4 ms·

When World of Warcraft was released, I had the same thing happen to me. It was a hot item and my local retailer happened to have it on the shelves, so I bought

When World of Warcraft was released, I had the same thing happen to me. It was a hot item and my local retailer happened to have it on the shelves, so I bought 10 extra copies and sold the CD keys on ebay for about 3x retail pricing. Almost half of the keys I sold were allegedly bought from Paypal customers who "had their accounts hacked", so ebay withdrew the money from my account and refunded it to the buyers leaving me without merchandise or money. Seriously: Fuck eBay.

aaron695 10y ago
This is very common for digital items. Because you need no postal address. It's a easy way to turn stolen credit cards to money (or stolen Paypal accounts) Someone tried the same arbitraging bitcoins on ebay and got burned. Not totally sure this is eBays fault. I'd guess the actually were bought with stolen assets.
DrScump 10y ago
Paypal/eBay give zero seller protection to anything not shipped with Delivery Confirmation (plus signature if > $250). (Even with confirmation, they will still try to rip you off if the buyer balks. But you have zero chance without Delivery Confirmation.)
srtjstjsj 10y ago
bought for 10, sold for 30, lost 12, profit 8. So, fuck eBay for only enabling you get 8 profit instead of 0?
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Well, kingnohthing did nothing wrong and then got scammed, and lost plenty of legitimate arbitrage profit. Yes, eBay is lazy and doesn't check up who's it is siding with.
chdir 10y ago
> bought 10 extra copies and sold the CD keys on ebay for about 3x retail pricing > ebay withdrew the money from my account and refunded it to the buyers Wicked karma :) When Nexus 4 was launched, I ended up with multiple devices (automated parallel purchases). It gave a lot of joy to sell them at cost (on craigslist) rather than cancel my purchase or pocket the premium they could've fetched.
- kingnothing 10y ago
  Karma? That's just good business sense. Buy low sell high.
  - chdir 10y ago
    I think of these practices as "Hoarding" & "Price Gouging" rather than business sense. More like taking advantage of people without adding any value to the trade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

aaron695 10y ago

This is very common for digital items. Because you need no postal address. It's a easy way to turn stolen credit cards to money (or stolen Paypal accounts) Someone tried the same arbitraging bitcoins on ebay and got burned. Not totally sure this is eBays fault. I'd guess the actually were bought with stolen assets.

DrScump 10y ago

Paypal/eBay give zero seller protection to anything not shipped with Delivery Confirmation (plus signature if > $250). (Even with confirmation, they will still try to rip you off if the buyer balks. But you have zero chance without Delivery Confirmation.)

srtjstjsj 10y ago

bought for 10, sold for 30, lost 12, profit 8. So, fuck eBay for only enabling you get 8 profit instead of 0?

ptaipale 10y ago
Well, kingnohthing did nothing wrong and then got scammed, and lost plenty of legitimate arbitrage profit. Yes, eBay is lazy and doesn't check up who's it is siding with.

chdir 10y ago

> bought 10 extra copies and sold the CD keys on ebay for about 3x retail pricing > ebay withdrew the money from my account and refunded it to the buyers Wicked karma :) When Nexus 4 was launched, I ended up with multiple devices (automated parallel purchases). It gave a lot of joy to sell them at cost (on craigslist) rather than cancel my purchase or pocket the premium they could've fetched.

kingnothing 10y ago
Karma? That's just good business sense. Buy low sell high.
- chdir 10y ago
  I think of these practices as "Hoarding" & "Price Gouging" rather than business sense. More like taking advantage of people without adding any value to the trade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]