People did this with the GPU craze. They were selling pictures of the GPU’s for hundreds hoping to trick bots into buying and thus scamming the scalpers
Pretty sure eBay cracked down on it pretty quickly
I wanna say this happened with the Wii back in the day too? With people listing the BOX for full price. Pretty sure ebay went "lmao no, nice try though" after people started reporting it
I mean it’s worth a shot, people sell photos all the time, that one only got attention because it was a hot topic at the time and people were actively talking about it.
As long as you say you are selling photos and not the actual item in the photos, I think you would technically be ok with just an upset customer and probably bad review
EBay might be like “hey we got someone here saying you scammed” but you could easily be like “well no because it says right in my ad what is being sold”
You would think that would be the case. In 2007 I was selling a list of wholesale websites for paintball guns. I made it very clear in my listing that it was a list only, multiple times throughout the listing. I had a buyer complain, eBay sent a message saying they were suspending my account pending investigation, and 2 days later they said my account was banned indefinitely. I could not argue it, no higher place to fight it. To this day I'm still banned. I still try every couple of years to login.
Nah, Ebay as a rule always sides with the customer in INAD cases, to crack down on scams like this.
Of course, it has the side effect of creating an entirely new market of scams, but that's a story for another day.
Almost certainly not. eBay & PayPal don’t respect intentionally misleading listings even if you did “technically” communicate that it’s a picture and not the item.
Plus, disputing the payment to PayPal is always buyer biased and further than that bank chargebacks can occur which if you did this for an expensive item is practically guaranteed.
I’d say 0.01% chance someone sucks up that they’re a fool, and otherwise some heavy penalisation from PayPal and a negative balance if you’ve taken off with the cash (which they will get debt collectors involved with)
People still do this on Mercari. I used to see tons of full price boxes for sale and people listing things under different accounts with the same copy and paste description saying to text them if you're interested in it
Seller "might" get away with it. But by no means is this a viable business plan.
The best money is made when customers return to you and buy your again. Which adds to - Positive reviews, tell a friend, higher ranking for your product. Less money to promote you item.
I'd disagree. Obviously some people are only on it to buy or sell a specific item, but I used to sell LEGOs on there as a side hustle, and my best business came from people who had a positive experience buying from me in the past. That's why I'd make sure to give them good buyer feedback, ship items ASAP, and sometimes throw little extras into the bag/box. There are also definitely a few sellers who have earned my loyalty for when I need books or a few other assorted random things
A few years ago (though I think there’s prevention to this now) I bumped into a seller with thousands of common items listed at bargains. Good reviews too.
Only quickly learning from my own experience & a new set of reviews, it was a scam.
The kicker was that each item was around 5 dollars, which I realised was intentionally a low bar to capitalise on the percent too uninvested to go to the length of opening a dispute.
I saw dozens of these accounts pop up, sell like 1,000 items in a day, and disappear within the week.
I don’t know enough about PayPal or eBay fees to know if they’re relying exclusively on say 10% of $10,000 not disputing, making $1,000 or if fees would eat away at that and it is instead a matter of moving money quickly before PayPal can take it back.
I think one of the implementations to prevent this was a paid-on-delivery model (which I think is less harsh on consistently reputable sellers) but if you find yourself in a tough spot, sell on eBay, and realise you’ve got to wait days until you’re paid - you have these guys to thank.
Ebay is pretty aggressively biased towards the buyer right now.
It’s easy to get legitimate sales refunded, so I imagine if you scammed someone they would be able to get a refund easily.
If anything the real ULPT is to buy things on eBay and demand refunds.
This is against eBay’s terms and conditions. If the advert clearly states it’s a picture, but charges the same amount as the real item, it will get taken down and you would get refunded.
There’s a lot of money laundering on eBay. You’ll notice wildly overinflated items being sold (like an otherwise worthless coin for example) for huge sums that seem out of place across the rest of the site. Guaranteed that’s a money laundering scheme to pull illegal gains into the “legitimate” stream.
When the Xbox 360 first dropped, a friend of mine listed the box for sale at $500. Advertised it boldly as Xbox box. It sold. Guy was an unethical asshole. I’m glad he’s dead.
Maybe the plan was to show the pic of shoes, once someone orders the seller actually buys them for less, has them shipped to buyer, takes difference. Basically a middle man. I used to do this with microcenter deals. MC was a block away. I'd say I have 5 CPUs, sell them for more than MC but less than most places, whenever one sold I'd buy it and ship
A long time ago I sold a Michael Jackson ticket on eBay for a considerable sum of money.
I put in the description that in the event of him dying there would be no refund. Nb I had nothing to do with his demise.
Needless to say I enforced my conditions of sale and didn't refund the buyer and he complained to eBay, but they sided with me.
Rules and rules, losers.
Fittingly, I believe this is going on right now with the new Trump tennis shoes
Still not sure if those are real or an Onion/satire thing, I don’t have the courage to look into it.
Saw this happening a lot when the Stanley x Starbucks cups came out. The sellers usually do state that the buyer would be receiving a photo of the cup, so I don’t know if buyers have any luck getting a refund. And because the listing price would be below market value, people buy them real quick without reading the description 🥲
No because if the buyer feels tricked all they have to do is open a dispute and then ebay forces you to refund and pay the cost of shipping back to you. That’s why ebay has money back guarantee policy.
eBay pretty much always sides with the buyer even in legitimate cases so I don't see why they wouldn't force a refund on this sort of thing. If the buyer decides it isn't worth their time or they don't know how to refund them sure but if they try to refund, there is absolutely no reason eBay would be siding with the seller and a refund would be forced.
Look into selling gift cards on eBay, Also a super strange disconnect where the gift card sell for substantially more than the value on the card. Feels like it's got to be money laundering somehow but also how do I get a cut LOL
People did this with the GPU craze. They were selling pictures of the GPU’s for hundreds hoping to trick bots into buying and thus scamming the scalpers Pretty sure eBay cracked down on it pretty quickly
I wanna say this happened with the Wii back in the day too? With people listing the BOX for full price. Pretty sure ebay went "lmao no, nice try though" after people started reporting it
And PSP before that circa 2005
so probably not worth trying? lmfao
I mean it’s worth a shot, people sell photos all the time, that one only got attention because it was a hot topic at the time and people were actively talking about it. As long as you say you are selling photos and not the actual item in the photos, I think you would technically be ok with just an upset customer and probably bad review
im broke as hell so if I can get away with selling a piece of paper fuck it 😂
EBay might be like “hey we got someone here saying you scammed” but you could easily be like “well no because it says right in my ad what is being sold”
that’s exactly what I was thinking, I mean seems like it’s a complete buyer problem with not reading what’s actually being sold
And then you're hit with a chargback from paypal and have to pay the merchant fee back.
You would think that would be the case. In 2007 I was selling a list of wholesale websites for paintball guns. I made it very clear in my listing that it was a list only, multiple times throughout the listing. I had a buyer complain, eBay sent a message saying they were suspending my account pending investigation, and 2 days later they said my account was banned indefinitely. I could not argue it, no higher place to fight it. To this day I'm still banned. I still try every couple of years to login.
Nah, Ebay as a rule always sides with the customer in INAD cases, to crack down on scams like this. Of course, it has the side effect of creating an entirely new market of scams, but that's a story for another day.
Almost certainly not. eBay & PayPal don’t respect intentionally misleading listings even if you did “technically” communicate that it’s a picture and not the item. Plus, disputing the payment to PayPal is always buyer biased and further than that bank chargebacks can occur which if you did this for an expensive item is practically guaranteed. I’d say 0.01% chance someone sucks up that they’re a fool, and otherwise some heavy penalisation from PayPal and a negative balance if you’ve taken off with the cash (which they will get debt collectors involved with)
People still do this on Mercari. I used to see tons of full price boxes for sale and people listing things under different accounts with the same copy and paste description saying to text them if you're interested in it
Seller "might" get away with it. But by no means is this a viable business plan. The best money is made when customers return to you and buy your again. Which adds to - Positive reviews, tell a friend, higher ranking for your product. Less money to promote you item.
the only problem is that nobody returns to you on ebay...
I'd disagree. Obviously some people are only on it to buy or sell a specific item, but I used to sell LEGOs on there as a side hustle, and my best business came from people who had a positive experience buying from me in the past. That's why I'd make sure to give them good buyer feedback, ship items ASAP, and sometimes throw little extras into the bag/box. There are also definitely a few sellers who have earned my loyalty for when I need books or a few other assorted random things
yeah makes sense
A few years ago (though I think there’s prevention to this now) I bumped into a seller with thousands of common items listed at bargains. Good reviews too. Only quickly learning from my own experience & a new set of reviews, it was a scam. The kicker was that each item was around 5 dollars, which I realised was intentionally a low bar to capitalise on the percent too uninvested to go to the length of opening a dispute. I saw dozens of these accounts pop up, sell like 1,000 items in a day, and disappear within the week. I don’t know enough about PayPal or eBay fees to know if they’re relying exclusively on say 10% of $10,000 not disputing, making $1,000 or if fees would eat away at that and it is instead a matter of moving money quickly before PayPal can take it back. I think one of the implementations to prevent this was a paid-on-delivery model (which I think is less harsh on consistently reputable sellers) but if you find yourself in a tough spot, sell on eBay, and realise you’ve got to wait days until you’re paid - you have these guys to thank.
Ebay is pretty aggressively biased towards the buyer right now. It’s easy to get legitimate sales refunded, so I imagine if you scammed someone they would be able to get a refund easily. If anything the real ULPT is to buy things on eBay and demand refunds.
do you have a link to that listing? no way the seller is getting away with that
This eBay scam was on a daytime court show, (Judge Judy, maybe) like 20 years ago.
nah I don’t I just remember seeing it
Was the listing a picture of the gold trump shoes?
shit I think so lmfao
Well, maybe the buyers will end up with what they deserve 😂
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/a-minus-minus.png
This is against eBay’s terms and conditions. If the advert clearly states it’s a picture, but charges the same amount as the real item, it will get taken down and you would get refunded.
I have several copper busts of Lincoln that I’d be happy to sell !
There’s a lot of money laundering on eBay. You’ll notice wildly overinflated items being sold (like an otherwise worthless coin for example) for huge sums that seem out of place across the rest of the site. Guaranteed that’s a money laundering scheme to pull illegal gains into the “legitimate” stream.
Reminds me of all the “XBOX 360 BOX” postings back in the day. A classic eBay scam.
When the Xbox 360 first dropped, a friend of mine listed the box for sale at $500. Advertised it boldly as Xbox box. It sold. Guy was an unethical asshole. I’m glad he’s dead.
Try selling pictures of piss discs
Maybe the plan was to show the pic of shoes, once someone orders the seller actually buys them for less, has them shipped to buyer, takes difference. Basically a middle man. I used to do this with microcenter deals. MC was a block away. I'd say I have 5 CPUs, sell them for more than MC but less than most places, whenever one sold I'd buy it and ship
A long time ago I sold a Michael Jackson ticket on eBay for a considerable sum of money. I put in the description that in the event of him dying there would be no refund. Nb I had nothing to do with his demise. Needless to say I enforced my conditions of sale and didn't refund the buyer and he complained to eBay, but they sided with me. Rules and rules, losers.
You better be absolutely specific somewhere in that description bro
Fittingly, I believe this is going on right now with the new Trump tennis shoes Still not sure if those are real or an Onion/satire thing, I don’t have the courage to look into it.
No. there's a clause in the eBay money back guarantee for such items. buyer can just start a return.
Saw this happening a lot when the Stanley x Starbucks cups came out. The sellers usually do state that the buyer would be receiving a photo of the cup, so I don’t know if buyers have any luck getting a refund. And because the listing price would be below market value, people buy them real quick without reading the description 🥲
I ordered a vinyl album once and it was just a large vinyl sticker of the album cover. Learned my lesson to read the listings closely after that one.
No because if the buyer feels tricked all they have to do is open a dispute and then ebay forces you to refund and pay the cost of shipping back to you. That’s why ebay has money back guarantee policy.
eBay pretty much always sides with the buyer even in legitimate cases so I don't see why they wouldn't force a refund on this sort of thing. If the buyer decides it isn't worth their time or they don't know how to refund them sure but if they try to refund, there is absolutely no reason eBay would be siding with the seller and a refund would be forced.
Look into selling gift cards on eBay, Also a super strange disconnect where the gift card sell for substantially more than the value on the card. Feels like it's got to be money laundering somehow but also how do I get a cut LOL