advance, not afterwards.
- don't leave feedback until you have the cash in your own bank account.
- For expensive items, don't just get signature confirmation, pay the extra few $ for insurance. I insure anything over $50, for two reasons: you can claim against the insurance if the buyer alleges the goods are damaged/missing, and if the buyer is scamming then the insurance means they're trying to commit fraud against the carrier, who are more likely to prosecute it aggressively. This is also why I prefer to ship via the post office. Sorry, but if you shipped an $850 item without insuring the shipment, you're foolish.
IANAL -- first and foremost -- but I would think the best tactic may be to go after PayPal to get them to discharge your supposed debt to them, given that you've already swept the money out. Their seller's assurance contract terms would seem to be vague around what is required for the item to be determined "not as received" -- also, as you mention, there is a a pattern on behalf of the seller -- is EBay/Paypal acting dilligently to protect your interest in return for your seller's fees and auction fees?
I think that depends a lot on what you mean "a decent attorney". Sure, a partner at Proskauer isn't going to take your call, but in my experience, the nice woman with the office down the street might be glad to help you put together a plan, critique your demand letter, etc. This kind of "decent attorney" is willing to work with you on the small stuff, in the hopes that you'll come back to her in the future with bigger business, and refer your friends and family as well.
A piece of advice -- as you mature and your life becomes more complex, it's not a bad thing to have a good relationship with an attorney. Here are some situations that have come up in my life:
Reviewing my ISO and non-compete agreements when I took a start-up job
Getting my security deposit back from a landlord who would not pay up
Reviewing the sale agreement for same start-up 10 years later
Representing me at closing when I bought my first home
Advising me when my bank "misplaced" a $10,000 deposit for over a month (they cashed the check but didn't credit my account)
Discussing will and estate planning when my first child was born
For all of this, and probably some other things I'm forgetting, I probably paid him less than $2,000 total -- and half of that was in closing costs on the house.
More recently, a different attorney (I moved) handled another landlord-tenant dispute for me with a couple of letters to the landlord's attorney, and never even sent me a bill.
A class-action attorney?
When I send a letter or a package and want to be sure it was received, I can rely on tracking or I can go the extra mile and request a signed return-receipt. Now all I have is confirmation the letter or package was handed over and someone confirmed they got it. They can still claim when they opened it, it was nothing but empty pages or a couple of stones - and there is no proof I actually put an iphone or important documents in there. There is nothing that guarantees both the seller AND the buyer that the actual item was very well in there and it was just as advertised in the auction and there is no easy way to prove it either.
From a legal point of view, how could you solve this? Let a third, independent and reliable party handle the transaction for you? Or do you pay a notary to certify that you actually packaged the iphone and that it's condition is as advertised?
On polish market, `allegro.pl' -- rather than eBay -- is the dominant auction/garage sale platform, and it is somewhat common to request such option when ordering from sellers without reputation. There is some abuse of this system, but it seems low enough.
I thought that party was eBay.
After 3? weeks of no response, I clicked escalate button to firm up the dispute and push it to Paypal so they could decide. I thought I had a clear cut case -- photos, documentation, 21 days of seller not even trying to defend himself.
Seller, upon getting the final warning, finally replied with a message along the lines of "I offered a refund but buyer never contacted me" with no proof... and Paypal voted in his favor.
Fuck Paypal.
If you can get law enforcement interested in the case (highly unlikely, but who knows), they should be able to issue a search warrant, and get the location of the phone from the carrier. If they can track it down to a residential address, then they may be able to find the actual person.
It would be helpful if the other sellers also had remotely trackable items. Regardless, you'll want to be coordinating with them on the item descriptions.
We ordered some stuff from (at least theoretically) a reputable company. We had to pay about 2 months ago, but kept getting emails telling us that the stock hadn't arrived yet and to just be patient. Then a couple of weeks ago, they told us that they actualy didn't have the stock and that we'd have to get a refund. But they were refusing to respond to any of our requests for the refund, so we contacted Paypal and they told us that we'd missed out on the 45 day window and they couldn't help us.
The company we ordered from eventually (after over a week of chasing) paid up, but if they hadn't we would have been left high and dry by Paypal.
A few years ago, I ordered some dirt cheap magazine subscriptions on eBay. I had done the same on eBay once before without a problem, but that was before the scamsters caught on.
You see, there is an inherent vulnerability with magazine subscriptions: they are not expected to start serving until approximately eight weeks after you order them. That's plenty of time for you to give positive feedback and a crooked seller to make more sales. It's also beyond that 45-day window you mention.
In the event, a couple of months passed. No magazines. I checked the magazine subscriber service sites and found that no subscriptions had been entered for me. I had paid on PayPal, via my American Express card. The action I took was to dispute the charge on the Amex website. It didn't occur to me take up the matter with PayPal first, so I didn't run into the problem you had. In any case, the chargeback was resolved in my favor.
Not long after that, eBay stopped allowing subscription sales on their site.
If you look, you can find stories like this every week since about 1999. This sort of behavior isn't new yet eBay continues to grow.
1) Try not to sell on eBay. Perhaps Craigslist or another marketplace will work instead. Unfortunately, people in low population density areas are kind of screwed without an online marketplace.
2) Block all buyers from countries other than your own. In massive markets like the US, gaining a few more potential buyers is not worth the increased risk of fraud or loss during shipment. Perhaps in smaller countries this rule won't work as well.
3) Only sell to people with significant positive feedback.
4) Only ship to CONFIRMED Paypal addresses.
5) Require Signature Confirmation for items over $250.
6) Don't accept PayPal; require money orders for payment. This might scare off potential buyers. However, it has the benefit of taking PayPal and credit card chargeback schemes completely off the table.
7) Don't ship General Delivery.
Rule number 1 for buyers: Don't pay with a money order, always use a credit card.
You're only thinking about protecting yourself - but you also have to actually attract buyers.
Its very unfortunate that it took this community outcry to get this far. Im currently working on a "post-mortem" overview of my what happened in the past few days resolution-wise and ill post it on my blog.
Tech-wise, its pretty amazing how much load a static octopress-based blog hosted for free on github pages would handle.
Also im pretty glad I chose to host the pictures on picasaweb. Hosting them on S3 would turn out pretty pricey :)
Also, it would not stop new ebayers from being able to buy things. eBay could 'eat the risk' or make them guarantee if a seller set up his auction that way.
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/buyer-requirements.html
More specifically: http://imgur.com/xvAYd
But it still doesn't get round the way this specific scam works, see post from Spooky23 above for a great explanation.
Most scammers have no bad feedback, they are just new accounts with 5-10 positive feedback for bogus items.
The whole "not as described" is an impossibly giant and stupid loophole.
Back to asking for checks I guess.
cf. 419 scams.
The most common scam that trips people up is the 'over amount' check where a "cashiers check" for more than the amount purchased is sent with the instructions to deposit the whole thing and just send back another check with the overage. When the check finally 'bounces' the check sent has already settled and you're out the amount of the overage (and possibly the item).
In this way writing a check is exactly the same as handing the person cash, once both banks agree the funds from one is in the other and the accounts are all updated, assuming it wasn't in error, and the other party doesn't have special privileges (there is an exemption that governments can pull back funds) the only way to reverse that transaction is a lawsuit. Well at least according the commercial banker who handles my business account at Wells Fargo.
There are other options (craigslist, amazon) but the fact is it takes longer to sell and still flush with scammers.
What does the solution look like? A costco style paid membership with more information given back to the user? Ability to 'vouch' for yourself via facebook/twitter/etc. ?
With all of this, its still chicken and the egg. Hard problem to solve.
A third party escrow service that examines all goods for compliance with their description and then sends them on could be a useful tool..
Did the police do anything?
It really sucks that the seller took the hit. Who should? The credit card companies? The banks of the scammers?
Of course Im not being objective here, but their Seller Protection wording could be a lot more forthcoming in communicating the lack of protection for this case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspection...
Edit: USPIS Wikipedia link
I recently bought an item on Ebay from an Ebay shop in China and paid extra for EMS shipping because I needed it fairly quickly (less than 2 weeks). The seller sent using a non-EMS method that barely got to my door in time, and it was the wrong item completely! When escalated to Ebay, they would only refund the item and original shipping fee and only if I sent back the item and paid for my own shipping to send it back.
I later learned that the seller was out of stock for the item, and figure that they must have sent the wrong item purposefully (since you're not supposed to be selling something you don't actually have).
But there's no way to actually contact Ebay support, so there was nothing I could do. Really going to avoid Ebay from now on because of that poor experience. No protection on any side.
I had someone do this to me a while ago on a laptop. As usual, Paypal and eBay were utterly useless. I marked the guy all ones on his shipping ratings, but considering this was a high volume seller, the effect is probably nonexistent.
In total I've lost 1000's of dollars due to Paypal just handing it back to the fraudster. It doesn't matter what you say or what evidence you got. Me personally have never won a paypal dispute as a mercher.
My recommendation to other people, I know its a loss of customers but LibertyReserve, bitcoins or old fashion bankwire is as safe as it gets.
But yeah, I get your point and try to avoid eBay as much as possible, although sometimes, very rare now, I have no choice. It eats me up inside when I do though :-(
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/mobile-recycling
Which will link you to a whole bunch of reputable bricks and mortar companies who'll buy your old phone.
You may not get quite the same price you could through ebay, but you don't have any fees so I'm pretty sure I cam out ahead. That and transactions were completed in person for cash. When one of my items (WiMAX router) didn't work correctly for the new buyer I offered to go round and help and give a full refund if I couldn't get it working (it started working thankfully).
The weird thing about gumtree was the rapidity of response - I put a microwave oven on there a midnight on a Saturday night, and got three email responses within 15 minutes. They didn't follow up the next day, leading me to think perhaps they were drunk or stoned prospective microwave owners, but it still sold within 12 hours.
Perhaps I was too cheap, but it was an 'everything-must-go' emigration situation.
Does ebay policy allow this? I thought the seller had to sell to the winning bidder, regardless of buyer's feedback, etc.
Confirmed address is a paypal policy you can also turn on, which forces the seller to use their paypal confirmed address when checking out or none at all. If someone wins and they ask you to ship elsewhere, you say no. Which sucks because the buyer might ding your DSRs (detailed seller ratings), which determine your ebay privileges, search ranking position, fees...
(Whoever decided that buyers should be exempt from negative feedback needs their fucking head examined)
Signature confirmation is an option you set with your shipper.
He may be able to pull off filing remotely with a few friends, but at some point he's going to have to fly/drive to ohio and show up, have a place to stay, etc.
Isn't this the obvious step that is missing from the whole equation?
I had no chance of appealing because Paypal would not disclose the Credit Card issuer contact info to me so that I could contact them directly
Just my 2 cents, i've sold two smartphones on eBay and not had any issues. I once did have a scam buy-it-now where they'd asked to ship to a foreign country but was able to relist quickly and sell to a legitimate buyer.
eBay were not very good, in my case, either. I spent hours on the phone. It was clear that the person that won the auction bid up to insure they won it. I'm pretty certain I had legit buyers at lower bids, and I would have been happy to sell at those bids. The reason I even tried a second time was that I didn't know about the ability to exclude certain buyers. For the second auction I tweaked all the knobs that massively restricted the auction to only the safest buyers. I don't know what happened, but someone with an account that was a few hours old won the auction. I think it was the same person that won it the first time. I called eBay again and they voided the auction after a few days.
It was a really horrible experience and I'll never use eBay to sell anything ever again.
I know this was in reaction to scammers placing fake auctions but eBay basically threw out the baby with the bathwater with their buyer protection policies. The scammers just moved to the buyer side where they enjoy lopsided protection.
This is my post from 2006 - a variation of the scam, but the seller protection is equally non-existant: http://verysimple.com/2006/08/13/ebay-laptop-scammers-part-i...
Thankfully everything went well (I think the period for chargebacks has expired), but I had this awful feeling for a long time after the auction that something dodgy would happen. Every time I sell, I feel like I'm playing Russian Roulette.
Like a lot of the other commenters, I'm not sure why more hasn't been done to help the sellers out. Shouldn't it be clear that it's a scam if a buyer does a CC chargeback, given that it's easy enough to file with Paypal? Also, wouldn't giving sellers the option to only accept payment via a bank account help?
In first-world markets, overall fraud is around 1%. But since experienced buyers and sellers learn to avoid it, the least experienced ones absorb most of the losses.
Whether you're in the most gullible 1% depends on who else you're competing with. For example, if you're selling a used car, you have to be fairly dumb to be in the most gullible 1% since lots of regular people do the same.
But the vast majority of iPhones on eBay are sold by sophisticated, professional, full-time merchants. So unless you have inside knowledge, you probably are in the most gullible 1% of iPhone sellers on eBay.
One gamer used a bank account to deposit funds into his account. 2-3 months later, he uses that same bank account, then files a chargeback for $680.
Even though he'd used that same bank account months earlier, on the same site without filing a chargeback somehow this time around he won the chargeback dispute.
I have no idea how that is common sense possible
I bought a few car parts from a shop who ended up shipping me only half my order. I contacted them, they re-sent me the same half a second time (so I had 2 of the same item, but no 2nd part). Contacted them again. Received the same item a third time and was fed up at this point. I had paid duties on each item to receive the package to only find I had more worthless parts and contacted PayPal for a dispute.
Turns out the only proof the seller had to provide was proof that there was a package shipped. No proof of contents or receipt or anything.
Learned a valuable lesson that day.
I think the only way to protect ourselves from this is to limit the accounts to which our PayPal accounts are linked. They automatically-deducted $900 from my bank account upon the charge reversal, and I was unable to prevent this.
By the time you get Paypal's resolution, the scammer is long gone and local law enforcement will tell you it's already gone. This whole situation is monopolistic and I don't understand why the FTC is not doing anything about it.
(also posted as a comment on your essay)
https://dfi.secureprtportal.com/dficase/programs/eComplaint/...
They really don't want business from the little sellers any more.
In all seriousness though, PayPal does need to get their act together. I've lost easily lost a few hundred through various transactions over the past couple years because of things like this - But there are so few options that are available to the mass public that it's hard to move away from them as a seller.
- It's a lot cheaper for ebay/paypal to let the scammers rip off people than it is to go after them, even when the facts clearly identify the scammer
- Casual sellers are both less able to detect fraud and are more greatly impacted by it
- The feedback mechanism is insufficient "insurance" against fraud
- "Seller protection" and "Buyer protection" are not suitable insurances against the kind of fraud that actually occurs
- The vast majority of transactions are legitimate
- The selling prices on ebay can be substantially higher than Gazelle/Amazon, or other reputable channel
- Fraud will undoubtedly occur in some cases
How about if a 3rd party sold real buyer or seller insurance? They would be in the business of identifying scam-like behaviour from buyers/sellers, help you to avoid fraud it can detect, and ultimately insure you from loss. Not sure how much the premium would need to be in order to make this work, but seems like an interesting idea.
As part of a large OTA, I've dealt with credit card chargebacks in the travel industry and it's really not pretty. As soon as a chargeback is received by the bank, you, the merchant, are presumed guilty. It's up to you to prove your "innocence". The buyer can simply claim one of the many frivolous reasons without providing an iota of proof and you'll be stuck with providing reams of paperwork - chargeslip, e-ticket, boarding pass, verification from airline that the passenger boarded the plane, etc. etc.
I have no respect for either of these companies.
Unfortunately, PayPal sticks the user with the cost in this case. It would be out of business I'd imagine if it ate the cost.
Whenever someone pays for something with a credit card using PayPal, you automatically lose all of your protections if they dispute it through their cardholder. They just act as a passthrough.
Our site is still very new but we are open to criticism. cellsolo dot com
Sorry you're out that much money because of scam.
They really, really suck. Sadly, there is little alternative to eBay.
it includes some fun site stats
How is this PayPal's and not the credit card company's fault? Couldn't the same thing happen to anyone accepting credit card payments?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_fraud
Cute name, serious problem.
-You can't block scammers -Buyers can return an item for any reason (even a year after they purchased it from you). 99% of the time, Amazon will let them keep the item and refund them. This happened to me many times. -If you get banned, they will keep your money for 90 days. Banning is based on automated robots that look for patterns. You have no recourse. All Amazon associates will tell you to use their email support system. The email support system is manned by either scripts or reps that will only respond with canned answers.
Ebay isn't nearly as bad. I've had claims filed against me a few times by various people and as long as I had the tracking number, I won the claim.
As someone who made amazon thousands of dollars, I got tried of being treated this way. The only reason they can still continue this behavior is because they are the biggest marketplace.
It's hard for competitors because you need the traffic.
