posted on August 14, 2007 12:02:30 PM new
I just had a winning bid notice from my store with an obviously false address. They have 0 feedback. I checked on their bidding activity and there are 16 today, some very heavy items on the UK board. Bidder is from Canada. This is their address:
oougfj jkhk
hjjhh
gjjvbj
ruyighjhgf MB
w7d 2w6
My problem is, I can never find the correct subject line to write to eBay. My reason for contacting them never seems to be in the list!
posted on August 14, 2007 12:06:52 PM new
First , wait and see how their payment comes in. Looks like your buyer was probably logged in from one of the ebay sites that does not translate well into english such as China or Taiwan.
How long have they been registered on ebay?
If their registered address is Canada and they ask you to ship elsewhere, report them for False or Missing Contact Information
[ edited by LtRay on Aug 14, 2007 12:07 PM ]
posted on August 14, 2007 12:09:41 PM new
They are registered in Canada, and I live in Canada. I am not even sure if it's safe to correspond with them. It smells of fraud, registered today, 16 BIN wins, vacuum cleaner etc. from England? Something wrong here, even the user ID is strange.
posted on August 14, 2007 12:17:52 PM new
Okay, I wrote to safe harbor, and told them of possible fraudulent activity, and what do I get? An email telling me how to reset my password if I have forgotten it. Really, what is the point of even contacting eBay??
posted on August 14, 2007 12:27:23 PM new
I had a similiar situation once and EBay really didn't care. They told me to leave it until the time had passed so I could file for FVF.
I had contacted other Sellers that they had bought from and we were all in the same boat. They continued to hit the 'Buy' button until we were all able to post enough negs. to get them booted.
There's an idea! If you are comfortable in contacting another Seller that they have purchased from and see if they received the same garbled address that you have and get their input. I think that would be a legitimate thing to do??
posted on August 14, 2007 12:41:09 PM new
Thanks, I'll try live help, I appreciate the help. Mine was only a small sale, but some are high, and I don't want other sellers to be defrauded in the same way.
posted on August 14, 2007 03:50:00 PM new
Live help told me to report it to Account fraud, although that seems to be if someone has taken over your account. Anyway, I just noticed something else very strange. When checking his/her bidding record, ALL the sellers ID's start with tr, and seem to be in alphabetical order. I am so glad I didn't respond or try to get contact info, that would have sent them my email address. As least there have been no more bids. I blocked them of course.
posted on August 15, 2007 03:55:27 AM new
Well, they have been NARU'd, got my fvf back already. I has asked the person on Live Help if they would report it to eBay as it seemed impossible for me to do it. I got a "suspicious bidder alert" in the night, so it didn't take long.
posted on August 15, 2007 07:00:13 AM new
Amber, some sort of attack happened on eBay on Friday night, August 10th.
I had a "buyer" in Austria who "purchased"
an item from my eBay Store. I woke up around 3 AM Eastern time, decided to check my e-mails, and saw the "Store Inventory Item Sold" notice from eBay. The address of the "buyer" was in Austria, but much of the "buyer's" address was in gibberish. He or she had zero feedback, and when I looked at the closed store item, the "buyer" had been "narued." I applied for my Final Value Fee and eBay refunded the amount to my account immediately.
Last weekend, I was looking at the message boards on eBay for eBay Stores, and many sellers reported the same experience as myself. In some cases, the phony buyer was located in China, and in one case, Spain. The people posting said it was a scheme to harvest e-mail addresses of eBay sellers. After the fake buyer ended the sellers' store item, the seller was flooded with as many as 50 e-mails from China advertising low cost web sites for Chinese made goods. After a day or two, the e-mails stopped. Oddly enough, I never received a single e-mail myself for these Chinese web sites.
Apparently, the same thing happened to sellers in the U.K.
posted on August 15, 2007 07:08:21 AM new
northwoodsguy: That explains the flood of emails I have received from China this morning. I purposely didn't contact this buyer hoping that nothing like that wouldn't happen. One thing I realise is that people can get a list of eBay sellers all over the world. This bidder had bid on 16 items in alphabetical order of user ID in 6 countries. They are obviously going through the list.
posted on August 15, 2007 07:13:34 AM new
This is one of the emails from China
my dear friend :
Please allow us to disturb your precious time!
We are the Chinese biggest foreign trade wholesaler.
If you want to do business, we can offer you our most reasonable discount, making you get more profit.If you have time, please visit our website,Please relate with us, we will give you a satisfying answer.
I would love to write back and say "Are you joking?? With all the recalls on products from China, there is no way I would buy from there"
posted on August 15, 2007 07:49:25 AM new
Except that 99% of the time these clowns aren't even Chinese but, rather, either the Lads from Lagos or Vlads from Bucharest, setting up phoney sites -- just another SCAM to try & get YOUR info...
posted on August 15, 2007 08:17:32 AM new
I started a thread about a week ago about a Chinese buyer with ?????? in their address. I was away for a few days and now the person is NARUed. Mighty funny stuff going around.
posted on August 15, 2007 10:46:44 AM new
Stone, there was no need to wait.
As soon as I received the "eBay Store Inventory Sold" notice from eBay, I looked at the closed store item on eBay and immediate saw "Not a registered user" after the "buyer's" eBay ID.
I thought it was odd that the so-called buyer was already NARU'ed, so I applied for my Final Value Fees, which were immediately refunded to my account, and went back to bed
(it was 3 AM).
No need to wait for a fee refund if the "buyer" is NARU'ed.
posted on August 16, 2007 01:29:27 AM new
Well, it happened again! This time, a zero "buyer" in London, England "purchased" an item from my eBay Store, just like the Austrian phony did 6 days ago.
This person in London registered on eBay on March 31st, 2007. They're not naru'ed yet.
I checked their bidder list, and within 2 minutes, they "purchased" items from the eBay Stores of 5 different sellers.
Just like Amber said the other day, the seller's IDs are all in alphabetical order, with user ID's similar to mine.
There is a message thread on the eBay Stores board about these fake "buyers".....
it has had 85 postings since this situation started on August 10th.
posted on August 16, 2007 03:57:57 AM new
I deleted about 50 Chinese (or from wherever) emails yesterday, what a pain. I could do a blocked sender in my email rules, but the only consistent word would be China, and as I sell china, that wouldn't work.
