Scams on eBay are a dime a dozen, and you’ve probably experienced your fair share. But I encountered a particularly simple and clever scam a while back, where the scammer got away so cleanly that I’m not even mad about it.
I Sold an iPhone and Got a DM
A former employer of mine had an account with Verizon that not only got our small staff cheap iPhone upgrades every year but also let the company keep the old phones. The company would then sell the slightly used phones on eBay to help recoup the cost of the phone plan (it was a small non-profit that had to make every penny count). The job of selling the phones on eBay fell to me, and one particular sale proceeded swimmingly until I got a seemingly innocent DM from the buyer.
The DM was simple enough. The buyer asked if I had shipped the phone yet. I had not and replied as much. The buyer then asked if I could send it to a different address from the one they entered at the time of sale because they were buying it for their son, and that’s where the son lived. The address couldn’t be changed (to my knowledge) once the sale was complete, so I obliged to be nice.
And that’s where I made a big mistake. The con had begun. Of course, most of us are worried about getting scammed as buyers but not necessarily as sellers. Suffice it to say that my guard was down.
I Shipped the iPhone to the Address and Got Paid
This next part is boring but important—I got my money after shipping the item to the improvised address. That’s how eBay works—the buyer pays, the seller ships, and the seller gets paid upon shipping. So far, everything seemed normal to me, but not long after, I realized I’d been had.
Checkmate: The Paypal Dispute
The buyer had paid via PayPal. About a week after the sale, I received an email from PayPal stating the buyer had not received their item and was disputing the transaction. This made no sense to me, obviously—I’d shipped the item to the agreed-upon address, and I sent PayPal screenshots and postal service tracking information to substantiate my claim.
I was promptly informed by PayPal that they could not do anything because the item had not been shipped to the address in the original sale. I contacted eBay with my story, and they quickly came to the same verdict—their hands were also tied. PayPal returned the payment to the buyer, and eBay could do nothing to help us, so the scammer got a free iPhone.
The moral of the story? Only send your eBay items to the address eBay receives from the buyer in the original sale. To be honest, I was impressed by the simple cleverness of this little con. Sure, we lost a few hundred bucks, but who doesn’t respect a good hustle? Of course, always keep yourself safe on eBay, whether buying or selling.
