Where there is an opportunity for a scum bag there is always going to be a way to find a potential victim.
I recently bid on an Android Phone on the worlds largest source of stolen goods, scam and fakes on the planet - eBay!
There's a trick eBay scammers can still get away with apparently.
I sent the payment promptly and waited for the item status to change to sent so I could track it. After several days I dropped a line to the seller asking if/when he was going to post it and could I have the tracking info.
No reply.
I started smelling a rat, the seller was probably using a hijacked account
I asked the seller if he was not going to post the phone, to cancel the order
no reply.
I opened a formal item not received request to cancel the order.
The eBay process requires you to wait until the stated delivery by date has passed before asking eBay to step in!
Luckily eBay also seems to withhold payment to (some?) sellers until items have been received by the buyers.
At last the seller started responding.
He admitted he wasn't going to send the phone.
He eventually claimed he had cancelled the order.
He had not, if he had I would have received notification from eBay and an automatic refund.
We played bat and ball with pointless exchanges of messages.
He repeatedly asked me to close the case saying the refund was dependent on me doing so.
Non said I.
This is seemingly where eBay scammers can trick people, if I had closed the case I would not have been able to re open another one, worse eBay seems to then assume the issue has been resolved and releases payment to the seller.
Once the required seven day time frame had passed I asked eBay for a refund which I received within minutes.
eBays auto bot reasoning was simply because the seller had not provided tracking info, I doubt any humans were involved so I suspect the sellers account was not investigated further and is still active.
Its actually been years since I have bought anything on eBay via the auction process and a lot seems to have changed, they no longer provide name and address etc of the sellers. That is a real shame as it takes away the ability to pop around and have a word.
