Engaging with a scam seller in any way poses more problems than the most obvious ones of "not receiving the item" or "receiving the wrong item".
- The item may be (almost certainly will be) made to substandard specifications of substandard materials, so that it is essentially not fit for purpose - but to your eyes, it would look fine. That's if the item actually ever arrives.
- The item's poor quality may result in a tragedy. Apart from the risk of damage to property, injury, or loss of life, there is also the issue of none of that being covered by insurance because the product responsible was not to standard and was made of inferior materials, and demonstrably you knew that that was likely at the time of your purchase.
- If you pay with PayPal, the scammer can send a tracked small/worthless item either to you or a different address so that he has proof of delivery. This has been mentioned on these boards before as having occurred.
- The scammer can send nothing, and use the usual box of trick to string you along past the time of being able to open a dispute. It sounds as though you're aware of that particular problem and would open a dispute within the appropriate timeframe, so that at least is not an issue. (davewil has corrected the eBay Money Back Guarantee timeframe for you.)
- The scammer will have your name and address and probably your PayPal email address. That's already enough for some form of identity theft.
- The scammer will have identified you as being a chancer. You'll take a risk on what seems fairly obviously to be a scam, if you perceive that if things' go pineapple-shapred you'll be able to get back your money. That reveals that you can be taken advantage of through other scams that are designed for just such type of mark.
- You would probably receive quite a few scamming emails. Many of them will look legitimate and ask you to click onto a link in the body of the official-looking email. Enough said.
- Even if you don't click on links within emails, some emails can contain code that executes simply upon being read.
- I would suggest - do NOT buy a "too good to be true" item with the idea that you can always get your money back, as though that's the worst result that can happen.
- Do not engage with scammers at all.
- Don't reply to scam emails;
don't open obviously scam emails;
have robust anti-spam filters and
have robust mental phishing filters (set up in your own actions, resulting from a state of mind that can weed out listings or offers that are more likely than not to be a scam); - and don't look for the cheapest price irrespective of any red flags. Even if the flag just a little bit pink, BE SUSPICIOUS!
And... try to buy Australian. Make sure it is from a reputable company with ABN, subject to Australian consumer laws, authorised sellers of the item you are purchasing, for which you will have the appropriate warranty.
There is a genuine and very appreciable difference between "made in China" but to Australian specifications (under contract to an Australian design for an Australian brand) and 'made in China" in a Chinese factory churning out the unbranded generic stuff without regard for Australian standards.
Some posts that might be of interest to you:
Regulatory compliance marks
Phones (among other items) being sent by Chinese sellers / fake / not to standard
Parallel imports / non-genuine / spoiler / non-existent items
