eBay, Etsy and other marketplaces on brink of having to disclose seller details

I’ve been bitten by this. I thoroughly tested a PC part, packed it in original anti-static packaging, packed that inside of an excessive amount of packaging and a thick box, and then shipped it all via a well-tracked shipping method.

Buyer waited until a day before the end of the claim period and then insisted the part didn’t work. Wouldn’t cooperate with any debug questions so I grudgingly authorized a return. Buyer never returned anything, never even provided return tracking info. Yet he’s been escalating this to eBay and now filing a chargeback with his credit card company.

After less than 10 minutes with eBay support, they admit that this buyer has a pattern of doing this exact scam. Just follow the steps and provide the requested info and I’ll be fine, they said.

I’m blown away that they know a buyer has a habit of doing this, yet continue to let them operate on the platform. Losing the couple hundred dollars wouldn’t be the end of the world, but I’m deeply frustrated that eBay is so heavily tilted toward the buyer that someone can develop a pattern of fraudulent chargebacks and false complaints with apparently no consequences.

Nope, I've had 3 different sellers run the exact same scam on me.

Each time it was an item not even close to as described -- e.g. damaged and used when advertised as new, an old inferior model different from the one advertised, etc. No problem, I can understand people make mistakes so I ask for a return and they send a prepaid label, I ship it back.

But turns out they've manually entered a totally different tracking number in eBay's system for the return label tracking info. I ship the item back but obviously it never shows to eBay as delivered or even sent in the first place, and there's no way in the user UX to correct the tracking info to the label you sent.

The only way to resolve it is to call eBay, except that's almost impossible because it has to be a callback initiated through a link on their website, and if you've called too many times before, they stop showing the link. (Turns out there's still a way to do it, clicking through several links in the support center, as long as you're not logged in so they don't know you're the one "using up" their phone support.)

Because the actual return label is in their message to me, a customer service rep eventually decides I'm right, they can manually see that label was delivered, and so they'll initiate a full refund but it will take several days. But every time, the refund doesn't go through. You have to wait a couple of weeks, call them again, explain the whole process again, and then the refund will go through on the second attempt. (All 3 cases, it required the second try.)

Three times, three different sellers trying to offload junk on me instead of the actual new item, and using this "wrong return label tracking number" scam so not only does it not get refunded but they get the original (albeit crappy) merchandise back too! Definitely a full hour of work to deal with eBay after each one to get the return fixed and actually refunded, and I imagine most people can't even get someone on the phone to do it. (Chat and messages simply didn't work or get responded to, or they were unhelpful autoresponses.)

Two examples that I've seen play out repeatedly in recent history:

List a pre-sale item that is 60-90 days out, with no intention of actually shipping anything. By the time the buyer realizes they've been had, it will be past the time they can file an eMBG claim and eBay will tell them "too bad."

Or list hot items like a Steam Deck or MoonSwatch under "Specialty services" or "Business and Industrial Equipment" instead of the correct category (again with no intention of actually shipping anything)...if some poor sucker doesn't notice and buys it any way, once again eBay will tell them "too bad" because those special categories are exempt from the money back guarantee.

Sure in both of those cases, buyers can resort back to a chargeback with their payment method, but eBay absolutely allows the scam to happen and typically does nothing on their side to prevent it proactively or assist the buyer after the fact.

And then of course there's the perennial favorite - send an envelope with a piece of paper to an address in the same zip code as the buyer so you have tracking with a delivery scan and any "item not received" claim will instantly be closed in the seller's favor.

I ordered a drone, tracking showed 3 pallettes of 50lbs each, PayPal did nothing. If you're not the shipper, FedEx won't disclose the destination address despite having the tracking number and PayPal won't lift a finger no matter how often you tell them that's not your actually your zip code or that drones don't weigh 150lbs. Afaik it's FedEx specifically.

That's when I was done with PayPal. I was not happy when ebay introduced their own payment system with forced KYC but PayPal is worse.

These tracking numbers are attached to the sale after the tracking number shows delivery.

By default eBay will close undelivered item cases because the tracking number shows the item was delivered.

Appealing the closed case is possible, but the link to appeal is difficult to find and the level of proof required is high.

I know because it happened to me and it took going to my local post office, talking to the postmaster, and getting the USPS internal tracking log. And that required convincing the postmaster I would not try to recover the package from the home where it was delivered.

I assured the postmaster that this was a scam, and it helped my post office serves an affluent zip code,

It was a ridiculous amount of time and effort for the amount involved.

This is not to dig on eBay. I still prefer it to Amazon. But that’s the scam you can use if you are so inclined.

Not that I am suggesting you are.

I had a seller try to steal $20k from me-- and they told me right out that eBay wouldn't refund it. They were right.

In my case the seller sent an item which was ultimately delivered back to them (they seem to have intentionally munged the delivery details so that a delivery to me was never even attempted). The tracking however ultimately showed "delivered" and that's all eBay cared about.

I even got a phone recording of the seller admitting they had it back then demanding more money from me to send it again! Ebay didn't care. (Maybe the seller actually would have come through if I'd paid their ransom but I surely wasn't going to send more money to someone who was trying to screw me over)

Through extraordinary effort I even got the full detailed shipment history, including showing it going back to the seller's address (which AFAICT the shipper wasn't really supposed to give me but I basically spent a whole day at their offices). Ebay didn't care, they demanded a letter from FedEx corp on Fedex letter head saying the package wasn't delivered to me (even though you could just see that from the cities named in the online tracking-- it never even made it into my state). I couldn't find any way to extract such a thing from Fedex even with another trip back to their offices.

So ebay ruled against me, absurd.

Fortunately I was still within the window to reverse the charge on my credit card (though ebay wasted enough time that I almost wasn't)-- and the credit card took care of it.

Back to the topic: This law would have done nothing for me. I was already able to track down the sellers identity without difficulty-- but what am I to do with that? I could sue them at great cost with years of trouble and time and a substantial risk that I get nothing-- including my legal costs-- because they're bankrupt or vanish. Honestly I would have much rather spent my time and money suing eBay since at least there would be a possibility of recovery if I won.

My entire problem was ebay's pants on head stupid policy that regarded a package as delivered to me even when the tracking made it completely clear that it wasn't. I don't think the seller even had to lie to ebay: they simply had to respond "Here is the delivered tracking number: xyz".

This is not true. Several sellers sent me broken version of a device I was looking for recently. In fact, it turned out that, for the device I was seeking recently, pretty much everyone who was selling around slightly (say, ~25%) below what I thought was the market price (for a used item!) was selling broken versions of it. The ones that were slightly more expensive actually worked.

This seems like a fairly important facet of this discussion.

This means on Amazon you can be fooled into thinking that you are buying from Amazon, but in reality the product you are getting is from a random seller. What this tells you is that Amazon doesn't care about getting rid of scammers. They are part of the business model.

I collect movies - and eBay has sent me bootleg DVDs and box sets countless times. They’re pretty convincing - even with stickers on the shrink wrap - but they are bootlegs regardless (sometimes poor printing, single instead of dual layer discs, no copy protection, etc.). eBay almost always makes me send them back despite my evidence, so I unfortunately know someone else will get scammed next time, but what else can be done?

Counterfeit Nintendo 64 cartridges are also becoming very widespread. eBay also sent me counterfeit AirPods Pro once. Very convincing box and look and feel, but the atrocious noise cancelling was the giveaway. It even made the little AirPods pop-up on your iPhone.

I got scammed by an eBay seller with thousands of transactions, and an almost faultless history. He shipped me a ‘brand new’ Punkt phone, but when it arrived it was in really bad shape: not only was it scuffed and scratched, there was about a year’s worth of call-history on it.

I made the mistake of contacting him first - and he immediately opened a complaint against me with eBay - meaning I was unable to leave a review of the sale (therefore his impeccable record).

In the end, because I had pictures and evidence of the phone having been used, next to screenshots of the sales page describing the phone as totally brand new, I eventually got my money back.

But nowadays I only buy from stores on eBay.

Seller was super nice - but I imagine the reason they were nice is because they didnt want me to make an extra report about them. They prob had to pay for the $10 I spent to ship it back (unless it comes out of eBay?) but either way they can try that 10 more times and try to turn a profit on an otherwise valueless item.

For evidence, see the trial of Elizabeth Holmes and SBF.

It doesn't stop someone from doing that and there will always be ways around things, but it's not that easy. Virtual addresses should require a notarized Form 1583. Maybe some don't do what is legally required, but things have become harder. Yes, you can get virtual phone numbers and burner phones, but there's a reason why a lot of sites want SMS verification: most people won't go through the cost and effort of getting a burner (and sites can differentiate between VoIP/Google Voice and real phones). Yes, you can get an LLC and EIN, but that again costs money and spreads knowledge about your identity a bit more. Yes, maybe you can fake some stuff, but then how are you getting the money? Are you getting a check for "DefinitelyNotAScam, LLC", but you're not a member of that LLC so you can't cash the check? Yes, maybe some places will still cash the check, but we're now talking about lots of payments that are eating into your margins: LLC fees, registered agent fees, burner phone numbers, virtual addresses, shady check-cashing places taking a cut, etc. And if you need to get a new LLC/phone/address for each scam, you're really increasing the cost and effort. It also increases the surface area for mistakes. If you're looking to insulate yourself, the more places you need to register and do stuff, the more chances for mistakes, especially as people are starting out. More surface area makes it harder to hide - certainly not impossible, but harder.

Know Your Customer rules in banking haven't eliminated money laundering and other nefarious activities, but I'd guess that they've made them a lot harder.

Yea, it doesn't stop everything, but it does really change the money and effort required. Maybe you don't think it's that much money or effort, but it might be enough to deter a lot of stuff. How does the lock on my house deter theft? I've seen the LockPickingLawyer make short work of basically every lock. Why even bother with a lock when the lock can be so easily picked? Yes, I know that the locks on my home won't stop determined, skilled thieves. However, they do work well enough for their intended purpose. Will these measures work well enough for their intended purpose? I don't know, but it does seem reasonable to think that they could raise the cost and effort enough that it'll deter a lot of bad actors and leave platforms with more resources to handle what's remaining.

It's just hard to respond because you can easily say, "well, I know a place that will give out virtual addresses without a Form 1583 and I know how I could..." Yep, there are ways around things. I think this is more a debate about how much bad activity it will deter. That's kinda the situation with almost everything in life. How much will masks prevent COVID spread? How much will a lock keep my stuff from being stolen? How much will a semi-anonymous username-based system like HN prevent really bad stuff that some anonymous forms see? How much does email or SMS verification deter bad acting on platforms?

It's just hard to figure out what you're looking for in a response. Yes, it won't stop someone truly determined to get around it, but maybe it should give you the same amount of comfort that the lock on your house does - and most people don't leave their place unlocked.

A good marketplace develops consumer trust. Parasites will try to exploit that, creating bad experiences and diminishing that trust. But that is bad not just for the consumers getting scammed, but both the marketplace and society at large. It's also bad for society to have lots of money ending up in the hand of criminals, because they will then go do more crime.

And note this doesn't stop you from doing business with Joe Anonymous. You just can't do it on an online marketplace. But you can always just not look at the details if you want, so you can get the experience you seek with a little custom CSS.

Then again, it is not so different for Chinese companies to register in US and continue their scam anyway.

Although the volume requirements may moot that.

(For work, occasionally I had to look into some sellers of diverted goods on various online marketplaces. The info from business names and addresses was helpful. And if it were fabricated/false info, there's a good chance that could be figured out, and the fact that false info was given would also be helpful.)

If an AliExpress-ordered charger burns your house down, good luck getting any money from the seller based in Asia.

If a dropshipped charger burns your house down, the European ‘entity’ (usually just some dude in Europe making a buck) is on the hook, and either his legally required liability insurance makes you whole, or you can garnish his income for decades.

Sometimes you don't care. Choose wisely.

When we with my ex started selling handmade stuff there, we had revenue above 20k in the first year knowing almost nothing about anything.

Mind you, handmade isn't IT, margins are thin.

Yes, we had that as an ongoing source of income. Why is this a reason for doxxing us?