Allowing sellers to sell items they don't have and have never had.Is it fraud?

[spoonero13]

Recently made a purchase from The Nile book seller.

They sold me an item which they never actually had posession of.It was not a case of just not having stock but never actually have the item to sell in the first place.As the sale was made "under contract" (Ebay agreement) does this constitute fraud?

Interested to learn.

Cheers Rod

[lyndal1838]

What do you mean by never having had the item?

The Nile has warehouses all over the world and can send the items from wherever they have stock of the item.

I also suspect that they dropship....there is nothing wrong with this and it is allowable under ebay rules.

Also, some sellers will list an item as a Pre-order.....you order and pay for the item before it is released and it is sent out after the official release date.  Again, nothing wrong with this as long as they do not exceed the ebay time frame.  As far as I am aware they must not list a pre-order item more than 20 days before it is released.

[lane-ends]

Fraud is obtaining money with no intent to supply.

If they cant supply they refund.

Any reason to suspect they listed with no intent to supply?

More of an inability to meet contract unintentionally for whatever reason than fraud.

[davewil1964]

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@lane-ends wrote:

Fraud is obtaining money with no intent to supply.

If they cant supply they refund.

Any reason to suspect they listed with no intent to supply?

More of an inability to meet contract unintentionally for whatever reason than fraud.

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More an inability to meet expectations of the OP, whether those expectations were fantasy or not.

[digital*ghost]

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@spoonero13 wrote:

Recently made a purchase from The Nile book seller.

They sold me an item which they never actually had posession of.It was not a case of just not having stock but never actually have the item to sell in the first place.As the sale was made "under contract" (Ebay agreement) does this constitute fraud?

Interested to learn.

Cheers Rod

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Consumer laws will vary between countries, but in so far as Australian consumer laws are concerned, a seller or business is not allowed to accept payment for goods or services they knowingly can not supply or provide. 

Knowingly being the operative word - with the way The Nile operates, I'd be surprised if they did know 100% whether they could supply everything in their catalogue at any given time. Many of the very high volume media sellers operate this way, as they have a vast array or sourcing and dispatch channels.

A refund could technically constitute non-acceptance of payment for goods, even if originally accepted by virtue of instant payment (it's not actually possible to reject something like a PayPal payment, at any rate, except by refunding after the fact), so even if not a great practice, fraud is a bit of a stretch. 

[go-tazz]

That store has one of the weirdest way of getting some of their stock,(it looks like it's still the current set up,(so

it would explain this question).

Some of their items are "purchased" from other sellers in the way that they will list say a book at $30 and they

know the book sells for only $15.

They will then list that book for sale and if it's sold by them then they will purchase it from another seller at the

cheaper price and post it to the buyer,(sometimes they will ask the other seller to send it direct to the buyer).

The book in question has obviously been sold by the original seller),

Some of their other items have over the top high prices and I would presume they are "purchased/sold" the

same way,

They sell a number of items that are "gathered" from other sites.

If you did a search for that "book" seller and used the option Price:highest first you would see very high priced

items that they would source in this manner,(eg: the 3 HP band saw is available for under $9,000 but they have

it listed for over $25,000).

That one is in stock on the A site and the 2 HP is available for less than $8,500 from another site,(this store has

it advertised for over $23,000).

It's a "model" that seems to work for them as their feedback score is nearly to 800 hundred thousand.

If you read some of the 1400 plus negative feedback scores you will see that an item not arriving or

out of stock happens a bit.

[rocket2retro]

Ebay don't allow sellers to list stock they don't have. For example you could now list a toaster you don't have and eBay would have no way of proving that you actually have it.

What eBay do though, is penalise sellers who cannot send an item with an 'out of stock' defect. Accumulating a certain amount of these defects (depending on your sales volume) can lead to restrictions on the amount of items a seller can list, as well as potentially witholding their PayPal payments for 21 days.

[go-tazz]

None of that applies to this store and other "large" sellers,(they have been doing it for years and are never

penalized).

They bring in the money,which is eBay's only concern,(ethics isn't part of their setup).

[rocket2retro]

Thanks Tazz I suppose eBay has two sets of rules. One for we small fry and another for the big fish.