Buyer has purchased through brand new account and messaged on another, older account to arrange...

[justbrostrading]

Buyer has purchased through brand new account and messaged on another, older account to try to arrange shipping to different address. Obviouisly, I will not ship to any address not directly attached to the sale. There's also no feedback on either account. As this feels quite "scammy", if I simply cancel the sale, will negative feedback qualify for removal? Thanks.

I should add that it's clearly the same person on both accounts. He claims to have not been logged in when he made the purchase.

[msau4301]

Tell him you can only ship to the address linked to his eBay account under eBay's rules, no exceptions.

I'm not sure if he's paid yet (hopefully not) it could be the other account has too many strikes against him for non payment or requesting cancellation so he had to open up a new one. The fact that he has no feedback on either account at least tells you he doesn't have negative feedback either (some people just don't leave feedback).

We're not supposed to cancel an order based on someone having zero feedback. There is a good chance he has unpaid item strikes as maybe he tries to do this (get address change) and when it's not done he doesn't pay. Each time their's cancellation for non payment he will get a strike. After so many strikes he can't buy.

[justbrostrading]

It's paid for, it just seems odd that he's messaging from a different account to try to have me send it elswhere. I certainly have no issue sending something to someone with zero feedback, so that wouldn't be the reason I'd be cancelling. 

[ricarmic]

If it were me, I'd tell him you have to ship to the address on the payment, so to fix this you can cancel the transaction, set up a special just for him item (the same one) which he can purchase and pay for under the "right" account and everyone is happy after that. That will avoid annoying him and related feedback problems.

(You probably already know, but when you cancel use either buyer requested or problem with address so it doesn't defect you)

[ilikehockeyjerseys · Accepted solution]

A common scam is to ask the seller to ship to a different address and hope they don't know how eBay's seller protection works. Because a seller isn't covered if they ship to a different address than the one on the invoice. You seem to already know about this scam.  Another common scam for people to contact sellers pretending to be the buyer of a high value item. 

Under no circumstances should you ship to a different address. Unless this is a long-tooth item that you think would never sell again, I would cancel due to problem with buyer's address and consider blocking the buyer. 

You say you know for sure it's the same person. It wouldn't be the worst idea to message the original account before cancelling, just in case. At the very least it puts something on paper in the actual transaction messages in case eBay tries to issue you with an OOS defect that you have to get removed. (Problem w/ address should not have a defect, but their bots seem to sometimes issue them automatically.)

If their main account isn't brand new, I would suspect that it is possible that the buyer is trying to get you to ship to a different address because they know you won't be covered and using the second account is their way of protecting the main account from being reported. 

I will note that this happens sometimes when people accidentally purchase with a guest account. I have had people contact me with follow up questions about a purchase using a different account, because they aren't very tech-literate, and accidentally created two different guest accounts. I think it's a scam because of asking you to ship to a different address, but I'm just pointing out that people do sometimes make legitimate mistakes with creating extra guest accounts and losing track.

[recped]

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@justbrostrading wrote:

I should add that it's clearly the same person on both accounts. He claims to have not been logged in when he made the purchase.

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Explain how it's "clearly" the same person?

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I have had similar situations where it's clearly the same person. So I can see how OP would be fairly certain depending on what the person said.

I usually will not share any personal info or info related to the transaction for liability reasons. But if they have a general question like "can you make sure to ship this with padding" I'll answer it. I'm not going to share the tracking number or any personal info. 

I do think it is a good idea to message the original account before cancelling because at least you put on paper that they tried to reach out to them. Even something as simple as "Hello, Can you verify whether your address on the invoice is correct? I have reason to believe that there might be an error with it. Please respond back within x amount of days to verify your address. If I do not hear back from you, I may have to cancel the order."

They don't have to share with the buyer that a sketchy account asked them to send it to a different address. If it's the same person they might reply and say "I told you already not to send it, send it to xyz." - if it's not the same person they will say confirm that the address is correct.

At least that way if they are issued a defect by eBay's bots for using Problem With Address, they can share with eBay that someone claiming to be the buyer contacted them from a different account, and they reached out to the buyer in response to verify their address but never heard back from them so they had to cancel. Also, if the buyer isn't the person behind the second guest account, they won't cancel a transaction for nothing.

The big take away which the OP already knows is obviously never send to a different address.

OP can technically ignore those messages and send it to the original address, and they will be covered when it is delivered. But I personally wouldn't do that to make a quick buck just in the off chance that it isn't a scam and is just someone who has no idea how to use eBay. They may have made a genuine error, and if they notified the seller within a reasonable timeframe (even if they stupidly used a second account), sending it to the wrong address just to exploit eBay's seller protection and make a quick buck isn't a very nice thing to do, cancel and let them rebuy.