I'm a seller and have had to list my iPhone 3 times (and counting) because each time the winning bidder was a fraud buyer that didn't pay. What they do is they offer to pay extremely high prices so that other legitimate buyers will not bid. Then they don't pay. I see this fraud across all of the iPhone listings. Anyone else having similar problems? They are costing me a fortune in listing fees. Ebay should do something about this.
Check out their profile, if they have a low rating, block them in your options and see if this helps. Or you can just make an immediate payment only.
You are better off not selling it to overseas buyers and just block them all together. You can also kick and block the people who bid high like that. That way the next legitimate bidder has a chance.
Also, you might want to only accept bids from ID Verified and Paypal Verified users. It might help a lot.
Yeah I had to relist 3 iTouches because of these zero bidders would win and not pay. Then I had to wait for 7 days of the end of the auction to file a non payment. And another 7 days to wait for them not to respond to the non payment. And finally I could get that refund of the Final Value payment that ebay collects.
I'm sure you guys want what's best, but I for example am a legitimate buyer and I've been trying to get an iPhone for a few days now. I'm not from US, but I shouldn't be discriminated against for this.
On my third listing it seems like all was well. The seller wanted to pay right away and also wanted me to ship it the same day. After several exchanges with the person I began to get more and more skeptical. Even though the payment had been made and I had already initiated transfer to my back account I was still a little worried. Someone who lived in the UK who had a very English sounding name (Susan Price) could barely put two English words together in a way that made sense. Like: "nobody people have iphone in indonesia. that is why my reason for a gift and have high price for it." They also wanted the item shipped to a remote area of Indonesia. Huh? Looking at it on google maps I would be surprised if they even had rudimentary cellular network, much less a 3G network that would actually make this phone useful. A PayPal representative confirmed that there were several scenarios in which I might end up loosing both my item AND my money.
1. Fraudulent transfer of funds would cause PayPal to reverse transaction and they would then come after me to collect those funds if I had already transferred them to my bank account. 2. The person might also file a claim for a refund saying that the package never arrived and the onus would be on my to prove that they did receive it. Which can sometimes be very difficult for shipping to places like Indonesia. In addition these disputes by default go in favor of the buyer unless the seller can produce the something compelling. I decided that I needed more assurance from the buyer, so I offered to refund their shipping charges of $32.25 plus and addition $30 to cover their cost of shipping the item to their friend in Indonesia once they receive it. I told them that if this was unacceptable that I would have to refund all of their money instead. I got a couple more emails pressuring me to send the package to Indonesia anyway. After telling them that was not an option they simply stopped responding.
I've already contacted eBay and PayPal about this. Now I have to call PayPal and get them to cancel the funds transfer to my bank and relist the phone yet again. *sigh*
(UPDATE: This person no longer responds to emails or any other form of communication which is odd because technically I have their money and they know that I am not sending them the item. I am in the process of issuing a refund, but they don't know that yet. If I were them and someone had nearly $1,000 of my money I would be a bit worried and already asking PayPal to refund my money. Clearly they are not worried because it is probably not their money. Sellers beware, I think paulkwp account is still bidding on iPhones. It is very likely that this account has been hijacked, you might want to block this account from your iPhone auctions. It is quite possible that I am totally delusions and this person is not trying to defraud anyone, but it sure smells like a fish market on a hot summer day.)
Yeah same problem ahs been happening to me. This will be the 4th time I have listed the same phone. The last one was great though. "paypal" sent me an email that said the money was pending to go to my acct, but I had to email them the tracking number first. It looke dso real, with the payoal logo all over it. SO I went to the local ups store and they told me right off that I hope you got your money because NIGERIA is the worst coutry to send to. But hey, I had the email from paypal, right? I emailed paypal and never recieved a payment. So I called paypal and they said it was fake and they were looking into it. Luckily I was able to go the ups store and get my phone before they sent it. I told them what was going on and they held it for me till I called them and told them it was real or not. Watch out guys, there are alot of scammers out there trying to take our hard earned iphones away from us. I had to wait in line all night for that iphone, all be danged if someone gonna take it from me!!!
I had the same problem, but luckily i had a legitimate secondary buyer. On my current listing, i'm only allowing Paypal users to bid and that seems to have cut down on those scammers.
I have not attempted to sell an iphone yet but have had many run ins with these types of scams so i hope that from my personal experiences that i can offer some informing words of advice. As you may already know do not ship or send money anywhere in Nigeria, if you receive emails from unknown people with broken english 9 times out of 10 it is a scam. Like mother always told us if its too good to be true it usually is. Another precaution you may want to take when selling items on ebay is to ask wining bidder for a contact phone number so that you may verify shipping address and validate the person. Even though this can be time consuming it will save you alot of money and headaches. Consumers have no problem with communicating with someone they are giving their money to so dont be to shy to ask. Last but not lease do not send out money grams, western unions to any unknown persons or companies. The iphones are a popular item in high demand that alone should let any buyer know why you are being precautions.
I am awaiting payment for three iPhones but the winners SEEMED legitimate. So much for setting time limits..everyone just ignores them. This is the first time I've listed all three but I have a feeling I'll be listing them again. This is so time-consuming! Ebay is a great concept but with all the crooked scammers lurking around, it's making me dread having to deal with it :o(
Yes This problem is happening all the time, What happened to me is the bidder was from Nigerian and the real account owner is from NY,the Nigerian Guy had the password of the account and bid on my Iphone,but 5min after the auction was over Ebay send me email saying that it is not the right owner of the account,,so I email the real owner she did not know what was going on, Im safe the account owner safe thanks for ebay
i have sold 13 iphones within the last week and have only received payment for 3 and i think thats all im going to get. ebay should do something about letting us be able to file non-paying bidder forms earlier than the 7 days.
HEY GOODFELLA i saw that you had a problem with the non-payers and this auction thing seems to not work for me because of the problems stated above when all at once people offer to pay a ridiculous price and never pay leaving guys like me stuck so if u have any more iphones i would be interested in buying one directly instead of going through the agony of an auction i would be more than happy to send the payment out whenever asked because i just want to get my iphone
I have suspected for a long time now that some of ebay's bids are fraudulent; i.e., someone keeps jacking up the price to bring it to unreasonable levels. Some people fall for it. I don't. I have been looking to buy an Iphone, and those prices are ridiculous.
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