Un-Nerving Ebay Message

I received the following email from ebay (verified) this morning concerning a paid purchase I made yesterday.


So I went to my ebay profile and selected '"I bought an item. I haven't received it yet." This seemed odd since it did the standard form back to the seller. Of course I hadn't received it, I just ordered it a few hour before. The standard reply screen was returned saying that the seller would be notified and have 3 days to resolve the issue.

I thought, 'I wonder what the seller is going to do when he sees this'? But almost instantly I get another email from ebay that says " ebay Customer Support made a final decision on your case in your favor and has issued a full refund".

The ebay account was not NARUed for this seller but the listing has clearly disappeared. The seller's other listing all still appear. Does ebay have an issue with people hijacking certain listing transactions? Yikes, that's scary.
Don


Edit: This is another example of a ebay Feedback system fail. Before ordering I noticed that this seller's 4-5 most recent Feedbacks were negative (other items). But I ordered anyway (was <$30), now the feedbacks have been removed. It appears to me that these negative feedbacks were related to the above.

Happened many - at least ten - years ago to a friend of a colleague at work. She suddenly started getting complaints about non-arrival of goods that she'd never advertised for sale. I wonder how widespread ths is?

A new "wrinkle". Is there any way to trace the crook's location?

Don--If you are curious about why the seller was blocked by ebay why don't you try and send the seller an e-mail through the ebay system asking him what is going on? If the e-mail does not go through you'll know that the seller has run afoul of the ebay rules and they want him out. If you get a reply, it will at least interest you to hear the seller's position in the matter.
Larry G.

The seller was not blocked. His listings were hijacked.

I received the same message from ebay after ordering an item from China. Before I could decide what to do about it the item arrived safe and sound. I checked and the seller had been NARU'd. I don't remember how I did it, but I emailed him back thanking for the item and that it arrived ok. My only complaint was that it was meter mailed as I was hoping for a China stamp on the package.

Good or bad I don't buy anything across seas on ebay. It could be wrong but I don't like it. I've heard and read a lot of bad issues on such. But then again I only collect U.S. but do have many foreign stamps in my collection,I just don't collect them anymore.

The location of the purchase I made was USA.
Don

My brothers account was hijacked several years ago. Someone selling computers under his U.S. account, receiving money and never sending goods. When the complaints, phone calls started coming about not receiving merchandise, he had to contact ebay and finally had to delete/change his account and passwords. Happens quite frequently apparently.

Hi Don,
This has happened to me a time or two in ebay as well. The plus side is, you get your money back always. The down side is, the item wasn't real/serious and you don't get what you'd hoped for. At least ebay aren't allowing them to rip you off. There are a number of ways ebay detect hijacked accounts. We were "attacked" a few years back (when Bill Weiss and I were working for ebay fraud, but also sellers) by one guy who used 6 different accounts to buy the cheapest thing I had listed, and then they all "negative feed-backed" us 6 transactions in a row. That was enough for ebay to step in (though it took a bit of shouting at them) we actually got stamps returned because the addresses were bogus, but they posted negative feed back saying we sent them "garbage". I sent the returned items still in their envelopes to ebay, who eventually blocked those accounts, and removed the negs from us, but it was a long ordeal. It seems they are getting better about that, though this was kind of the opposite. Still it does happen.