On several occasions over the last 2 months I have either bought items in the "buy it now" category

[arclifford001]

On several occasions over the last 2 months I have either bought items in the "buy it now" category or have won by bidding.

Having paid for the item I have been informed by eBay that the article is no longer available and has been removed from eBay listing.

I have received an email from eBay informing me of the above and that I should seek repayment from the seller or submit a Paypal claim to recover my costs.

Apart from the hassle and disappointment in not getting what I ordered, there is never any explanation from eBay as to why the item has been withdrawn.

If the seller is using fraudulent means to obtain money by deception, surely there must be some way to vet these sellers before allowing them open slather on eBay. Perhaps, sellers should be requested to put up some amount of bond before being allowed to sell or the money collected by Paypal should be kept in trust for 45 days before being passed onto the seller, so that if there are problems the money can be quickly and easily returned to the buyer.

I don't understand why sellers who offend for whatever reason aren't made known to the buying public at a very early stage to avoid other buyers suffering as I have now on 6 separate occasions, by 3 ratbag Chinese eBay sellers.

[digital*ghost · Accepted solution]

There are a few vetting systems eBay use, but as you can gather, where there's a will there's often a way to work around them.

eBay will never disclose the reason why a listing was removed, citing privacy above all else as the reason, but I presume there are other reasons, including the fact that often, listings are ended based on suspicion rather than clear, undeniable proof, and if they started mentioning "we think the item didn't exist and the seller was trying to scam you", etc, they could be leaving themselves open to legal ramefications.

There are a number of things to look out for when buying on eBay so that you can make purchase decisions which reduce the chances of this happening again - 

Newly registered IDs selling highly desirable items at far less than RRP, possibly using cut / paste descriptions of other listings or information from websites, is all but guaranteed to be a scam. Also watch out for established  IDs that have been inactive for quite a while, and/or have either no selling history, selling history but for lots of low value items or for things completely unrelated to current listings, but suddenly start listing lots of high value or sought-after items.

[digital*ghost]

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@arclifford001 wrote:

 Perhaps, sellers should be requested to put up some amount of bond before being allowed to sell or the money collected by Paypal should be kept in trust for 45 days before being passed onto the seller, so that if there are problems the money can be quickly and easily returned to the buyer.

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I just wanted to address this, also - in particular the line I bolded.

The current process for disputes via PayPal already facilitates (in as much as possible) quick and easy refunds. Regardless of why the listing on eBay was ended, the PP dispute process must still be followed through, as it's not a given the item or seller was fraudulent and PayPal must allow for the seller to respond. It also doesn't matter for the buyer if the seller has withdrawn the funds they received, the buyer will receive a full refund of the original payment if the dispute is found in their favour.

In some countries, particularly with new sellers PayPal do put a hold on funds until a certain amount of time has passed, or the buyer indicates they have received the item by leaving feedback. PayPal will occasionally do that for high risk items, although I'm not sure how often that occurs here in Australia, but the buyer would never know their payment is on hold from the seller unless the seller informed them. 

A lot of the time the money is not what the "seller" is after, they are farming information. Once you purchase and pay, they have names, email addresses, postal (and possibly residential) addresses, phone numbers and so on, all of which may be used or sold to attempt to gain access to accounts (so keep an eye out for phishing emails and the like).

[fionashields101]

I wish I had read this post before I got scammed, because that is exactly what happened and being new to the game should have been more aware.

[lyndal1838]

Fiona, were you advised by ebay that the item had been removed?

Did you open a paypal dispute as advised to get your money back?