Tell (ask?) HN: The USPS is (unknowingly?) enabling eBay “scammers” | Hacker News Reader

Tell (ask?) HN: The USPS is (unknowingly?) enabling eBay “scammers”

2 pointsindigodaddy10 comments

I put scammers in quotes because I’m not sure if it rises to the level of scamming but I feel like it does.

So apparently one can send someone a package with insufficient postage paid upfront, and the recipient is then forced to pay extra postage upon delivery or at the post office in order to receive it.

I’m not sure how long this “feature” has been available, but it’s most certainly a thing now— and I am not at all enthused about it. It was only $3.xx in my case, but I indeed feel wronged. I would have much rather just paid the extra $3 to not have to now wait until Monday and drive to the post office.

I won’t leave the eBayer’s name, but he has tons of 1-star reviewers with the same complaint. Obviously there must be tons of eBayer’s using the same technique, so the USPS is, unwittingly or not, enabling this scamming practice.

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This isn't an effective scam. Don't pick up the package and it'll be returned to sender for insufficient postage. You'll open a case for non-receipt and the tracking will show that the item was never delivered, so you'll win. The seller obtaining tons of 1-star reviews will soon lose their selling privileges as a result. The scam is thus self-resolving.

I was expecting a story about an actual scam that's been going around marketplaces for a while now: you buy something. You're told it shipped and are given a tracking number. The tracking soon (or already) shows the package was delivered, but you never received anything. That's because the seller never sent anything, they bought a tracking number for some other package destined for your zip code for pennies and gave you that. If you open a case, it'll be closed because the seller appears to have proof of delivery. By the time enough people leave 1-star reviews and raise hell with customer service for them to catch on and terminate the seller, they've gotten away with a lot of money.

This happened to my father a couple of years ago and Paypal's incompetent support decided that a tracking number associated with a package addressed to a different person that weighed only a few ounces was evidence that the seller shipped a 10ft antenna to my father.

He ended up shutting down a side-business of selling antiques on Ebay because he doesn't trust Paypal to not let a scammer steal hundreds of dollars from him again because they are too stupid or indifferent to read.

eBay and PayPal are no longer part of the same organization.

I don't recall saying that they still were. It happened when paypal was still practically the exclusive payment method on their platform. So probably more than a couple of years ago but the date it happened wasn't important. It was the details of the incident and Paypal's poor reaction to it that are pertinent to this conversation.

Sure, but won’t the majority of people (as I will), just pay the extra postage in order to be done with it and get their item?

The scam isn't effective even if you do, since it will generate 1-star reviews and chargebacks no matter where the seller goes, so eventually they won't be able to continue scamming more people. They'll be dropped by every marketplace and every payment processor.

It's also a lot of work... most ecommerce platforms, marketplaces and shipping services support USPS's Automated Postal Verification system. As soon as the package hits a sort center and is weighed/scanned, the insufficient postage is noted and charged to the sender. If I ship to you through Shopify or Etsy or Pirateship or what have you with insufficient postage, the difference will be charged to my credit card before it reaches your post office, and you'll get your mail as usual.

To have the insufficient postage reach the buyer, you have to use stamps or a guest account at the USPS website or something else that doesn't keep your credit card on file to cover the mistake.

This isn't a widespread scam, it's self-resolving, and USPS is not actively enabling it.

That’s good and interesting information. Thanks for explaining those details.

Did you contact the seller?

When I started selling, I made errors shipping small items that resulted in similar situations for my buyers.

Basically I put First Class postage based on the ordinary rate table. But the packages were “irregular” per USPS First Class regulations. The difference was about $3.xx

When I found out I refunded the whole order (they were <$15) and got on with life and everyone was happy (enough there was no negative feedback).

YMMV.

This is also something I ran into as a new seller. When volume of my sales picked up, I ended up sending out hundreds of packages by hand with the wrong postage. Took me a while to realize it, and had a few not so happy customers because of it.

I hadn’t actually thought of contacting them as I figured it was a tactic but perhaps not. If they actually aren’t aware then it’s worth typing up a few sentences..

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