Phantom Ebay Order, Has This Happened To Others?

Last Saturday October 3 I was out and about running errands, had a work service call to respond to, I was not at home on a computer, and defiantly not logged onto ebay.

Around 2:00 PM I stopped by my work office to check e-mails:
11:45 AM e-mail receipt from my bank's ATM (which establishes that I wasn't at home).
11:53 AM PayPal receipt for $2.43.
11:55 AM Order Confirmation from ebay for a $2.43 stamp purchase.
12:17 PM Update notice from ebay that the order is being shipped.

This was a stamp set that I recall looking at but it wasn't on my watch list (a BIN listing, not an auction). It was too late to cancel the order as it had already been shipped. I e-mailed the seller (whom I've bought from before and have always been happy with) who is having me return the item when it arrives. It will all work out, other than the nuisance and time waste of it all, and I feel bad for the seller who probable has unrecoverable fees and postage involved. What is confounding is how this happened … a glitch in ebay's database / order system? I am curious if anyone else has had this happen.

Are the times you show the times that the auction concluded (and not the times that a bid was placed)?
Don

The times are from the e-mails received, so I am guessing from the date/time stamp Yahoo applies. The order detail on ebay just shows that the order was placed and PayPal payment was made on Saturday October 3, no time is given. The item was a fixed price listing, not an auction item.

I would be far more concerned about how the Paypal charge managed to go through. Did you at some time allow PP or your computer to remember your Paypal ID and PW? They commonly ask - in order to speed up future payments.

I NEVER allow any ID and PW remembrances on sites where I have (or might have) any financial dealings, and that includes my bank and credit card sites.

I'm not sure this is relevant to your situation here, but I've seen scams where someone gets your credit card or PayPal information and instead of making a major purchase, they spend only a very small amount. Why do this? To see if your number works. Then, when they have confirmation that it does work, they make some large purchases. Maybe they're less likely to get caught that way?

Did you bid on the item you "purchased" through a sniping website and then forget you'd done that? I've done that a couple times and had that "How did I buy this?" moment.

Is it possible your cursor hovered over the "buy" button and you selected it without you realizing it? Probably not, though, since you were clearly out. Of course, you can access ebay even when you're out by using a cell phone . . . so being away from your computer isn't 100% reliable.. Well, it's a mystery, isn't it? At least it wasn't something really expensive.

I extremely rarely utilize ebay. In fact, I avoid buying there. I have not experienced this. However, I do strongly advise that you change your ebay password and anywhere else that you utilize that same password.

I have paid before thinking only one seller was on the invoice, and then see that there were others also paid, that I was waiting to pay.

If this happened to me (never has), I would just chalk it up to a glitch in the system and be happy that the gods wanted me to have this. I would write off the few $$$. After reading the responses to your post, though, I would worry about someone 'finding' my credit card # or PP account password! Change your PP password NOW!! Change your ebay P/W NOW! It may be nothing (maybe it really IS a glitch in the system), but new passwords are cheaper and easier than trying to get a refund on a big screen TV (or 5!) that you never see.

To reply to an above comment, I had my CC stolen from a store. It was my CC company who figured it out and called me when two $1 purchases from a US pharmaceutical company were made (I'm in Canada). My question was why would someone bother and that was the CC company reply - to check which cards they stole worked. The CC company figured it likely wasn't even the thief who necessarily wanted the CC but that they would sell my card info to someone else.

That anecdote aside, this seems more odd. I definitely would NOT click any links in any of those emails and would login directly from a browser to ebay and PayPal to see if that transaction and purchase occurred. I'd also be changing all my passwords.

I have a thought - do you have a birthday coming up? Maybe Christmas? My thought is that maybe someone in your household (wife, kid, dog???) went onto ebay, found your search history (or whatever it might be called) and decided that they would get this for you, since you looked at it in the past. It may be time to sit down with the wife, the kid, and the dog, and ask them all if they did this.

Thank you for all the interesting and thoughtful replies. I had already taken the customary precautions of changing my ebay and PayPal passwords. I never have a web browser remember my password (I get really irritated when they keep asking, lol) but I notice that some sites, including ebay, keep me logged in after a visit, probable a function of the cookies. I can appreciate the convenience of this, and in the case of ebay when I place a bid or an order it always asks me to verify my password. Now I will have the habit of signing out after each session.

I have the ebay Android App but generally only use it if I need to be out and about but am also following an auction about to end. Last Friday night I was watching a movie at home (away from the computer) and I "might have" browsed on the phone. "If" I had accidentally clicked a buy button … well, I've never made a bid or purchase on ebay that didn't involve a few clicks, and the confirmation e-mail shows up right away, not 15 hours later.

I was curious if this has been happening to others. The seller, whom I've traded with before and have always been very happy with their material and service, is being very understanding about my returning the items (by the time I saw the e-mail receipts from ebay and PayPal the item had already been shipped). I am hoping they may be able to recover their fees.

My cat sold the dog on ebay a few months ago, and 50 lb of his favorite kibble was just dumped on the doorstep by UPS.


I had to disable the "paw-print" reader on the computer to get him back under control.

Mike

Mine types whole essays in gibberish as she walks across the middle of the keyboard, then curls around several times and plunks right down in the middle and watches the screen and chases the cursor/mouse around (seriously!) :-)

Jamesg

It could be worse.....