A number of eBay Australia sellers have fallen victim for a drop ship scam. Recruited by classified ads to act as “agents” listing product on eBay collecting the funds and handing them over (less a cut for themselves) the products then never arrived.
All the innocent buyers received was an empty box which was shipped with tracking numbers in an attempt to dupe the sellers to forwarding the cash. One seller has gone public having (luckily for them) not sent the money on to the con men, but still had it in their bank account. Typical for this scam sellers are recruited who have a good feedback record, some buyers appear to have been remarkably tolerant even leaving positive feedback once they had their refund.
Of course this hasn’t stopped the seller’s account being suspended, nor has it stopped eBay chasing for AUS$5250 in fees accrued by selling.
Lessons to be learnt are:
- It’s now easier for crooks to get you to scam buyers on their behalf than it is for them to hack your account or set up their own.
- Never ever ship anything you don’t have in stock, unless
- You use a reputable drop shipper that you fully check out, and
- If you’re offered brand new current range consumer electronics such as Sony Bravia TVs at anything up to 50% of the retail price then it’s a scam!
2 Responses
Never ever ship anything you don’t have in stock.
End of!
If you’re going to rely on an external company to complete orders on your behalf, you need to have 100% trust in them and they also need to have proven themselves.
But even then, problems can still arise and it would only take a couple of misplaced orders to screw up your feedback.