Ebay item sold for higher than expected.

March 9, 2016 9:32 AM

Item sold for 2x going price, is this a scam?

I just sold a used phone on Ebay (here). I was expecting to get around $200 for it, but it sold for $400.

Is this possibly a scam? Buyer also seems to have paid much higher shipping than requested ($7.35) but paid $16.65.

posted by wongcorgi to Computers & Internet (15 answers total)

Sure looks bad to me. Check the bid history and you'll see that all the bidding above $158 was between two bidders with zero and almost-zero feedback. My guess is that those two bidders are the same person.
posted by jon1270 at 9:37 AM on March 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

Sounds like a scam. They'll probably tell you it was a mistake, ask you to refund them the difference and, if you do, charge the original back.
posted by veedubya at 9:40 AM on March 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

This answer from a slightly different Ask might explain what the buyer is hoping to do.
posted by whoiam at 9:41 AM on March 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

FWIW, I don't think the shipping cost is an issue. $7.35 might be the correct amount for buyers close to you, but looking at the ad from the other side of the country, $16.65 is what the calculator shows as correct.
posted by jon1270 at 9:43 AM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

If an item is worth over $250, a seller needs signature confirmation of delivery to be covered by PayPal seller protection. Boosting an item's value beyond that point and then claiming it was never delivered is one potential scam vector. So, if you find your hand is forced (and if they *seem* to have paid, it often is) definitely spend the $1.50 or whatever for signature confirmation. I'm sure there are other possibilities here for scamming but that's the one I'm familiar with.
posted by Lorin at 10:06 AM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Ok so it's most likely a scam, what are the next steps? I've never run into this issue before.

Do I report the buyer? Can I just relist it, or will ebay want some kind of fraud case opened?
posted by wongcorgi at 10:10 AM on March 9, 2016

If the payment proves to be legit, and you ship to the verified PayPal address, with signature confirmation, you are reasonably well protected. Not as well as a buyer is though, but my understanding of the $250+ scam (and all this only applies if that is indeed the angle) is that if signature is required, the scammer just moves on, rolling the cost of the legit purchase into their overall operation, or maybe revoking it altogether?

The whole thing is predicated on new buyers not knowing all the fine print of selling on eBay, so it makes sense it would happen with a new seller and a high profile electronics item.

If you're not looking to sell a lot of stuff on eBay and just don't want to deal with the potential loss of your item, you can cancel the transaction, even if they've already paid. It'll be a defect or a strike or whatever, but that's better than losing your item altogether! Especially if you're not worried about loss of future sales. Sorry you're dealing with this. It really soured me on eBay too.
posted by Lorin at 10:26 AM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

The problem is that if the buyer is showing paid on your Seller page on eBay (not just based on emails) I believe you have to ship the item or get dinged. Obviously, you should ship only to the confirmed PayPal address with Signature Confirmation, but even that's not going to protect you 100%. It's possible that this phone is hard to get overseas (is the address a freight forwarder, that is, a company that receives packages in the US and sends them on) and that's the reason for the suspiciously high price, but I agree based on the bidding history that it's probably fake. Who increases their bid 10 times a minute?
posted by wnissen at 10:34 AM on March 9, 2016

There's a scam where you send your phone and the seller claims that you sent a broken phone. Takes photos of it, etc. Then he issues a chargeback against Paypal. The buyer wins typically and you're out the phone and the money.

I'll see if I can find the details, as there are things to do to prove you sent your phone, but I've heard of this happening quite frequently. So yeah, be a little wary should you go further.
posted by vivzan at 11:41 AM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would try this and this while stalling as much as possible before sending it. Look up the shipping address in Google to see if there's any mentions of it being used for fraud, check it out in Streetview to see if it looks abandoned, check Zillow or other listings to see if it's been foreclosed on.

If you do send it, document the condition it's in and the serial number and fully insure it.

I have had reasonably good luck getting customer service via eBay's chat.
posted by Candleman at 11:42 AM on March 9, 2016

Check this out: http://andrewminalto.com/buyers-scammers-on-ebay/ and https://www.auctionnudge.com/blog/common-ebay-scams-for-the-first-time-seller-to-avoid/
posted by vivzan at 11:50 AM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

If an item is worth over $250, a seller needs signature confirmation of delivery to be covered by PayPal seller protection.

The threshold is now $750.
posted by mama casserole at 12:36 PM on March 9, 2016

So, you should call eBay to have them look at this. If they agree it's a scam, they can do things you can't, like cancel the transaction, refund your fees immediately, and prevent the buyer from leaving negative feedback. You can cancel the transaction from your end (and that's the next step if you don't get anywhere with eBay) but it's not as clean to do it that way for a number of reasons.

When this is resolved, consider selling the phone on Swappa instead of eBay--it's lower fees for you (flat $10) and less of a hotbed for scams.
posted by mama casserole at 12:49 PM on March 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

+1 on calling eBay.
posted by kmennie at 4:20 PM on March 9, 2016

I've been selling on eBay for almost 20 years and have been hit several times in the past couple years by people like this.

1) Definitely don't go through with the transaction.

2) All of the times this has happened to me the buyer ends up cancelling or otherwise bailing. I am about 99% certain these fake bidding wars are run by your competition - larger scale eBay sellers who are selling similar items and don't want you to sell yours.
posted by MonsieurBon at 4:13 PM on March 10, 2016 [1 favorite]