Beware of scams! No help from eBay
Summary: silberos warns about scams on eBay and mentions the lack of help from the platform. max-bit refers to this warning, but does not add any new information.
I would like to warn other sellers about a situation that happened to me on the eBay platform.
I am a long-time seller and I always act in accordance with the service's rules. I also sell items of very high value.
In my case, the buyer reported a return. According to the procedure and recommendations of eBay support:
I refunded the entire purchase amount,
gave back the shipping costs,
additionally, I gave the buyer money for the return shipment, because due to a system error on eBay, I couldn't generate a return label.
After receiving the money, the buyer:
did not return the item,
did not provide the tracking number,
did not respond to messages,
did not answer calls,
completely broke off contact.
As a result, I was left without the item and without the money.
The worst part of this situation is that eBay — despite many reports, case numbers, and complete documentation — did not resolve the issue. I only received automatic responses like "we will contact the buyer", even though the buyer had not been responding for a long time.
The platform, which charges for transaction security and controls payments, did not secure the funds in the buyer's account and did not compensate me under seller protection.
In practice, this means that:
the buyer kept the money and the item,
and the honest seller bore the entire loss.
I write this as a warning to others:
- with expensive items, exercise maximum caution,
- do not refund money without a physical return of the goods,
- document every conversation,
- do not trust assurances like "the system will solve it by itself".
Unfortunately, I trusted the procedures and was deceived.
If anyone had a similar situation or knows how to effectively deal with such cases — I would gladly accept any advice.
max-bit
·3 months agoUnfortunately, that’s standard these days.
eBay support is rock bottom these days, replies pasted from some script blindly.
Besides that, ZERO support.
Recently I found 2 auctions that were clearly a scam and what, nothing — I got a reply:
Thank you for contacting eBay Customer Support. My name is Aman and I’ll be happy to help you further.
First of all, I appreciate your time and effort in providing us with additional information.
I can see that you opened this account 23 years ago. I would like to express my gratitude for your loyalty to our platform.
As per your request, we understand that you want information about specific listings and accounts. I assure you that I will provide you with complete information below.
After reviewing the information you provided to us, item number: 389898091642 – Keysight DSAX91604A, DSA oscilloscope, 40 GSa/s, 20 GHz, 4 channels, sold by user: iedaojingerlu7 – and after investigating this seller account and its listing by our dedicated team, I would like to inform you that we did not find any suspicious activity in relation to the listing you provided or this account. However, if you still believe the listing is suspicious, we advise you not to conduct any transactions with this account
Probably (if it’s not AI) that’s CTRL-C, CTRL-V
if anyone doesn’t believe it
Scammer auction:
Keysight DSAX91604A, DSA Oscilloscope, 40 GSa/s, 20 GHz, 4Ch bb | eBay
Real auction
Keysight DSAX91604A, DSA Oscilloscope, 40 GSa/s, 20 GHz, 4Ch | eBay
And what, nothing
The account is still there and nothing has happened to it.
In general, buying and selling on eBay (unless it’s a big store) is becoming a lottery — we never know when we’ll run into a scammer.
ways to buy:
- maintain correspondence with the buyer and ask “difficult” questions related to the item being purchased
- demand (absolutely) additional photos
- check whether such items have already been listed (including on other sites)
- buy only using PayPal and indirectly credit cards