How Do Obvious Scammer Buyers Stay Active?!?!

[teenytrinkets]

I'm getting tired of repeat INRers for untracked items. I'm getting even more tired of the ones that so blatantly abuse the system, and have no consequences. That's just a slap in the face to sellers. I do my due diligence: followup fb, block, report - but I feel like it's just a waste of time. My most recent experience has really reminded me I need to investigate each buyer more carefully before sending something untracked - this one has left more neg fb than positives - I can't actually believe it. It's insane! And most of them are for INRs & INADs. Sorry for the rant - it's just getting so frustrating!!!

[ricarmic]

I can tell you from personal experience that reporting does have an impact, the hurdle rate may be higher than we'd like but I have reported a buyer and they were immediately "non registered" ie my reporting them was the one that sent them over the top and the "bots got them". 

I actually called in to my CSR folks because I thought I might have taken too many liberties with the "reason" I picked which is why the seller was immediately zapped. They advised that yep it looked like mine was the one that topped them off and that my reason was ok for the situation.

I sell too much non tracked stuff, and generally have a "better" client set in my category so I don't do any research on over 95% of my buyers. Folks in Latin America, Eastern European countries or anyone who sets off my "spider senses" often gets investigated, but I'd likely only do that maybe once a week.

I do have an undisclosable here (for obvious reasons) mechanism to identify repeat problem buyers, so my mantra for some time has been burn me once shame on you, burn me twice shame on me....

[recped]

Without tracking to prove anything one way or another it's going to take a REALLY LARGE number of claims before eBay is going to see any kind of pattern where they might go so far as to cut the buyer off of the MBG.

eBay's stance on this is probably that if you ship without tracking it's all on you and if it's a problem then stop shipping without tracking.

FYI - I've shipped thousands of Lettermail within Canada and the US, I can count on one hand (with a spare finger or two) the number of INR claims I've had in the past 22 years on eBay.....maybe it's what you sell that leads to so many claims.

[femmefan1946]

Cancelled for "Problem with Address" may be your saviour.

The problem being "I don't wanna ship to this .... person."

Unfortunately, the "person" can still leave feedback.

Most of your products seem bulky enough that you are using Parcel services.

• Is it time to consider moving from untracked Small Packet to Tracked Packet?
• Have you lost enough money (never mind sleep) to make the possible lost sales worthwhile?
• Could you move some of the higher cost of shipping to your asking price? Is there a set price or a lot of competiton for your products?

For the LetterPost items, the same questions. And also, could you increase the number of items and therefore the value and most importantly the bulk of the shipment to make Tracked Packet a reasonable choice?

[teenytrinkets]

I definitely haven't lost enough money to warrant changing my shipping methods. I still have a pretty low rate of INRs - it's just frustrating when I get the obvious scammers. It seems like the ones I get always seem to be these jerks that have lots of evidence proving they're repeat offenders, and yet they're still going strong on the same account without consequence. I think I've just got to be more savvy sussing out those buyers before shipping untracked. Wouldn't it be nice if buyers had an INR Claim score?! I would LOVE that! As a buyer, I've had one or two INRs in 20 years! And ZERO lost lettermail from family & friends. 

[teenytrinkets]

I find that most of my INRs are in the $20-$30 range (I don't ship untracked for over $30 value). I get the feeling that most scammers may not bother with an INR (or purchase items with the intent of INR) unless it's worth their while (over $20?). So if all your items are under $20, maybe that's why you've been fortunate to have a low rate of INRs? Just a theory.

[femmefan1946]

The problem with feedback is that naive buyers will leave it INSTEAD of negs. Or stupid sellers will risk Defects to slag off scammy buyers instead of using the UID system.

Personally, I'd like to see FB dropped completely  (It's soooo 20th century) in favour of a count of Disputes.

Won or lost.

So if I have 500 transactions with two Disputes, one as a buyer ,one as a seller, one won, one lost, my Rating would be 498/500.

Still would not solve the problem for Fixed Price/BIN transactions where the seller cannot see who is buying until he has bought, of course.

[teenytrinkets]

Oh I LOVE the idea of a dispute count! My scammy buyer would likely have 250 out of 500 transactions and stick out like a sore thumb!

The only problem is, as a seller, I think buyers alone should be dinged for canceled transactions, non payment, INR & INAD - because these are the areas that highlight their "scamminess"! But seeing as how there are plenty of INR & INAD claims that are the fault of the seller, that wouldn't be fair either. So perhaps a buyer and seller would "share" that ding. So if either party opens a dispute, the transaction isn't counted as a success for either party. In other words, you'd suffer consequences by opening a dispute, regardless of fault. Is that fair? Perhaps not - but it paints a very clear picture of what's going on behind the scenes for both parties. Transparency is key - this is what ebay is missing!!! Ebay has given too much power to the buyer - and sellers need a better way to protect themselves if eBay won't.

I think feedback is still relevant for sellers. They're called "reviews" in the real world. I've had plenty of buyers only buy from me after reading feedback that details I sell authentic, new, fresh, etc. - and ship quickly. A lot of buyers (and especially a new buyer) think all eBay sellers are scammers, so a dispute count alone may not cut it.

Whatever way you slice it, eBay needs to do something to keep sellers around, or else there won't be anything left to buy!