4 ms·

I was victim of fraud on e-bay. Someone opened up an account and pretended to be me. They opened yet another count as a fake seller. They used my credit card

I was victim of fraud on e-bay. Someone opened up an account and pretended to be me. They opened yet another count as a fake seller. They used my credit card information on the fake buyer account and paid the fake seller account. The fake seller found a real tracking number to my city and marked it as shipped. I filed a chargeback. E-bay would not let me file for a 'return' or claim because the account was not 'mine.' When e-bay received the chargeback they appealed that the account was actually mine and the tracking number was evidenced they received it. The e-mail given? Something like "arrrghpirate@hotmail.com" -- they taunted me. Ebay shut down the fraudulent seller but fought tooth and nail against the chargeback. They overwhelmed me and my bank with paperwork until my bank gave up and threw up their hands. Ultimately my bank told me to go fuck myself and that ebay wins, even though the tracking number given was for an entirely different person and before even the date of the invoice. Fuck e-bay.

JohnHaugeland 4y ago
> Ultimately my bank told me to go fuck myself and that ebay wins The next step is to take it to small claims court, where the court doesn't really care what the bank wants and says "no, this is their money, and here's a nice hefty fine to convince you not to try this person again"
- notch656a 4y ago
  Yes you're correct. Sadly This happened one week before a cross country move to a half of the country where there is no representation of this bank. It would have cost me as much in hotal and travel fees to fly back for the court dates as I would have recouped in the claim if I prevailed.
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
    > Sadly This happened one week before a cross country move to a half of the country where there is no representation of this bank That is their problem, not yours. Open the case and let them send staff to your local court. . > It would have cost me as much in hotal and travel fees to fly back for the court dates You don't have to sue there. Moreover, if it costs you money to engage your court process, you make that part of the damages. They pay that, and quite possibly tripled. Talk to a lawyer, please. The law is ready for common things.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      Appreciate the advice! I'll look into it.
      - kingcharles 4y ago
        A lawyer is going to cost you $400 an hour. No lawyer is going to take a case on contingency (where they pay all the costs and recover it from the payout) unless there is a big chunk of money at the end. The risks aren't worth the effort.
        actually_a_dog 4y ago
        Almost all lawyers will do a short consultation where they can help you determine if the case is even worth pursuing. That's what "talk to a lawyer" means in this context.
    - leephillips 4y ago
      The court where you moved to doesn’t have jurisdiction. The types of damages you can recover in small claims are limited. It’s usually just actual damages.
      - kingcharles 4y ago
        Thank for you some sense. It's usually just compensatory damages, which is limited to just the cost of whatever the item was. You can ask for punitive damages to punish the other party, but that would be rare to get that without the other side having done something very malicious.
      - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
        > The court where you moved to doesn’t have jurisdiction. Yes, it does. Banks are federally regulated. . > The types of damages you can recover in small claims are limited. In most of the country it's five figures, which is enough to get a bank to stop screwing around
- kingcharles 4y ago
  Have you ever litigated in small claims court? I don't think you have because you use the word "fine" which is not used outside of statutory claims generally, and probably wouldn't be something that comes up in a small claims action (you'd be asking for damages). IANAL, so my advice when dealing with the courts at all is to tread very carefully. You can easily lose your shirt, especially against larger opponents, if they wish to get vindictive and manage to get you to pay their legal costs when you lose.
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
    > Have you ever litigated in small claims court? Yes. . > I don't think you have because This is not relevant to me. . > IANAL, so my advice This is not relevant to me.
dceddia 4y ago
I had a similar problem with buying an item on Swappa - the very same “seller found a tracking number going to my town” and gave that to PayPal as proof of shipment. It happened oddly fast, and the ship-from location didn’t match the seller’s. I think this takes advantage of recent-ish changes to shipping emails and tracking numbers where they don’t show the full destination address, presumably for privacy. Yay unintended consequences :/ In my case it worked out ok, just took a while. After some back and forth with the seller and then going radio-silent, I told Swappa, they canceled the sale and banned the seller almost immediately, and then I had to file a dispute with PayPal where they held my money for a full 30 days before handing it back.
- tyrfing 4y ago
  This is a common scam on platforms like eBay, and it seems like Paypal's policies in particular make it very hard to get your money back. Tracking numbers can't be considered anything but public information, considering both the ease of scraping and all the 3rd party sites to enter them on for tracking.
- BenjiWiebe 4y ago
  I helped my father with an issue where a seller (not on eBay) sent a PayPal tracking number for the same town as proof of shipment. Oddly enough, they sent a tracking number for a package that I had seen that morning at my day job... I explained that to PayPal and we got our money back.
- kingcharles 4y ago
  I had a package. FedEx fucked up and delivered it back to the merchant instead of me. It clearly shows this on the tracking. I never got the package. My bank (Square) refused the chargeback as the package had technically been "delivered" even though it wasn't delivered to me.
cameronh90 4y ago
In the UK, if your bank refuses a chargeback but you still feel wronged, you can escalate it to the financial ombudsman or even small claims. Is there no further escalation possible in the USA?
- samtho 4y ago
  Yeah, we have small claims where this sort of matter is settled. It’s very inexpensive in most places to file a claim and you don’t need an attorney/solicitor.
  - thallium205 4y ago
    Will the card contact allow small claims? Doubt it.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      The court case would be between you and the entity that owes you money - the payment method doesn't matter. In fact, this is the same reason that winning a card chargeback typically doesn't absolve you from contractual obligations towards the seller (though in most cases if they lose a card chargeback they have very little to stand on in court so they are unlikely to pursue it and even less likely to win it).
- morpheuskafka 4y ago
  You can complain to the banking regulator that they didn’t follow the procedures, but that’s not really an appeal of the decision itself. You’d have to argue that they either didn’t follow procedure or did a perfunctory job that did not really comply. However, these complaints go to a different team in the bank that may just decide to compensate you.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    I appealed at the bank. The appeals team simply said the actual facts of the case hadn't changed so the charge was still my responsibility.
danachow 4y ago
How did they get your credit card information? If it was stolen then it’s a simple fraud case and you’re not liable for any of it with any major credit card in the US (the federal law maximum liability would be $50). In that case the chargeback reason is simple - the card was stolen, these are fraudulent purchases and you are not liable. If you have a balance on the credit card you refuse to pay the amount. They should remove the charge. And if your bank isn’t doing the right thing you file a simple online complaint with the CFPB. You will get a response in 15 days or so. Though I’m not exactly sure why your ire is so strongly directed towards eBay and not your bank. They sound like the real villains here since you are their customer, not eBays.
- notch656a 4y ago
  >How did they get your credit card information? If it was stolen then it’s a simple fraud case and you’re not liable for any of it with any major credit card in the US (the federal law maximum liability would be $50). Yes stolen. Not the physical card, but the information skimmed or hacked somewhere. >In that case the chargeback reason is simple - the card was stolen, these are fraudulent purchases and you are not liable. If you have a balance on the credit card you refuse to pay the amount. They should remove the charge. And if your bank isn’t doing the right thing you file a simple online complaint with the CFPB. You will get a response in 15 days or so. I did file a charge back as fraud/stolen. My bank removed every other charge from that day. Including the e-bay charge. Then e-bay appealed. E-bay sent back a very long document asserting my own name was on the account, that a tracking number showed something went to my house. I've forgotten what all was on there, but it was a lot. The hacker basically had all my information; not sure how but my employer's human resources was hacked so maybe they got some of it from there. So for the first 15 days or so the charge was reversed. Then e-bay won the appeal. The issue is e-bay knew the seller is fake. I also contacted e-bay and told them the charges were fraudulent. E-bay just ignored me. They knew the seller was fraudulent but appealed the chargeback anyway. The charges were re-instated. Everything revolved around that tracking number. My bank talked to me very condescendingly and noted the invoice had my address and that the tracking number went to my city (I couldn't find out WHERE in my city it goes because UPS does not reveal that to anyone but the actual customer.) Both e-bay and the bank could have found out that tracking number was shipped before even the time of the alleged order. I was treated like a thief by both e-bay and my bank. Ultimately they ganged up on me. I'll never understand why the bank was able to justify reversing every single other charge that day but the e-bay charge. But I do know it is because e-bay made the chargeback process a living hell for my bank, because e-bay has a legal division devoted to fucking over the customer as much as possible when they get a chargeback. That is the source of my ire at e-bay. So yes my ire was also at my bank. But this threat was about e-bay. My bank was a small regional bank that not a lot of people know about.
CamperBob2 4y ago
Yeah, that's not just fraud, that's a targeted attack. Definitely not getting the whole story here. How'd they get your card number?
- notch656a 4y ago
  There's nothing else to the story on my end. My card number was skimmed or hacked from somewhere. I was unable to determine from where. The source they got it from apparently had my address and personal details. Awhile back the human resources at my employer was hacked which included basically all my information, so perhaps its on the black market somewhere. I don't know. I assume e-bay was chosen as a platform for the scammers because e-bay aids and abets these operations by offering very good chargeback prevention via their legal team. Rather than the scammer defending the chargeback directly, they can leverage the might of a mega-corporation who has a well-oiled machine to fight the banks.

JohnHaugeland 4y ago

> Ultimately my bank told me to go fuck myself and that ebay wins The next step is to take it to small claims court, where the court doesn't really care what the bank wants and says "no, this is their money, and here's a nice hefty fine to convince you not to try this person again"

notch656a 4y ago
Yes you're correct. Sadly This happened one week before a cross country move to a half of the country where there is no representation of this bank. It would have cost me as much in hotal and travel fees to fly back for the court dates as I would have recouped in the claim if I prevailed.
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  > Sadly This happened one week before a cross country move to a half of the country where there is no representation of this bank That is their problem, not yours. Open the case and let them send staff to your local court. . > It would have cost me as much in hotal and travel fees to fly back for the court dates You don't have to sue there. Moreover, if it costs you money to engage your court process, you make that part of the damages. They pay that, and quite possibly tripled. Talk to a lawyer, please. The law is ready for common things.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    Appreciate the advice! I'll look into it.
    - kingcharles 4y ago
      A lawyer is going to cost you $400 an hour. No lawyer is going to take a case on contingency (where they pay all the costs and recover it from the payout) unless there is a big chunk of money at the end. The risks aren't worth the effort.
      - actually_a_dog 4y ago
        Almost all lawyers will do a short consultation where they can help you determine if the case is even worth pursuing. That's what "talk to a lawyer" means in this context.
  - leephillips 4y ago
    The court where you moved to doesn’t have jurisdiction. The types of damages you can recover in small claims are limited. It’s usually just actual damages.
    - kingcharles 4y ago
      Thank for you some sense. It's usually just compensatory damages, which is limited to just the cost of whatever the item was. You can ask for punitive damages to punish the other party, but that would be rare to get that without the other side having done something very malicious.
    - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
      > The court where you moved to doesn’t have jurisdiction. Yes, it does. Banks are federally regulated. . > The types of damages you can recover in small claims are limited. In most of the country it's five figures, which is enough to get a bank to stop screwing around
kingcharles 4y ago
Have you ever litigated in small claims court? I don't think you have because you use the word "fine" which is not used outside of statutory claims generally, and probably wouldn't be something that comes up in a small claims action (you'd be asking for damages). IANAL, so my advice when dealing with the courts at all is to tread very carefully. You can easily lose your shirt, especially against larger opponents, if they wish to get vindictive and manage to get you to pay their legal costs when you lose.
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  > Have you ever litigated in small claims court? Yes. . > I don't think you have because This is not relevant to me. . > IANAL, so my advice This is not relevant to me.

dceddia 4y ago

I had a similar problem with buying an item on Swappa - the very same “seller found a tracking number going to my town” and gave that to PayPal as proof of shipment. It happened oddly fast, and the ship-from location didn’t match the seller’s. I think this takes advantage of recent-ish changes to shipping emails and tracking numbers where they don’t show the full destination address, presumably for privacy. Yay unintended consequences :/ In my case it worked out ok, just took a while. After some back and forth with the seller and then going radio-silent, I told Swappa, they canceled the sale and banned the seller almost immediately, and then I had to file a dispute with PayPal where they held my money for a full 30 days before handing it back.

tyrfing 4y ago
This is a common scam on platforms like eBay, and it seems like Paypal's policies in particular make it very hard to get your money back. Tracking numbers can't be considered anything but public information, considering both the ease of scraping and all the 3rd party sites to enter them on for tracking.
BenjiWiebe 4y ago
I helped my father with an issue where a seller (not on eBay) sent a PayPal tracking number for the same town as proof of shipment. Oddly enough, they sent a tracking number for a package that I had seen that morning at my day job... I explained that to PayPal and we got our money back.
kingcharles 4y ago
I had a package. FedEx fucked up and delivered it back to the merchant instead of me. It clearly shows this on the tracking. I never got the package. My bank (Square) refused the chargeback as the package had technically been "delivered" even though it wasn't delivered to me.

cameronh90 4y ago

In the UK, if your bank refuses a chargeback but you still feel wronged, you can escalate it to the financial ombudsman or even small claims. Is there no further escalation possible in the USA?

samtho 4y ago
Yeah, we have small claims where this sort of matter is settled. It’s very inexpensive in most places to file a claim and you don’t need an attorney/solicitor.
- thallium205 4y ago
  Will the card contact allow small claims? Doubt it.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    The court case would be between you and the entity that owes you money - the payment method doesn't matter. In fact, this is the same reason that winning a card chargeback typically doesn't absolve you from contractual obligations towards the seller (though in most cases if they lose a card chargeback they have very little to stand on in court so they are unlikely to pursue it and even less likely to win it).
morpheuskafka 4y ago
You can complain to the banking regulator that they didn’t follow the procedures, but that’s not really an appeal of the decision itself. You’d have to argue that they either didn’t follow procedure or did a perfunctory job that did not really comply. However, these complaints go to a different team in the bank that may just decide to compensate you.
- notch656a 4y ago
  I appealed at the bank. The appeals team simply said the actual facts of the case hadn't changed so the charge was still my responsibility.

danachow 4y ago

How did they get your credit card information? If it was stolen then it’s a simple fraud case and you’re not liable for any of it with any major credit card in the US (the federal law maximum liability would be $50). In that case the chargeback reason is simple - the card was stolen, these are fraudulent purchases and you are not liable. If you have a balance on the credit card you refuse to pay the amount. They should remove the charge. And if your bank isn’t doing the right thing you file a simple online complaint with the CFPB. You will get a response in 15 days or so. Though I’m not exactly sure why your ire is so strongly directed towards eBay and not your bank. They sound like the real villains here since you are their customer, not eBays.

notch656a 4y ago
>How did they get your credit card information? If it was stolen then it’s a simple fraud case and you’re not liable for any of it with any major credit card in the US (the federal law maximum liability would be $50). Yes stolen. Not the physical card, but the information skimmed or hacked somewhere. >In that case the chargeback reason is simple - the card was stolen, these are fraudulent purchases and you are not liable. If you have a balance on the credit card you refuse to pay the amount. They should remove the charge. And if your bank isn’t doing the right thing you file a simple online complaint with the CFPB. You will get a response in 15 days or so. I did file a charge back as fraud/stolen. My bank removed every other charge from that day. Including the e-bay charge. Then e-bay appealed. E-bay sent back a very long document asserting my own name was on the account, that a tracking number showed something went to my house. I've forgotten what all was on there, but it was a lot. The hacker basically had all my information; not sure how but my employer's human resources was hacked so maybe they got some of it from there. So for the first 15 days or so the charge was reversed. Then e-bay won the appeal. The issue is e-bay knew the seller is fake. I also contacted e-bay and told them the charges were fraudulent. E-bay just ignored me. They knew the seller was fraudulent but appealed the chargeback anyway. The charges were re-instated. Everything revolved around that tracking number. My bank talked to me very condescendingly and noted the invoice had my address and that the tracking number went to my city (I couldn't find out WHERE in my city it goes because UPS does not reveal that to anyone but the actual customer.) Both e-bay and the bank could have found out that tracking number was shipped before even the time of the alleged order. I was treated like a thief by both e-bay and my bank. Ultimately they ganged up on me. I'll never understand why the bank was able to justify reversing every single other charge that day but the e-bay charge. But I do know it is because e-bay made the chargeback process a living hell for my bank, because e-bay has a legal division devoted to fucking over the customer as much as possible when they get a chargeback. That is the source of my ire at e-bay. So yes my ire was also at my bank. But this threat was about e-bay. My bank was a small regional bank that not a lot of people know about.

CamperBob2 4y ago

Yeah, that's not just fraud, that's a targeted attack. Definitely not getting the whole story here. How'd they get your card number?

notch656a 4y ago
There's nothing else to the story on my end. My card number was skimmed or hacked from somewhere. I was unable to determine from where. The source they got it from apparently had my address and personal details. Awhile back the human resources at my employer was hacked which included basically all my information, so perhaps its on the black market somewhere. I don't know. I assume e-bay was chosen as a platform for the scammers because e-bay aids and abets these operations by offering very good chargeback prevention via their legal team. Rather than the scammer defending the chargeback directly, they can leverage the might of a mega-corporation who has a well-oiled machine to fight the banks.