Some sort of semi-scam?

Jack_

Is there any reason someone would keep selling a guitar on eBay, and then refunding every time it's purchased.

Is it just an alternative to a payday loan or something? It gets lots of money into the persons account before it all gets refunded in 5-7 days?

Legionreturns

"Yes darling, of course I'm trying to sell some guitars. Unfortunately people keep changing their minds and I have to refund them. Look, it's back on Ebay again right now"

crunchman

Or he's not got as much as he wanted so he relists hoping to get more.

Jack_ said:

Is it just an alternative to a payday loan or something? It gets lots of money into the persons account before it all gets refunded in 5-7 days?

Thinking about it, Ebay and Paypal fees are probably less than Wonga interest.

Jack_

I saw it listed earlier, and then it was gone very quickly, then I saw it up again for the same price, and this time I bought it, only to be refunded almost instantly.

Also, in the PayPal confirmation email the sellers details were empty.

It's definitely something fishy, I just can't work out how the seller benefits.

Do they get the cash in their PayPal instantly? Can they just get loads in, withdraw it all and leave their account in arrears and never pay it back?

Will I definitely get my money back?

vale

i would get onto paypal asap. their complaints line can sometimes be a trial of endurance, but their 'report fraud' line is usually instant response.

while the seller probably won't get to keep your money, they now already have your paypal details & address & email address & maybe even your telephone number (if that's in the info paypal pass on to sellers to  facilitate the delivery of an item (once it has been paid for).

with any seller messing around with your funds, it's best to ask questions sooner rather than later.

are they newly joined with low feedback as a seller?

Jack_

I've already spoken to eBay.

What damage could someone do with my physical address and email? It's not like I can stop the person having them now.

Jools

Interesting, I was using ebay recently waiting for a specific model of guitar and ended up 'watching' quite a few and saw this happen again and again. In the 2-3 months of watching I saw at least 6-7 guitars get relisted after a supposed sale 2-3 times, some more. My knee-jerk reaction was the sellers didn't get to end the sale before the autction finished and it didn't make the numbers they hoped for. Which is against ebay rules but hard to enforce.

However I've done a few searches on this and read some forums and there a few different reasons.

There is the alledged 'zombie' listings, this happens quite a lot apparently, sellers not understanding ebay relisting options can have an item immediately relisted but this can also occur, and some genuine sellers report this, as a system fault where a listing is relisted in error. This could be ebay doing this to popular watched items to keep users coming back... but that a bit of conspiracy theory.

I think the idea of it being some way to keep funds coming in, although not unimaginable, would be a lot of work to keep going just to run a cash flow. But dodgy characters are not always the smarted bunch.

If an item gets relisted once you could assume it's a bad deal, twice or more and I would mark the seller as slightly suspect. But in terms of them having received your address and email, if the intention was to misuse this there are far less complicated ways to get hold of large amounts of this type of data quickly, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Jack_

Ok, I was just a bit concerned because I haven't been involved in a semi-scam since my last visit to Thailand.

Sesh

I've had a similar issue on Amazon recently. I bought a second hand cd via marketplace. It didn't turn up on time so after giving it two days I emailed the supplier. They refunded immediately saying it must have been lost by RM. I can understand this may be an attempt to avoid negative feedback, but part of me says it was too soon, as if they knew it would never arrive. But I can't see an angle where that was in there interest.

horse

Sesh said:

I've had a similar issue on Amazon recently. I bought a second hand cd via marketplace. It didn't turn up on time so after giving it two days I emailed the supplier. They refunded immediately saying it must have been lost by RM. I can understand this may be an attempt to avoid negative feedback, but part of me says it was too soon, as if they knew it would never arrive. But I can't see an angle where that was in there interest.

 Maybe they didn't ever have the cd they listed, and couldn't source it cheaply enough when you ordered it, so his gave an easy way out?

thegummy

Sesh said:

I've had a similar issue on Amazon recently. I bought a second hand cd via marketplace. It didn't turn up on time so after giving it two days I emailed the supplier. They refunded immediately saying it must have been lost by RM. I can understand this may be an attempt to avoid negative feedback, but part of me says it was too soon, as if they knew it would never arrive. But I can't see an angle where that was in there interest.

I'd believe a company like that would have a policy of instant refund when any kind of enquiry like that comes in since they rely on their feedback score so much.

Before I worked in customer service for a bank I assumed it was a rarity for things to get lost in the post but it actually seems to happen all the time.