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What Can You Do When Defrauded on eBay?
"Most of us followed the proper procedures. You wait 30 days to file a fraud claim on ebay. Then you have the option of getting $175 at most from eBay's insurance. It softens the blow, but for many it's not anywhere close to what they lost. Contacting local authorities hasn't accomplished anything nor has filing with the FBI. Many people who paid via PayPal did get a refund, but others paid via checks.
eBay has been one of the bright spots of the internet. As a NYSE listed company, you'd expect more to be done about helping customers. I hope this question comes as a warning to be more cautious on eBay or not to bid for items on ebay over $400 without escrow protection. I've learned my lesson not to do business with anyone who doesn't use paypal or billpoint. But regardless of what we learned, most of us feel helpless because eBay has not done more to get our money back. Any suggestions?"
Auction fraud is illegal, I believe there is a way you can file with the FTC and have the fraudelant seller fined thousands of dollars, or even possibly jailed. IIRC, something about interstate commerce, or whatknot. I think you may also get a full refund of the amount of money you were defrauded from, or a portion of the money collected by the FTC in fines; I don't remember which.
Look in to it.
JKoebel
Holding funds in escrow until completion of the transaction is probably the best solution. Like all insurance it costs a bit but provides you with protection from loss. I always use such services for items over $100 (your loss point may differ).
I shop ebay quite often, and though I've had a few bad experiences, I've managed to let them go...
1. From one seller, in 4 different auctions I bought 4 15" monitors for $25 a piece. Shortly after I sent him a money order for the combined total of the 4 auctions, this guy seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. His user account was cancelled, his email address bounced mail, and his phone number was disconnected. eBay didn't do anything for me at all.
2. I bought a Cisco 3000 router that claimed to have 16 MB of RAM and 8 MB of Flash (enough to run IOS 12.0). I receieved the product which had barely enough flash & ram to run IOS 9.0 (worthless nowadays). I contacted the seller, he promised to send me the replacement RAM & Flash, he sent me some bunk chips that didn't even fit in the device. After numerous other emails and phone calls with no answers, I finally gave up. ebay didn't do anything for me on this one either.
3. I won an auction for a bootleg TOOL video. I sent the guy the $14 total, and I never received a product. Apparently this guy screwed over 4 other people bidding on the same item from him, we all left negative feedback. This time the amount was not enough for ebay to care.
Each time I filled out one of ebay's fraud reports, and never EVER got a response. Since these losses weren't too important, they were all things I never really needed, just impulse buys that would have ended up sitting in a corner taking space, I don't really fret over it. Plus, if you believe that the grand scheme of things fits together in one huge orchestrated puzzle that meshes together... they'll get what's coming to them.
I wouldn't be too hard on eBay. It sounds like they do their share. They provide escrow, mediation services, and dispute resolution forums.
If you are unable to get the balance of your money, I would contact your state attorney general office. Most AGO offices have a division for consumer complaints. If you don't get your money, you may be able to get satisifaction in the criminal courts.
If you paid by check or money order, though, you're just plain silly. Just because a seller has a fancy auction page or a good feedback rating doesn't mean you should send a check for $400-1000 to a total stranger somewhere else in the country and expect the seller to make good on it. Where's your common sense? People get busted for that all of the time and auction sites account for the majority of fraudulent online activity. So think before you pay next time, and good luck getting your money back.
-CT
I've used paypal numerous times successfully w/o a problem. Whether sending money from my bank account to someone just for the purposes of cash or purchasing on eBay. There was one problem with an eBay transaction. Suffice to say, the guy never fulfilled his obligation and proceeded to not respond for a month, then I notified paypal, they did their investigation and within a week I received a phone call notifying me that they had refunded the $539.00 -- problem solved. I'm not sure whether the guy had his paypal acct. yanked or who knows what action paypal took, but, problem solved on my end. ;)
:wq
For any significant amount of money on eBay I send the postal money order by U.S. Mail. The penalties for mail fraud are quite severe and the post office does like to investigate reports of same.
See if any of the buys used the U.S. Mail and/or a postal money order. If so, have that person or persons file a complaint with the postmaster of their zip code, and have him reference the other cases that you have dug up.
sPh
Less than 66% of internet users have not been a victim of online fraud... Per victim, the price of fraud hovers around $600, which is more than most research estimates of average online retail spending.
What this means is that 34% of all internet users have been screwed over (if you believe their report). Show me another industry that has that high a fraud rate - there isn't, why? 'cause the Fed's would come down hard.
This just isn't acceptable.
I just got done with a fraud battle on Ebay and this page was of immense help, and eventually got me my full money back from the bastard who tried to swindle me:
t ml
http://www.mindspring.com/~bookdealers/ripoff.h
Pay particularly close attention to the sections on reporting the fraud to the IFCC section of the FBI, and the Postal Inspector fraud complaint form.
In the postal inspector's case, when you file a fraud report, they notify the person that they're being investigated. This led to me promptly getting a $600 money order from the criminal in question. They actually had the money order to me in a day, and it cost them $25 to mail it. File reports galore, and try to get as much information about the person that you can.
And how does this protect the seller from being defrauded by the buyer? I've been selling on eBay for several years, and there's no way I would ship the item to a buyer before I received payment.
Paypal will only protect you if you pay with a credit card
Not true! Paypal will cover any transaction, provided you follow some simple and quite obvious steps:
- Conduct transactions with verified users
- Ship/send money only to the listed address
- Use some common sense and not deal with someone who... say..., wants that new computer bought at $300 shipped overnight to a MailBoxes Etc., doesn't care shipping is going to cost $250, and says he's paying with a credit card (which just happens to be in the name of someone else).
Really, how hard is it to spot things like this? Same thing applies to sellers. Ship to confirmed address and have paperwork/tracking numbers to back up your end of the transaction. I deal on Ebay all the time, people have tried to screw me over, but I take some common sense. In every case, I've either got my money back, or a replacement from the seller.
Of course, on the other hand, the support systems of both Ebay and Paypal are terrible. It's not uncommon for it to take 4 or 5 days to get an illegal auction cancelled (bulk email addresses) on Ebay, or a month to report a spammer using Paypal as a payment vehicle.
It becomes possible mail fraud if they don't deliver within the time alloted and they don't notify of delays or offer a full refund.
o me .htm
For details and to file a complaint:
http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/welc
"I may be Love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
Yahoo auctions here in Japan (I don't know about in the US, sorry) now require a credit-card number as a prerequisite for both posting and bidding on items, as the direct result of a rash of auction fraud incidents.
It was a couple years ago. The amount I lost was around $250, the total he defrauded people was around $20,000. Ebay offered no restitution, eventually the city in Indiana where he lived filed a settlement with the guy. He was put on probation (I don't believe there was any jail term at all) and he was ordered to make restitution. The attorney, in his letter accompanying the legal documents sent to victims wrote "In most cases, victims see little to no money." He was honest and correct - I've never seen any money from anyone. If ebay would have had policies in place at the time I would have been in a much better place - $175 would have made a big difference at the time as I was a college student. Really, the worst party in this was the US Post Office - they were delivering all of these money orders to an abandoned warehouse. I know at least one person who used FedEx and received their money order because the delivery person refused to leave the letter there. By comparison, the thief was just doing what a thief does, and he was smart enough to get away with $20K even though he was caught. Hell, I'm willing to go on probation for a year or two to make $20,000 in tax-free cash. Now I rarely buy through eBay and when I do I use the online credit card services, never money order.
PayPal only refunds the money if they can get it out of the the account of the abuser. If that person has emptied his/her account PayPal will do nothing. I believe the original poster was pointing out that when you buy something with a credit card you have protection. With PayPal you have none.
The problem with reputation is that it's just so easy to buy! Lets say I go place 20 bids on random crap and my $1 bid wins
Well, gee... Your saying maybe we ought to look at the actual circumstances of the transaction rather then some overall number? Anybody who does Ebay business regularly should look at the seller's actual auctions. More than once I found deadbeats trying to build up feedback like this. Usually a ring of new accounts, all selling ridculous things like "Used condom" or "Banana peal" for $0.01 that closed 5 minutes after it opened with the "Buy it Now" feature. Easy... report them, accounts closed, move on with life.
Just set up a ring of ebay accounts, bid on each other's stuff, and have it sell for higher values
Well, that's a good idea too, it's called "Shill bidding" and it's against the rules. Again, by looking at the actual auctions you can easily detect this. Don't just look at the feedback of the seller, look at the feedback of those who left the seller's feedback, and the feedback of those who left the feedback of those who left feedback. Are they all the same people? Are they all new users whose account were all created the same day? If so, it's a pretty obvious clue there's some fraud going on.
Most criminals aren't very smart, instead they just rely on others being dumber than they are.
Anyone who thinks that using Paypal protects you,.. is completley wrong. I have a close friend who was defrauded to the tune of $2,000 and paid via paypal. Paypal says they can not help him and the credit card company will not remove the charge. So be careful out there people. You could really loose some money if the seller decides to skate.
I, along with a bunch of other people, were defrauded by a business with an eBay ID of bayco.
e ed back&userid=bayco
It looks like feedback for this user is still around. You can see the feedback.
http://cgi2.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewF
Basically, what happened was this person was selling RAM and processors. Selling more than hey had in stock, and buying after they have received funds from the buyers. Then RAM prices rose dramatically. Whoops, not enough money to buy the parts we promised to the buyers. Screwed.
This was also a case of a user with a preexisting high feedback rating, suddenly going bad. The buyers could not have helped the situation by researching on the seller.
Do I blame eBay for this? NO!!! I support eBay. They are just a trading marketplace, I would not want to endanger them or make their lives more difficult by trying to blame this on anyone other than myself, or the bad seller. This would cause problems that would make eBay !eBay.
I believe the San Jose police got in on the case, and they requested eMails from a lot of us asking to document our experience. I think I have that eMail around somewhere still, but am not willing to dig it up right now.
I got repayment through eBay's insurance system. I finally got a check from Loyds of London some time afterwards.
Bottom line; bad seller, not my fault, not eBay's fault, sellers's fault, seller is responsible. You sent a check somewhere, go find them, enter their home during the night, and cut off their testicles with a dull rusty butter knife.
Problem solved!
Seller defrauded me on a non-eBay transaction. After 90 days (too late to dispute), I get word from PayPal that they found that the seller was fraudulent, but because their bank account was empty, there was nothing they would do to help. Thanks PayPal.
Unfortunately, more often true than not. Paypal only really covers outright theft, not disputes of "description" or dissatisfaction. My advice, forget the reccomendations of waiting 45 days, or whatever, and file a notice of dispute immediately (not the formal request for reimbursement). That puts Paypal on notice and they will immdiately flag the account if a couple other simmilar notices come in. And you did exactly the right thing following, call up the local police department and ask to speak with a detective in theft. Fraud and theft is fraud and theft, it doesn't matter whether you live a mile away or a 100 miles away.
Ebay has a very thorough process for such claims.
What you need to do, if defrauded, is go through Ebay to contact Lloyd's of London, who provides the insurance on auctions for Ebay. Once a claim is filed, investigations are put forth, and, more than likely, you will recieve some of your money back.
The only bad thing, is that there is a ~200 dollar cap on the amount you can recieve, and they automatically take 25 dollars out of that as a service charge.
I was defrauded on Ebay for approx. $250, and recieved $175 of it back, although the claims process took well over 6 months to work itself out.
Its a pain, but you can get your money back.
About a year and three months ago I purchased a Porsche 944 off of ebay. And although I was promised a warrenty, the company who handeled the guys warrentys would not provide one for my car. I had transmission problems, muffler problems, air conditioner problems, and brake problems. I had finally given up when a representative from the state of New Jersey called me and informed me they were orgonizing a Class Action Lawsuit against the individual who sold me my car.
This seems the way to go, collect information about the one individual, and bring it to the state. I happen to be fortunate because he forged my signiture several times when providing documents to the state, so I have a very strong case, so perhaps people might not have as good luck as I do.
The downside is I provided all of this information to the state, and it has still been 10 months, and I have not got word on how the case is progressing.
Here's what you do: Go get a bunch of free e-mail accounts. Create a bunch of e-bay accounts with this free e-mail account. Hold auctions for stuff nobody is going to buy and do this from 1 single account. From each of those other free accounts, bid on your $1.00 crap. When you win, give yourself a bunch of good feedback. You're an instant hit.
It may be time consuming, but to swindle people for $400-$1700 per fraud, you're looking at a pretty good take for your effort.
I got outbid on a fraud auction. Shortly before I got outbid, I got suspicious and discovered this guy had tons of auctions ranging greatly in what the items were and the costs. Many were dutch auctions. Before he finished his first auction, I got together a group of high bidders, pointed out what I saw and over the next few days, one of the guys in the group said he lived near the address being advertised. He checked it out and confronted the guy.
Poor bastard wouldn't back down. Those who actually ended up sending him money filed for mail fraud with the USPS. It wasn't long before he found himself in court. So, go to the USPS would be my advice. They take this stuff seriously and don't make you wait for satisfaction.
IFCC FBI Complaint Center
One of their prime purposes is to handle online fraud.
Yeah, it's pretty easy to pad feedback on eBay... You have to look for other signs that they're a trusted seller, other than the feedback, like actually looking at the actual auctions - if they're all 50 cent items and you're planning on buying a 2x800 G4 from the guy, somethings going on... if you don't smell fish, you better go take some decongestants.
There are a couple of other things that you can do, too. There's a pretty reputable company out there called SquareTrade that has a Seal that certifies sellers as legitimate. I doubt they can do anything is a situation of fraud, but they do dispute resolution too. They do some pretty extensive checking on sellers... plus they have a fraud protection guarantee so that you're protected against fraud for an additional $250 (over eBay's amount). I think they also have somewhere on their site where you can search for items being sold on eBay by their members, but i forget where it is.
*the tide is right for cowsurfing*
There are two things I notice that quite a few people ignore.
The first is consistancy. I know the critsim of the feedback system has been beating to into the ground, but there is more to it than simply buying a lot of small auctions for feedback. The TYPES of items sold are important as well as looking for tons of $0.50 auctions. I mean, I saw someone selling a helecoptor on e-bay motors that brought their feeback up by selling cd's and stero equipment. He was talking like this was a normal thing. Always check the recent auctions for consistancy before you buy from someone, and check for generic feedback. Make sure the recent auctions weren't just to boost feedback AND make sure that they are consistant. Someone buying or selling an eratic array of items is an other sign of feedback boosting. On the same topic, your GUT FEELING is usaly right, and ignoring it is a foolish thing to do.
The major other problem have I seen are people NOT READING THE ENTIRE AUCTION.
One of the bigger items in this problem are the "you are paying for information" items. This can sometimes be at the end of the description in a table or something. Spending a few hundred for a playstation 2 and finding out you were paying a few hundred to find out where you can pay a few hundred to get a playstation two is something that wouldn't happen if you read the auction fully. If in doubt, mail the seller about shipping. If the seller doesn't respond within a reasonable amount of time before the auction, chances are you will have problems after the auction as well. For expensive purchaes, read the auction multiple times. You'd be supprised how much you missed.
When dealing with computers, make sure everything is listed. Don't rely on pictures - if it isn't listed, it probably isn't there.
The biggest problem I've seen with people not reading the entire auction are computers. Computers need the following
-Ram, Sound, Hard Drive, Floppy,Case, Operating System, keyboard, modem, ethernet port, monitor, motherboard, processor, FANS, power supply, and the like.
It is very common for an auction to not list ram, or say upgradeable to X amount of ram, or 6 speakers for $40 more or something similar. This means they are NOT INCLUDED IN THE AUCTION. That means this is not a full computer.
Check for a No DOA garentee for some electronics options. Some phrasing may be ambigous, so ask. Basicly this means you should find out if when you get something if its fake or not working will you be frended or get a replacement. This is important espeicaly with electronics. Find out the warentey. I have purchased some items that have no garentees that work, and some that don't. I dealt with both with a grin, becuase i expected it. Why? becuase I read the auction.
Read the auctions fully.
Some items wear down, like monitors. Others work or they don't, like processors. Know the diffrence when you buy used. Remember, refurbershed means used.
Never send cash.
To sum up - Go with your gut, make sure the seller has feedback on the type of item you are buying, check the feedback ratings of the people who gave the seller feedback, and READ THE AUCTIONS FULLY
Liquid Gaming - Your daily dose of gaming news
The FBI has a unit that handles nothing but online auction fraud. They are notorious for handling auction fraud quickly and seriously, but due to the sheer volume of cases they probably have a hard time getting to everyone. Poke around at the FBI until someone puts you in contact with these people.
Interestig one that. Not sure how the law works in the states, but in the UK, a credit card company is jointly liable for all credit card transactions. This means that if you buy something on a credit card from anyone and it doesn't turn up for whatever reason, the credit card company has to give you your money back (unless they can prove you were stupid).
So if any of this happend to me on a british credit card, I get my money back from the card company and they have to chase the seller / paypal etc.
I won an auction from Yahoo auctions a while back from a guy who had something like a 300 feedback rating. "Great!" I thought, "No chance of getting ripped off here!" I place my bid, win the auction, and then I notice, the guy had, I don't remember exactly, but somewhere between 80-100 negative feedbacks with about 400 or so positive feedbacks. he had ripped off 20-25% of his customers, but by sheer volume managed to obtain an incredibly high rating.
My auction was for a video card, and it was like, $35+$10 shipping. And my case wasn't all that bad, it was supposed to be "new in box" but it obviously wasn't. The box was cut up, will all UPC info, and even some of the specs cut off. The card was in an open static bag, and the "brand new" manual bad was taped back together. I complained, and the guy claimed he just opened it to make sure it worked ok, but it was obviously BS. But, the card did work, and it _was_ actually the right card and all, so I didn't bother filing any official complaints or anything.
Other people's auctions were things like "untested, as-is hard drives". Of course the guy had tested them, because among a lot of 10 or 20, not a single one would be good. The guy's responses to his negative feedback were things like "I said it's as-is, what do you expect?".
Here's another flawed aspect of auction feedback ratings though. I have a 118 positive feedback rating on ebay, with no neutrals or negatives. I have a 1 positive feedback rating on yahoo, 2 positive, 1 negative. What's my negative from? This guy. I, of course, left negative feedback, and the bad seller, in retailation, left negative feedback for me. I don't think I'd ever leave negative feedback for anyone on ebay, because I KNOW they'd leave negative feedback for me as retribution, and it would ruin my perfect reputation. That's a really crappy situation, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's dealt with it.
Screw it, I'm just going to post anonymously. I tried to write this post without giving away what agency I work for, and it just didn't work.
I see lots of E-Bay fraud complaints. Our office has an entire unit that deals with consumer frauds, and they're swamped in auction fraud complaints - thousands of them - involving auction sites. Yes, I have taken a few of the most egregious cases and prosecuted them criminally - and unlike most white collar fraud cases, I was able to get one guy sentenced to some jail time. The Judge commented at the sentencing that he was an E-Bay user and hated people like the defendant who preyed on the trust required in online auction systems. It was waaaay cool.
Ok, here are the tips, from a law enforcement perspective, to Ebay users. BTW, I've used Ebay on a couple of occasions to purchase stuff, and conducted enough investigations to know some of the tricks of effective scams. (Also, these comments apply to any auction service - I just use E-Bay for ease of writing)
Don't spend any more than you couldn't live without. E-Bay is the equivalent of going down to the swap mart or flea market and buying something based on it's apparent value. Except you can't actually touch it. And you don't know if those pictures are really of the item the seller has. And you don't know much about the seller at all. And the swap mart makes no assurances about the seller. You get my drift.
Escrow. I've seen it posted a bunch of times, but I'll emphasize it: USE ESCROW SERVICES If you are sending anything over a few dollars, you are crazy not to use escrow. Personally, I'm less inclinded to take a case where a seller has lost a large amount of money in an E-Bay fraud and has not used escrow. Government cannot protect all of those who do not make even minimum efforts protect themselves. [BTW, I take the same tack with corporate victims who whine about spammers attacking them, when the real cause is the fact that they ran an open relay. Why anyone would run an open email relay in the year 2001 is beyond me. Anyway, many credit cards offer the same protections. If your seller demands cash, checks, money orders (especially ones not made out to any particular person), walk away. Online payment services, like Paypal, also waive liability for your losses like E-Bay does - the only advantage they present is that they tend to keep records on the identity of the seller, which I can use to track him down.
Don't trust "feedback". Several posters have pointed out that feedback can be set up so that the seller has a high karma level based on a bunch of successful small dollar sales. I've found that a couple of my investigative targets used multiple accounts and shill bidders to make themselves look good, so they can't really rip you off. I like these cases because that's really good evidence of motive - fraudulent intent. But just like juries can see it, potential buys can see it too - if you look for it.
Don't complain about E-Bay not helping you. I've dealt with their small, ardent team of fraud investigators. These people are in the middle of a huge storm of complaining customers, and doing their best. In reality, it's the users who more often than not failed to protect themselves against fraud. More importantly, it's in the user agreement that E-Bay is not responsible if Joe Seller rips you off. They are very helpful to law enforcement who eventually pursue the cases, and I think they do a good job.
Don't expect 'infinite justice' over your $20 beanie baby. Oh, I hate those people who call and call and call demanding their $20 back because they bid on E-Bay on a beanie baby, and it was never sent to them. Arrgh. There are not enough prosecutors in the world to bring justice to all the auction fraud. Look, file your complaints, and then forget about it. Consider your loss paying your 'Stupidity Tax' for the year, and learn from your mistake. Even if I know who the guy who stole your $20, I'm not about to whistle up a team of jack-boot search warrant guys to go kick his door - unless I have a bunch of other cases against him that aggregate to a potential felony charge.
Don't expect the FBI to help. My personal pet peeve is this statement, which I've seen so many times in this story: The guy who ripped me off was in another state so it's a Federal Crime and the FBI will help me! WRONG! The FBI is a little busy with Al Qaeda right now, and even before Sept. 11, they didn't care about auction frauds on E-Bay. The reason - auction frauds from online auctions rarely add up to enough loss to meet the US Attorney's prosecution guidelines. You have to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the US Attorney's attention, and the FBI does most of its work with the US Attorney. In fact, the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, run by the FBI, is essentially an information gathering service - they aggregate all the complaints about specific individuals, looking for the next big case so they can prosecute it. Everything else sooner or later gets farmed out to a state or local agency, usually in the municipality or state where the target lives.
Use the IFCC. The only successful case we built on auction fraud before the IFFC sucked. We used a team of investigators who tracked down the defendant, all the victims, and put together the case. In agency terms, it sucked. Why? It was a resource hog - it took up lots of valuable time and effort that could have been going to what the public views as more serious crimes - all to prosecute a guy who ripped off a bunch of people who arguably should have protected themselves. Want more police and prosecutorial resources devoted to auction fraud? Take your argument to your state legislature or city council. But back to my point - the IFFC provides a tremendously valuable service to the FBI, state and local agencies. It aggregates the losses as to each potential defendant, and helps me decide which cases merit prosecution - the defendant who rips off the most people for the most dollars in the most egregious way is the most likely to draw criminal charges. But I can only charge your loss if you let me know you've been ripped off. The best was to do that is to file a DETAILED IFCC fraud report.
Prosecuting the cases takes time, and you may not receive constant updates about the progress of the investigation. Look, I have lots of cases. Investigations move very slowly, as do most things in the legal arena. I mentioned above that the IFCC is an information gathering service, and it takes time for that info to filter down to people who can actually act on it, and then those people have to find the time to pursue it. The statute of limitations varies from state to state, but mine is seven years for felonies. If I can put together a case showing a pattern of small-dollar fruads over a span of months or years, I can put a guy in jail, possibly prison. If I take your $20 beanie baby case, I can maybe get him on a petty offense, a trip to city court, and a fine similar to a parking ticket. BTW, getting your money back is my goal in fraud cases, but it rarely happens because the defendants often live large with your cash and have no way to pay you back.
I'll watch this thread to see what responses pop up.