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Comment by corin_ | Hacker News Reader

I have no love for eBay or Paypal, but what should they do in these sorts of situation? If buyer claims they send the product and seller claims they didn't, is there any good way of handling the dispute that doesn't have the potential for screwing over whichever party is innocent? Of course, they could have decided in your favour based on better feedback history, but that would have solved the problem for you, not all problems like this.

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At the bare minimum, they should help. They don't. They can't because they don't have the capacity to, but that is no excuse to profit over a platform they themselves have built that is being openly utilized by criminals to scam people, of which they are completely aware, and only doing the bare minimum to continue to stay in business.

As for what could solve the actual problem, there is one solution that always works, and that is insurance. Based on the claims, including false claims (it doesn't really matter), a company can calculate the loss probability, and sell protection. It would be a form of seller protection insurance that would save you from various situations as long as you follow the guidelines.

Of course, mail swap fraud is incredibly stupid because the perp is accepting the package to do their deed, leaving a decent trail of evidence. Mail theft is also stupid because there are harsh laws in place that would make it so not worth it compared to other forms of theft. So both are fairly rare. But they do happen because there are no shortage of idiots.

Since filing a false police report is in itself a crime, the honest innocent victims should all be filing more police reports, and PayPal and eBay should act based on these. So if someone returned a brick, you could file a report, have PayPal confirm it, and get your money back. Everyone should help you along this process, and it should be made simple and fairly easy. They don't, and it isn't.

And if you're a victim of a false police report, then you should be compensated even more for your troubles. If we have red light cameras that automatically send us fines, there is no reason we couldn't build a system for transaction fraud that would automate much of the violations involved in commerce. The credit card chargeback system is an example of one such system which are all maintained by corporations for their users. I'd opt for a public one for the people.

Wouldn't tracking the package be the final decision maker? If it was "taken off the porch", then the buyer should have opted for signature required.

The package could always contain a brick. That's why I take a video of myself opening anything expensive I buy from eBay.

Which proves you didn't already open it, swap in a brick, and reseal it to make it look unopened... how?

Yep, I think the only defense against someone criticizing an unboxing video is to sit near your front door on the expected delivery day, recording device in hand and finger on the button, and as soon as you see/hear the delivery driver pulling up, start recording and don't stop until the device is unboxed. The sheer absurdity of anyone actually doing that is what works in the favor of scammers on both sides (buyers and sellers).

> The sheer absurdity of anyone actually doing that is what works in the favor of scammers on both sides (buyers and sellers).

Request shipping to post office, open package in post office while filling with smartphone. If you don't want to pay for a trusted retailed, you have to put in some work yourself.

No dice, you'd have to get specific permission from the Postmaster to record on the premises, otherwise video recording by the public for anything other than news media purposes is prohibited.

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/usp...

"or installation head", so it's a roll of the dice.

Why couldn't the post office act as a trusted intermediary and verify what was in the package for a small fee.

Another thing I do is only buy from and sell to people with 5+ years and 50+ transactions of feedback, and at least a few transactions at the same dollar value that I'll be doing with them.

People are so entitled. They want free guaranteed secure transactions without putting any effort into security. It's "Fuck Ebay" every time something goes wrong, and entitled complacency every time they get an awesome deal.

The seller is rightfully entitled in this case. eBay is not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts — they are charging the seller a fee for conducting a sale on their platform. Given the fee, the seller has the right to expect reasonable service.

Yes, and a high fee at that. Between ebay and paypal, you pay about 16% as the seller. They could easily take the hit in these kinds of scenarios (which are still pretty rare when considering the whole ecosystem) and still be very profitable while they improve their fraud detection methods, but instead they'd rather just collect their rent, do pretty much nothing, and let someone get screwed.

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