Is this a scam: Bidder in Zambia ships to US and has paid with PayPal

[branta_branta]

I'm thoroughly fed up with scam artists as a seller. And, I'm wondering what it does to buying prices as well.

I've listed a used low value laptop (<$100 CAD value) and someone from Zambia with a rating of 200+ transactions (quite a few in the past year with 100%+) and on eBay since 2011 bought it and paid for it nearly immediately through PayPal. They list as their shipping address: 

My questions are these:

#1 Since this item has been paid for and I limited my shipping to Canada or the US am I now obligated to send the item?

#2 What sort of seller protection exists? From the internet I gather there are many horror stories of sellers being scammed left, right and central and something doesn't seem right.

#3 Provided I mail the item with tracking, signature required and insurance am I covered? By eBay (if the buyer tries to claim fraudulent activity on their account)? By Canada Post (if it gets lost)?

#4 If I were to simply "cancel" the transaction would the buyer still be able to leave negative feedback? At least if they'd been a non-paying bidder it would've been simple to get the final value fees refunded and protect my rating.

This is so frustrating.

PS This is one of the companies I've found at that address:

[recped]

1 - Yes

2 - Same as any transaction

3 - You don't need a signature, it does nothing for you

4 - Buyer could leave you a neg and you WILL get a seller cancellation defect

In terms of an INR claim all you need is proof (tracking) showing delivery to the PayPal address.

In terms of a SNAD claim, it's the same as any transaction, your obligation to cover return shipping would be limited to the amount you paid to ship the package to the USA.

Unauthorized Use claims only require proof of shipping as long as the shipping was done within 7 days of payment and the address used was the one provided with the payment.

[branta_branta]

On the surface this seems legit, but, I guess that's the way with these things. His rating is in the hundreds on an account dating back five years with many transactions conducted this month.

The buyer says he buys items from Canada, US and UK and resells them in Zambia (which I could believe).

[sylviebee]

The shipping address was edited out by Lizzier.  Was the shipping address in Zambia?

How was the buyer able to pay for shipping to Zambia since you have values in for Canada and the US?

[mr.elmwood]

I have shipped to many countries I do not know about. Why? Mail forwarders in Miami. Doral, Port Richy Florida.

Mail forwarders are very, very common.

I have started looking at a buyer's feedback score, which can only be 100%, to see where they are. Last week, Trinidad plus Guatemala showed up, yet the mailing address is Florida.

[branta_branta]

Hi Sylviebee, the shipping address was in New Jersey, US and it pointed to a real building with real businesses in it (none matched the name of the company which did have Zambia in it). They paid for shipping to a US location.

My listing clearly states that I will not accept returns for this item, and, hopefully, clearly indicates the flaws with item (which it has, and, which I think were listed). Does that mean I'm still on the hook if someone tries to pull a SNAD? Though, hopefully with a rating of 200+ they have something on the line as well if they try to commit fraud (unless someone hacked an existing account).

What sort of protections exist if someone's account was hacked? Am I on the hook in that case?

[sylviebee]

So it just sounds like a freight forwarder then.

Did you have more issues with the item?  You sold it twice.  (Just curious.)

[mr.elmwood]

Send to the Paypal address and you are covered.

I ship and forget.

[sylviebee]

Somehow I don't think that scammers would be likely to use freight forwarders.

[branta_branta]

Three times!!!

First time I cancelled the listing because I realised it had ended up on international sites somehow and people with rating of 0 and 1 from Brazil were bidding (yeah, right!)!

Second time it was a non-paying person from the US. That experience made me realise that eBay does well in protecting the buyers but provides sellers with very little information to go on. There was no way for me to easily cross-reference the purchase feedback and the items they bought, though, I did finally figure out that this person had bought a very similar laptop from someone else at around the same time and simply decided to go "mute" and ignore my messages to them.

So, once the non-payment process finished I listed again (third time's a charm, right?!) only to have this quandary put in front of me.

There are many honest people out there, but, I can't help but think something's up. I'll make sure that I cross my ts and dot my is and take photos/videos when I ship and trust that PayPal and eBay honour their seller protection guarantee in case this isn't legit.

[branta_branta]

PS It used to be that eBay advertised a policy of "You won it, you bought it." Whatever happened to that? It seems like the internet is full of stories of non-paying bidders.

In fact, both items I sold recently had non-paying bidders--why bother bidding if you're not going to pay? I guess if there are no consequences to not paying it's safe to bid on whatever you feel like. I've bid on a whole whackload of items before at the same time, but, I've also been prepared to honour each of the bids had I won them all.

[sylviebee]

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@branta_branta wrote:

PS It used to be that eBay advertised a policy of "You won it, you bought it." Whatever happened to that? It seems like the internet is full of stories of non-paying bidders.

---

I'm guessing that buyers tend to part with their money easier when the atmosphere is a little more relaxed.    

You're a new seller jumping right into a high risk category, but most categories are much easier to deal with.

[reallynicestamps]

My listing clearly states that I will not accept returns for this item, ... Does that mean I'm still on the hook if someone tries to pull a SNAD?

Yes,

If you take Paypal (or if the buyer uses a credit card) you make refunds.

Which is not quite the same thing as 'No Returns".

It does mean that eBay/PP may not insist that the buyer return the item to you before they issue the refund and come after you for their money.

After all, you said you didn't want it back.

Do you understand how freight forwarding works?

Basically, the customer has a contract with a (usually) US-based company.

All purchases are sent to that company.

Once the purchase is delivered to the freight forwarder, the seller's responsibility for shipping ends.

It is often, and with anything electronic advisable, to use Confirmed Delivery. Signature is only necessary if the item is valued over $750.

The forwarder then sends the purchase, along with any other purchases for that country on, having paid in advance the duty and sales taxes applicable. He charges the buyer a fee for this.

This is the first African I have heard of using such a service, but it is a tried and true system that has worked for a long time for Asian customers. The first ones to use it were Japanese and then South Korean.

[reallynicestamps]

--why bother bidding if you're not going to pay?

The first one was very likely scamming.

This is a complex , but the easiest way to deal with it is to check on your Paypal page before shipping. No matter what else you may get in the way of emails, only the PP page will tell you if you have been paid.

The US buyer may also have been scamming (have a bad one, buy a good one, return the bad one), but more likely had several bids on similar items and only paid for the first one he won.

This is not unusual with new members, but your Unpaid Item Claim (and those of the others who did the same) gave him a Strike. Two Strikes and he is automatically Blocked by many if not most sellers.

Go to your Seller Preferences and add the Block on deadbeats. You could also consider Blocks on bidders without active Paypal accounts (mostly newbies but some scammers) and on countries you won't ship to.

[branta_branta]

I get the sense this person is legit given what I read here, but, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the possible routes scammers will take.

I'm certainly no high volume seller, but, I've sold a number of high value items on eBay over the years (iMac > $500 (6 years ago), Apple TV > $300 (2-3 years ago), digital camera of $100) and not once did I have the sheer quantity of suspect bidders that I ran into with this low value laptop (and, I'm not referring to the unusual situation I described earlier in the thread... until I'm proved otherwise I don't think I still perceive it as a suspect bid).

Plus, as a buyer I also see many suspect bidders when I'm bidding on auction items which makes me wonder what all the suspect bidders are doing to prices. I guess from eBay's POV it's all good. Prices are inflated for buyers and the costs and inconvenience of unpaid items are shouldered by the sellers (though, I suppose some sellers will also benefit). My primary use for eBay has shifted from buying used goods to buying insanely cheap electronics parts from China--though, it looks like Amazon may be muscling in on that turf so maybe eBay will have to go back to focussing on the used goods market (which wouldn't be a bad thing).

Back to SNAD:

If an individual who'd used a freight forwarding service were to try an SNAD I were to offer to take the item back, would that then stop PayPal from making a refund without requiring the buyer to return the item before a refund is given?

If eBay were to allow the seller the option to have a no Returns policy while giving a refund to the buyer without having the buyer return the item before the refund is given, this would create the perfect conditions for SNAD scams.

I realise that large corporations can get away with affording to lose a certain percentage of sellers this way by having them shoulder all the risks of selling while creating the conditions for a scam, but, I can't see such a thing lasting a long time before it will actually impact eBay's bottom line. eBay can't really be maintaining conditions that encourage scam artists to pull that kind of SNAD trick.

Everyone, I do thank you for your thoughts.

[branta_branta]

Here's a PayPal annoyance:

Please limit your Ship To "Address 1" length to 40 characters.

According to PayPal, I have to edit the shipping address that they provide because it's too long (by one character)! So, does editing the address (by converting the "and" into an ampersand) now eliminate their seller protection guarantee?

[hlmacdon]

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@sylviebee wrote:

Somehow I don't think that scammers would be likely to use freight forwarders.

---

They do, and in fact one large national retailer in the US specifically banned shipping to forwarders due to a very high rate of fraud. Now that being said, there are far more legitimate buyers that use freight forwarders than their are scammers, so they represent no more risk than any other class of buyer. The caveat here is that if you are in a high fraud risk category, such as popular consumer electronics, it is something to think about.

[hlmacdon]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

Do you understand how freight forwarding works?

Basically, the customer has a contract with a (usually) US-based company.

All purchases are sent to that company.

Once the purchase is delivered to the freight forwarder, the seller's responsibility for shipping ends.

It is often, and with anything electronic advisable, to use Confirmed Delivery. Signature is only necessary if the item is valued over $750.

---

In my experience this is not the case. Regardless of the package being forwarded on, paypal will entertain SNAD cases and decide against a seller or force a return. However, if you can provide mitigating circumstances such as highly suspicious buyer they will refund out of their pocket, but they will still decide against you. This is one of the few cases where I've had difficulty with and many long phone conversations up the escalation path. It is particularly difficult when the freight forwarder is not acting as a buying agent, but strictly a middle man in logistics.

[reallynicestamps]

Good point.

The seller is protected against Item Not Received, but not against Not As Described.

Which is of course logical.

My concern would be the NO RETURNS policy.

If the seller says he doesn't want the item he shipped back, then PP/eBay would not be wrong to force a refund, without requiring the return.

And returns from overseas, or even from the USA, are expensive, especially with Delivery Confirmation.

OP- this does not specifically refer to your situation, although I'm always nervous of using that No Returns. Again, No Returns does not mean No Refunds.

[branta_branta]

Wow. As a seller, I now see that it's a minefield to accept PayPal for items of any value. Interac payments only in future. That'll limit sales to Canada, but, at least the risk of fraud drops dramatically.

Wow. Credit card companies are scam artists, aren't they? They've created a system that lets the seller eat all the costs and they get to keep all the profits.