Item not received... Fraud ?

[mariemilagritos]

After buying an item a member (from Canada) contacted me to ask if I could ship at a cheaper price (and also avoid paying the sale tax...). I offered shipping the thing using standard mail, no tracking, but at his risk, to which he agreed. Now he has opened a case with ebay for an item not received... Pretty sure that I've been defrauded. Since there was an agreement, at the buyer's request, any chance ebay could setlle the case in my favor ?

[femmefan1946 · Accepted solution]

When he asked to avoid paying the sale tax, it was a red flag that he was going to cheat you.

Unless you are registered to remit sales taxes in his province, you are not collecting or remitting taxes.

And he told you he wanted to cheat the government, so he told you he was dishonest.

Shipping is not part of Best Offers in part to protect sellers from predators like this.

If you ship without Tracking, you give up basically any Seller Protection that eBay offers, which isn't much to begin with.

Some sales are not worth having.

You will lose the Dispute, you may as well refund now to avoid adding a Defect to your selling account which is worse than the money you lost.

I am truly sorry that you had this experience.

All that being said, most of my listings are Free Shipping and most of my items go out by LetterPost with no tracking.  And I have perhaps one claim a year, over four active selling accounts.

But I am confident enough to be able to refuse to downgrade shipping, although I will occasionally accept a lower selling price.

[mariemilagritos · Accepted solution]

I've been selling on ebay for about 15 years, yes, I should have seen it coming. Let's say that I very rarely had any issues with Canadian buyers (I mostly sell in the US), with deliveries or just scammers of this sort. So I let my guard down... I mentioned the part about his attempt to avoid the sale tax wondering if I could have any leverage on him with this ???

[reallynicestamps · Accepted solution]

Unless you are set up to charge and remit sales tax, it's irrelevant. If you are set up to remit sales taxes, you agreed to help someone avoid them. Any question about this would probably be worse for you, unless you enjoy being audited to confirm that this is not a common practice of yours.

[mariemilagritos · Accepted solution]

I am registered to charge and remit sales tax, and I did charge the tax on this sale. 

Tried contacting the buyer but, evidently, no answer on his part. Guess he knew what he was doing...

Now I'm wondering if I should try to contact ebay (not sure it would do any good) or just refund the crook and forget about this ?

[femmefan1946 · Accepted solution]

With a minimum wage of 25c a minute, is it worth your time? However, if you believe this is a common action on the part of the buyer, your Report added to other Reports may help close his account.

[mariemilagritos · Accepted solution]

I will just let the case run for its remaining days, hoping for an early Christmas miracle, and issue a refund if nothing happens. Contacted ebay and, as you said, not much else to be done...

[salepro2 · Accepted solution]

I read the issue & carefully read all the comments. I felt an urge to give a different response

[salepro2 · Accepted solution]

Ooop .. clicked enter by accident but no problem .. continue here

[salepro2 · Accepted solution]

New on this one.. Enter key posts the comment right away instead of starting a new line ..... Anyway, there will always buyers whom falsely claim, are Sellers whom trying to get even with the system and take their anger on another seller, honest misled or Lost package and many other reasons which opens a case against a Seller... THIS IS PART OF DOING BUSINESS ONLINE and a Seller shall really put 5% of his/her total sale in a reserve area to cover these sort of cases without any hard feeling ... Simply you have to increase your enter pricing as a total (for example if you have $10000 total listing value, you shall add $500 across your entire inventory where increase of prices won't slows your sale) ... If you do business on eBay full time, your annual refund will be between 1-3% to our experience. Therefore, every year you will have at least 2% money extra from the 5% you initially got from the increased prices... What we do with the extra money is to divide it between the future buyers by simply adding FREE stuff related to their purchase items .... This way, your days goes much smoother and absolutely no anger when you see an open case BECAUSE you have insurance money to cover the sour transaction ... Hope it helps you all ... Any question please drop s a message at SalePro2 to get a rapid response (We hardly come to the community but always online with our accounnts) ... Thank you ... Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays

[pjcdn2005]

You sent the item with lettermail? Without tracking there is no way that you will win an item not received claim. The seller is always responsible for delivery even if the buyer said they would take 'responsibility'.

[mariemilagritos]

Yes, lettermail... I was under the impression that I was protected by the terms of our agreement, naively I guess.