Items not arriving

[gav1615]

I have tried 3 different sellers to buy an item over the last 9 weeks, same story.

1. Item marked "sent untracked".

2. Does not arrive, commence Ebay process.

3. Seller claims lost by courier,  will refund within 2 days and item now out of stock.

4. Ebay intervenes and issues refund.

On my last attempt my message to seller was

" do not accept my order if you do not provide tracking number", 

All 3 never had or sent the product, they claim they are now out of stock but continue to offer it for sale.

What is this nonsense ?.

My honest negative feedback was deleted.

GOOD NEWS - I tried Amazon for the first time. Same item.

1. Ordered Sunday 21st December

2. Arrived Wednesday morning 24th December.  

Within 2 business days Xmas week !

One thing left to say - Goodbye 👋 

[springyzone]

I think every buyer these days should be checking things out carefully before they pay a cent anywhere, whether ebay or not.

There are a lot of scam sites around, the so called 'ghost shops' are rampant, there are a lot of Chinese sites trying to pass themselves off as Australian, people should not take it for granted that just because it is on ebay, it will be fine. They really do need to double check feedback and recent records.

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of buyers who just let things go. My own daughter was almost one of them years back when something didn't arrive. We're talking a cheap item, but her attitude was-I don't know how to do that (open a claim), it's only a few dollars, I haven't got time for complicated stuff (as if she is some tycoon or something).

I pushed her to make a claim. If buyers would just take the time to read up the help pages when things go wrong and follow up on things, it would soon make an impact on some of the dodgy sellers, I am sure.

[sandypebbles]

So, so true

A Facebook friend posted this morning about fake sites claiming to be Dusk

And last year (I think it was) there were numerous warnings about fake Peter Alexander sites

People can only be warned so many times about the need to check and care about what they are buying and from whom

My friend said the fake 'Dusk' site looked 100% fake but people were still saying 'But it's Dusk'

No, it ain't 

[*casey*]

@clockwork_planet

"while you do the dance of trying to get a refund"

You were extremely lucky to to receive a refund as quickly as you did.

In the cases of fake tracking scams, eBay always sides with the scammer / criminal  first.

Buyers have to jump through hoops to prove the fake tracking  scams and very often, even after fighting to the end,

still don't receive a refund.

We see it here from time to time but the US boards are  flooded with fake tracking scam threads.

The difference between now and the early  beginnings is that now eBay constantly aids and abets fraud.

Needless to say, I could fill  all the forums with examples but here's just one  very small example of a fake tracking scam which is fairly recent. The fake tracking was reported to eBay well before the OP of the thread left negative feedback,

which was the first of many.

What did eBay do ? Nothing.  They left all the listings up for many others to be scammed .

https://community.ebay.com.au/t5/Buying/Am-I-being-scammed-Seller-sent-cheap-item-and-is-now-despera...

These buyers not only leave eBay, they tell everyone they know how much fraud there is on this site.

I remember the early beginnings here well. There were still plenty of scams  but back then they were dealt with.

In fact on  the very first New To eBay Board , which was always busy, we were able to to get examples of scams pinned to the top of the Board. 

We had  a team of members reporting fraudulent listings to  great  Trust and Safety Teams who removed the listings. 

BUT the team of members were kicked to the curb and  Trust and Safety no longer exists.

Comparing fake sites on Facebook and  elsewhere  doesn't  really compare.

A few months ago, someone else  said " If only they'd work with us"

Because when I personally report  30  individual  hijacked Italian accounts, each with 12,000 listings and hijacked by Chinese scammers who send the items from   AliExpress .. and eBay does NOTHING..

Then eBay are aiding and abetting FRAUD.

Let's not forget  the Chinese criminals can and will pass on all the buyers' details to other criminals.

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[safunskinbeauty]

I just searched for "Mullein Gummies" under Item Location "Australia". I am THE ONLY seller in Australia on this item. Every other listing is a seller faking Location. That's 98% of sellers faking location on 1 item. That's disgusting.

[springyzone]

I agree with you 100% that there is far too much fraud on ebay and ebay not only fails to stop some of it, but it positively praises quite a lot of very poor sellers, leads buyers astray.

But I do think comparing fake sites on facebook does compare or has compared to ebay fraud, for one simple reason. I suspect more people use facebook than ebay.

I joined a facebook group about scam alerts and it is scary just how many people are seeing these ads. The problem is, if you do see an ad and click to have a look, that ad or similar ones will keep popping up.

So far, I have had 3 people I know who bought, thinking they were dealing with an aussie company. Two received shoddy goods from China and the other received nothing.

There is an absolute deluge of ads where the company gives itself an aussie sounding name eg Bentleigh Boutique, announces it is closing down after 20 years and has 80% off sales.

I was suspicious of them after I looked at one then tried to find it on google maps. Didn't exist. But loads of people are reporting being caught up in it, paying money, then receiving nothing or else goods that are not as described in the ads and that are a tenth of the price on Shein or Temu.

Same in almost every category of goods, as well as other scams to make you think you're dealing with authorities. The scams are getting better.

I personally would never buy direct from an ad on facebook, although I do see ads there that are for perfectly legit companies too.

But I would always access them myself, not via facebook.

The only thing I will say for facebook is that recently I saw what I was pretty sure was a scam ad so went to check it out and up came a warning that it may be a scam site. That never used to happen on facebook but I think they are working on identifying potential ghost sites.

I am not sure how much ebay is trying to stop ebay scammers. The trouble is, ebay collects commission on each sale and it benefits each time a disappointed buyer just lets things slide or gives up instead of opening a claim.

I do think ebay is being used less and less by younger people, they have moved to Amazon.

[countessalmirena]

One helpful way to avoid the faked shop closing down scam: reverse image search. Copy-paste the image (of an item supposedly being sold by a respected Australian shop) into Google, and see where else it is being used. It will almost certainly pop up in Temu or similar.

Also… assume a closing-down sale ad is fake… unless you’ve verified it.

If the ad has a video announcing the closing down sale, you can probably still detect the AI nature of it. Same or similar script, voicing a bit off, some details not quite right visually… but this will all get harder to detect as AI develops further. However, for now it’s still a useful barometer.

Check when a website was created or domain name was registered (websiteage.org, WHOIS). Most fake sites will be recent as fake sites are taken down in the vast and ongoing battle to cut down on these scams, so new ones will pop up all the time.

eBay needs to do more. In the case of fake tracking, where a buyer on eBay has their claim denied, and it can be proved that the listing or seller was reported to eBay but eBay failed to take sufficient action, well… there is a pathway there for an outcome that eBay would not like.

[*casey*]

"The only thing I will say for facebook is that recently I saw what I was pretty sure was a scam ad so went to check it out and up came a warning that it may be a scam site. That never used to happen on facebook but I think they are working on identifying potential ghost sites"

That sounds like a very positive move  to help prevent   Facebook scams.

.............................................................................................................................................................................................................

It's also important for new buyers to know that if they see a  (linked) eBay item on Facebook, in order to be covered by eBay's  Buyer Protection - MBG , the item needs to be paid for through eBay's official checkout.

[springyzone]

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@*casey* wrote:

"The only thing I will say for facebook is that recently I saw what I was pretty sure was a scam ad so went to check it out and up came a warning that it may be a scam site. That never used to happen on facebook but I think they are working on identifying potential ghost sites"

That sounds like a very positive move  to help prevent   Facebook scams.

.............................................................................................................................................................................................................

It's also important for new buyers to know that if they see a  (linked) eBay item on Facebook, in order to be covered by eBay's  Buyer Protection - MBG , the item needs to be paid for through eBay's official checkout.

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The one thing I noticed with several ads that came up on my feed was that the wording was somewhat similar eg 'After 20 years, we are closing down etc'

The name would be completely different, location listed as different but it would usually be a site with few or no followers.

Now I am no expert at picking scams, so if I can see some warning signs, then I am not sure why facebook could not have picked up on them much earlier.

As I said, absolutely the only reason I think it is as big a problem as ebay is because of the sheer volume of people who use facebook on a regular basis, compared to ebay.

I have been extremely impressed with the way you have been able to identify scam accounts on ebay & to be honest, shocked at the volume too. I guess I don't know your background & skills and I don't mean this in the least rudely, but if you, a private person, can in your own time pick up on these, then I am astounded ebay, with all its resources, has not been able or willing to, if only to protect its brand.

[clockwork_planet]

Ebay removes any negative feedback if the seller asks for it. There's no point leaving feedback, and there's no point checking it. So many sellers fail to supply these days. Even if you refuse their request to cancel (so they have to cancel), if you leave a neg with "supplier cancelled order" it will get removed.

It's a cess pit.

[lezned-toycollector]

Of course such a comment would be removed - and rightly so. You have absolutely no way of knowing whether the supplier cancelled the seller's order.

As you are aware, leaving feedback that doesn't relate to the transaction is grounds for removal. What else would you expect? 

I would suggest taking a little more care when wording your feedback comments in future. I suspect you actually wanted to write "seller cancelled order", which is an entirely different scenario. Unless you purchased directly from the manufacturer, your seller and the item supplier are totally different entities.