Petty Drop-ship scam

[pop-u-lous]

Hello, fellow sellers!

Just thought I would share this little loophole in the eBay policy that I noticed a drop shipper taking advantage of today.  I had an Austrian buyer with a US address who sent me a low-ball offer on an item.  They sent me a $9 offer on a $30 item. I checked their location to calculate the shipping to justify the low-ball offer.  The shipping was $38, so I accepted the offer. Then he waited a few days to pay, but before he did, he switched his address to a local Canadian address with a shipping rate of $13, quite a bit different.  So I sent them this message and canceled their order....

Hi there, I'm sorry, but the shipping cost drastically changed when you updated your address from US to Canada at checkout. I need to cancel this order as your low-ball offer is not justified by the shipping anymore. I will refund you now, and you are welcome to repurchase the item with the Canadian address.

I used "Problem with Buyer's address" as a reason for the cancellation, so I don't get penalized. It's hard enough to make a living on here without the scams!

Hope someone else finds this useful! 

[mrdutch1001]

As I have never enabled the "Make an Offer" feature as I do not allow offers on my items(and never have been asked for a discount, either), I never encounter this nonsense. Glad you averted a bad situation!

[clemowbooks]

Trying to understand the economics.

You wanted $30 plus shipping 

You accepted the $9 offer because the buyer in Austria would be paying (Canada Post?)  a high shipping fee.

Shipping is not usually part of the Best Offer process, but okay.

Then the buyer changed their address to a Canadian freight forwarder* and the shipping went down.

Your cost for shipping to the Canadian address also went down, surely?

How would your profit on the transaction change?

* Who could have been Tante Inga in Scarborough.

[recped]

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@pop-u-lous wrote:

Hello, fellow sellers!

Just thought I would share this little loophole in the eBay policy that I noticed a drop shipper taking advantage of today.  I had an Austrian buyer with a US address who sent me a low-ball offer on an item.  They sent me a $9 offer on a $30 item. I checked their location to calculate the shipping to justify the low-ball offer.  The shipping was $38, so I accepted the offer. Then he waited a few days to pay, but before he did, he switched his address to a local Canadian address with a shipping rate of $13, quite a bit different.  So I sent them this message and canceled their order....

Hi there, I'm sorry, but the shipping cost drastically changed when you updated your address from US to Canada at checkout. I need to cancel this order as your low-ball offer is not justified by the shipping anymore. I will refund you now, and you are welcome to repurchase the item with the Canadian address.

I used "Problem with Buyer's address" as a reason for the cancellation, so I don't get penalized. It's hard enough to make a living on here without the scams!

Hope someone else finds this useful! 

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I do not undestand why you would cancel this order. Not sure how you justify cancelling this order especially when using "problem with address" as the reason.

I hope YOU understand that until a buyer pays you will never know the destination address that will be used.

There is no scam here!

[pop-u-lous]

Sorry, but I hope YOU understand that you do get to see the address of the person who sends you an offer (I have a screenshot of their original location), and when I get a low-ball offer, I look into why. If it is justified, I accept. If not, I would counter. In this case, I accepted knowing that the rate and tariff fees are higher. Days later, they paid, and I noticed the total price with shipping was $5 less than the original price of the item.  And the buyer gave me zero communication before changing the address after the deal was confirmed with their original location. Scam if you ask me.

[tuckhouse2021]

I don't think this a scam.

As a collector I used multiple addresses depending on the country the purchased item was in.

If the seller was in the UK, I had a UK address of a friend who would consolidate my mail into one package and send it every so often at a much reduced cost versus say ten individual large overseas mail charges.

I also had a US address as well to use.

As a Canadian I have to be registered in the country in which I reside. THat is why you saw his home country.

All my addresses were paypal and eBay verified and totally above board. It just saved me a lot of postage and allowed me access to items for my collections.

The sellers also liked it as they didn't have to deal with overseas customs paperwork. 

It worked great for those sellers who didn't want international mailings and who blocked buyers from other countries from bidding or purchasing-ie listings that were USA or UK only shipping.

This was before any EIS type programs.

As a collector it was great and enabled me to purchase items that would have been unavailable otherwise. 

[pop-u-lous]

The item was $30 + shipping

I got an offer of $9 from a dropshipper using an American address. I use UPS to ship to the USA since the tariffs. The rate was $38. As you know, we get discounted labels printed through eBay, so I could justify the $9 for the item, as I would make a bit back from the shipping. But in this case, the cost of the label to the freight forwarder they were sending it to was basically the same cost that they paid for shipping. If they wanted a better shipping rate, all they had to do was contact me, and I would have worked something out. What's with the shady address change?  All in all, I don't appreciate being taken advantage of by a dropshipper who is basically stealing my profits!

[pop-u-lous]

That's awesome and all, but they should have contacted me before the address was changed from the original one when the offer was accepted.

[marnotom!]

Imagine, if you will, on a European eBay discussion board or perhaps on Reddit, an Austrian eBay user may be posting about a Canadian seller who tried to fleece them by charging three times their domestic shipping price on a Best Offer that the seller accepted.  When the buyer decided to have the item sent to a Canadian address instead, the seller complained and in doing so, admitted that they were trying to make money off this inflated shipping charge to the US.  The seller then cancelled the sale, much to the buyer's annoyance.  The buyer is now warning people of a Best Offer scam.

I don't think you were trying to rip off this buyer, but I don't think the buyer was trying to scam you, either.  I'm just trying to make a point about different perspectives.

By the way, how is this "dropshipping"?  I'm wondering if you're thinking the term means something different than it does.

[pop-u-lous]

Lol,  funny!

I'm assuming a dropshipper because the destination of the item was the USA, and the buyer's account is Austrian.

[marnotom!]

That doesn’t make it dropshipping.

What the buyer likely provided was the address of a third party who would hold and/or forward the item to them, sort of like what eIS does.

Dropshipping is something sellers do. Dropshippers have no inventory on hand. When a buyer purchases from a dropshipper, the seller instructs (and pays) another party who actually has the merchandise to ship the item to the buyer.

[visual-sound]

EBay policy is that you MUST ship to the buyers address as listed on the order. 

[pop-u-lous]

"Dropshipping is something sellers do. Dropshippers have no inventory on hand. When a buyer purchases from a dropshipper, the seller instructs (and pays) another party who actually has the merchandise to ship the item to the buyer."

Exactly, "allegedly," he's a seller who sent me an offer from an Austrian account [his location] with a US address [ assuming his customer's location]. I accept the low offer, figuring I can make back the loss on the discounted label from eBay. So a couple of days go by,  he pays, and I notice that the total and the address don't match the original offer; he had changed the US address to the freight forwarder to get a better rate to ship to the US address, I presume. There is more than one way to "skin a cat," as they say. 

Regardless, I consider the address change after the offer was accepted to be a breach of contract, and it justified the cancellation. If they had contacted me before making the change, we could have worked something out.

[pop-u-lous]

Correct, to certify the eBay guarantee, but if the buyer wishes to send it to another address, .ie, if they are dropshipping and forgot to update it to the correct address, you can send it to the new address, but they will lose the eBay guarantee. To avoid this, the buyer would then have to cancel the order, update their address info, and repurchase the item.

[recped]

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@pop-u-lous wrote:

Correct, to certify the eBay guarantee, but if the buyer wishes to send it to another address, .ie, if they are dropshipping and forgot to update it to the correct address, you can send it to the new address, but they will lose the eBay guarantee. To avoid this, the buyer would then have to cancel the order, update their address info, and repurchase the item.

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Your buyer provided the US address when they paid that is how every transaction on eBay works. 

You made an assumption (incorrect) that because the buyer was registrered in Austria that their shipping address would also be in Austria. As I told you before you will never know the final ship to address until you are paid (which is what the buyer did).

Since shipping is not part of any offers it's really irrelevant when it comes to accepting or declining any offer.

[marnotom!]

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@visual-sound wrote:

EBay policy is that you MUST ship to the buyers address as listed on the order. 

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It's not "eBay policy".  It's one of the requirements for sellers who want to be covered under eBay's so-called seller protection policies, and those policies don't cover everything, anyway.  If a seller is willing to let their items go for a third of the listed selling price, those requirements probably aren't as important to the seller as you may think.

[reallynicestamps]

If you accepted the $9 offer, then I can only think that you felt $9 was an acceptable price.

The shipping is a separate question.

You don't pay shipping.

The customer pays shipping.

You listed at $30 but accepted an offer of less than a third of that. 

The cost of shipping is irrelevant because it comes in and goes out without* affecting your profit on your $9 sale.

* Actually you make a little more since you pay fees on the ENTIRE payment and your fees are now based on the purchase price + only the domestic shipping.

[reallynicestamps]

There are foreign students, military personnel, and diplomats, not to mention immigrants, who sell on eBay Canada and eBay USA, but who keep their original overseas account, if only to simplify banking. 

Not many, but they do exist. 

And yes, some of those foreigners who are legally in Canada do not have work permits and should not be selling while resident here, but that's not your problem. 

[reallynicestamps]

INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING FEES
"If you offer 1-day or international shipping as well as a cheaper or free option (like domestic shipping),

the total amount of the sale is calculated based on the cheapest domestic option you offer.

If you only offer 1-day or international shipping but no cheaper option like domestic shipping,

the total amount of the sale is calculated based on the service the buyer chooses."

[pop-u-lous]

Sorry, you are wrong, it tells you the buyer's address when they send you an offer. From now on, when I get offers, I will be sending this message when I accept...

📌Please note: This offer is based on the current address attached to your file. If you edit your address before payment, your order will be canceled. If you wish to ship to a different address, please cancel the order, edit your address, and re-purchase the item.