Posted: 21 April 2024 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | 1
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Over the last couple of months I've been selling my comic collection on eBay. It's one that I've had since childhood, containing a fair bit of 60's, 70's and 80's stuff (mainly Marvel).
I've been charging reasonable prices and have made a few sales because of this. It's been, for the most part, an enjoyable experience.
A couple of weeks ago, I sold an early Punisher appearance. The issue was in very good condition and I included lots of photos in my listing to indicate this. My price was pretty reasonable (under what other similar issues had sold for).
I was contacted by a potential buyer and offered a price below my advertised price. I responded with a counter-offer which the buyer accepted and paid. Out of interest, I checked out the buyers feedback. Their transaction level was fairly low (around 70) but they showed a feedback score of 100%.
I don't know why (maybe some wording in their message) made me a little suspicious. I double checked every inch of the comic and took photos before packing and shipping it as securely as possible with recorded delivery.
The delivery was accepted successfully two days later and all seemed well (especially as the buyer then gave me positive feedback and praised me on the speed and packaging).
Flash forward to a week later. Still being polite, the buyer messaged me with a comment along the lines of "Just had a closer look at the issue and have noticed a crease near the bottom of the cover. I still want this issue but this is obviously not as good a condition as was advertised so I'm not sure what to do."
From this, I assumed that the buyer was looking for a partial refund. Instead, I offered to take the issue back for a full refund and cover the cost of postage. The buyer went quiet for a couple of days and then messaged me once more, saying that he'd noticed another flaw. Again, I offered to take the issue back and did not receive a reply.
On a whim, I decided to investigate this guy a bit more, and this is where things came to light. Some of the positive feedback that he had received was along the lines of 'difficult customer who made false claims about condition.' (yep - I discovered that a seller cannot leave negative feedback for a buyer!).
So, here's what I did.
I looked at this guy's feedback left for sellers (there were lots of negative ratings about quality) and also looked at his transactions over the last few months. Then I copy/pasted what had happened to me and sent it to lots of those sellers, receiving dozens of responses which echoed my own experience. Many of these honest sellers just gave full or partial refunds without question.
So basically, the guy's scam is this: 1) Receive the item and get positive feedback. 2) Contact the seller with a false claim. 3) Hope to get a full or partial refund with every transaction (and because the messages between buyer and seller are private, none of this is broadcasted. Loophole!).
Bottom line is that I've blocked this guy and reported him to eBay and half a dozen of his victims have done the same. Waiting on what happens now (eBay have already told me that they treat claims seriously but will not inform me of the outcome, so I'll just have to see if he's still active in a few weeks).
Sorry this is such a saga - but I just wanted to highlight one of the pitfalls of eBay (of which, I'm sure, there are a few).
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