Thread: ebay fraud help newbie here!

Yes, I am a newer seller, I am not a trusted seller yet, as I have only been selling for 2.5 months. at the end of this month I will get my money instant. for now it gets put into an escrow and shows up as a balance in my paypal. as soon as the buyer gives positive feedback and the tracking # shows delivered then it leaves escrew and shows up as available balance.
this is to protect buyers.

for this russian guy, his funds are verified. I have had a buyer in the past who used an e-check, and paypal lets me know, and I just dont ship until it clears.

in this case, his funds are verified and in my escrow. so technically this purchase is good.

as I said, I would not have been the wiser if he had not sent me a message from another account with a different address.

and yes my stink-o-meter is going off. but Paypal, ebay and other sellers feedback looks good.
the 'ONLY" thing I have seen off is his address is not verified. so that could line up with DaveW's post about someone helping him to buy stuff..... at least he has not mentioned using western union..

In the case you're dealing with, I'd only worry about it if his history prior to a certain date was spotty, and then all of the sudden the account had a whole bunch of unrelated purchases on it. That might suggest a stolen ID, but even then it would be possible that someone just got hooked on something. Nobody here got suddenly hooked on straight razors or stones did they?

I've done proxy ebay buys. Buyer from Canada, ship to South America, North Africa or Europe. Some sellers won't ship outside of North America and I got friends and family all over.

I think I will just flat out ask him what is going on. I checked his feedback and it goes back to 2010 with about 10+ purchases per month for all kinds of things with perfect feedback.

I am thinking you guys are right about the proxy buys. perhaps someone is boxing up and sending a but-load of stuff back to Russia for him all at once. and I will go ahead an ship this newest item, paypal says the funds are good, so the monkey is on their back. (I will take a photo of the shipping, that sounds like a great idea.)

well, he just confirmed that a 'friend' buys for him. so I guess all is well.

It doesn't matter if a 'friend' buys for him or he does it himself. The transaction is between you and the person who paid via paypal (if the buyer is different than the paypal holder they will have ebay/paypal problems and you should contact ebay/paypal about that).
If you don't want to take more risk than you have to, you have to ship to the address paypal/ebay tells you to ship and make sure it says 'eligible for seller protection'. If it doesn't contact ebay/paypal for advise, and how to not end up in such situation (after all they get fees from you, so you want to get service for this money).
I think in the past the fund holding policy was until the buyer leaves positive feedback or 21 days, whichever is first; and once you get a bit of a positive feedback/sales volume/account age they will lift those restrictions.

You can also request that his 'friend' who is purchasing from you (and who you legally transact with) leave feedback as soon as the he receives the item, so that your funds are not held hostage. If he trusts his friend to buy for him, he surely can trust him with the inspection of the items and leaving timely feedback. If he refuses you can block him from bidding on your auctions and only deal with more cooperative buyers.

I've had to deal with few unpleasant situations where buyers attempted to defraud me. I still get requests that I do such and such thing for them, but if I don't know the person and what they ask amounts to me forfeiting part or all of my seller protection, I politely tell them that I would be more than happy to, as long as they also forfeit the protection on their end and send me the funds as a cashier's check/money order or 'paypal gift'.