3 ms·
It's absurdly easy to scam people on eBay as both the buyer and seller. They probably saw the pattern of a new account selling electronics in an amount equal to
by hansvm 5y ago
It's absurdly easy to scam people on eBay as both the buyer and seller. They probably saw the pattern of a new account selling electronics in an amount equal to a month's wages in a lot of places and instabanned.
Back when I was selling a lot of electronics there they just had restrictions where you couldn't increase your volume much until after some successful purchases had gone through. I guess that was too easy to game and they've taken a harder stance?
If you do want to sell there eventually (sounds like you don't) you just need a new address, new IP, new cookies, new phone, new bank, .... As long as you're not actually scamming people and don't need true anonymity there are cheap/free services for all of those things that usually require some kind of personal information (so that if you do use them with nefarious intent the courts can find your real identity), and you'd just be violating eBay's terms and conditions. As you've seen though, adhering to their terms doesn't give any better personal outcomes, so I dunno that I'd give a flip about breaking them (not legal advice, please don't sue).
- morpheuskafka 5y agoI’ve only sold three things and two of them the first buyer tried an obvious scam (asking for email to send fake PayPal payment notification, telling me they “couldn’t get their card to work on the eBay site”). The first time eBay flagged it automatically and reversed the sale, the second I cancelled as buyer request since they told me they couldn’t pay. The annoying thing is I had to manually restart the listing and ask eBay to override the selling cap so I could do so. It’s really annoying because they tie up the listing while waiting to see if you are that gullible or not.
- thewebcount 5y agoYeah, I hit something weird like this the one time I tried to sell something on eBay, too. A buyer bid on it, won the auction, then after-the-fact tried to back out. I’m not sure what the scam was, but I said no, and they paid and took the item. But it totally soured me on selling anything on eBay ever again. This was a low-cost item and the hassle of it all made the whole thing such a waste of time and effort.
- contradistinct 5y agoWhen are we, as a society, going to take small crimes seriously? My girlfriend got scammed out of over $1000 on Ebay recently (seller is within the country). Here was the dastardly scam: she ordered something, and the seller never sent it. Ebay would do nothing; the police would do nothing. Why can you just take people's money like this?
- aaronfitz 5y agoSmall claims court is always an option in the US