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Comment by noonespecial | Hacker News Reader

For what its worth, thats the "brick scam". As in "you can't sell apple stuff on ebay anymore because of the brick scam".

Usually, they send you a return package with a rock or brick inside approximating the weight of the original package.

Its famous enough at this point that its impossible that ebay is unaware. They are fully aware and are choosing to continue to profit off of this. So much so that the "shell game" the author faced is likely scripted by this point.

Ebay consumes sellers as a raw material as part of the process. That's their business model.

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Could you record the opening of the box and then go after eBay for allowing the fraud to occur?

How would you prove you were opening the box as shipped?

If investigative news meant anything, they'd be all over this. But most investigative news is gone, and there's so few investigative reporters and trustworthy news outlets left that its hard to hold ebay's feet to the fire.

You'd need to also record yourself putting a real phone IN the box when you're shipping it, but it seems that even if you did, your evidence would just be ignored by ebay.

I mean, you can put a real phone in a box and film it but it's not foolproof as you can just open the box again and ship something else. it's not an easy problem to solve. especially with different jurisdictions in different countries.

Even if you had a film of the box being delivered to the post office you could have a corrupt post office friend or a post office worker that is scamming things on their end by opening packages and replacing the contents.

I took a photo of handing it to the USPS man.

So? You can still swap it out, or give him another box, or get your mate to dress up as a USPS man.

There is no 100% way to prove you sent what you say you have.

How about sealing it with glitter nailpolish? Take a picture of the dried seal, it's nearly impossible to produce the same pattern again.

So, you (the scammer) does this but leaves the bottom of the box open, and then remove the item, and glue the box back together, with a brick inside...

This is the same (sort of) reason that mailing yourself something is not proof of anything, as you can mail yourself a bunch of empty, unsealed, envelopes, then seal them with whatever inside them at some time in the future.

100%? No. But I was sure to include his USPS badge in the photo, as well as the address on the box, and the background of the behind-the-counter post office. I figure it raises the difficulty of faking it substantially.

Even legal process (especially civil legal process) doesn't rely on 100% proof to reach a result; it would be unreasonable for any dispute resolution procedure to do so.

I tried something along these lines. No luck. There is zero protection for sellers.

Amazon actually accepts this as evidence and will find in your favor. Video yourself packing the original and unpacking the "return" and you will likely prevail selling on amazon. I have.

Ebay sadly does not even provide you with a way to submit such evidence.

I've submitted video evidence to eBay before. Just include a link to an unlisted Youtube video.

Thanks for letting us know, that is actually very helpful

If you ship USPS, you might be able to go through them. Mail fraud is a federal crime and they don't fuck around with it. (you don't get the same protection with UPS/FedEx/etc.)

and if the fraudster is from another country? will the mail police order ebay to return the money?

Just want to point out that it's not always a planned scam on buyer's side. Actual item might be stolen/replaced on customs, post office, some package sorting facility or even by your neighbors.

For a buyer eBay is a great place because everything is protected and you can always get a refund.

For a seller, I guess you either have to accept the risk, or get some kind of insurance.

Overall, I think auction places always attract scams, so there always be some risks involved.

> For a seller, I guess you either have to accept the risk, or get some kind of insurance.

Or eBay pays the insurance cost out of the fees they charge.

It's hard to prove anything without some type of escrow service. It'd be cool if eBay offered such a service for an additional fee.

...are you joking or serious?

What's wrong with the notion of an escrow service? For high value items the extra protection may be worth it.

eBay are partnered with escrow.com to offer this service (which, I admit is different from offering it themselves, but it's there in that form).

AIUI you just described Paypal, which they not only provide, but also make mandatory, and part of their mandatory fee pays for insurance.

PayPal doesn't put the item in escrow.

Hardly.

An escrow service would be a neutral company that would intercept items and returns to make sure they were the correct item and in the correct condition.

Ebay offered escrow services for years prior to purchasing and integrating PayPal. I wasn't trying to be rude, I was trying to figure out if you were doing the old "if only <such and such> existed" when it actually does/did exist.

> everything is protected and you can always get a refund.

Hardly. No guarantee that anything is authentic or not stolen. No refunds outside the return window. And you need to know how to use ebay to force your refund. If your return package fails, you'd need to go through all of the USPS insurance hoops. And the protection ebay offers is the same protection most credit card companies offer which is also similar to what paypal offers... so this idea that "ebay provides safety" is a delusion.

> you either have to accept the risk, or get some kind of insurance.

That's not the point. The point is, ebay doesn't give a shit, and there is no "some kind of insurance".

> auction places always attract scams

As do all monetary transactions.

Yes, it can be tampered with anywhere along the way. I've heard of bricks or even jars of tomato sauce showing up instead of expensive electronics shipped from Amazon's warehouse.

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