Is eBay Cracking Down On Scams, Return Fraud & Virtual Shoplifting?

Liz Morton
Liz Morton


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eBay's recent acquisition of AI powered compliance software company 3PM Shield aims to root out counterfeit products on the platform and a new job posting shows that eBay may be looking to hire an expert to tackle important trust issues on both the buyer and seller sides of the marketplace.

Senior Manager – Trust Transformation in New York | Finance & Business Analytics at eBay
Apply for Senior Manager – Trust Transformation job with eBay in New York. Finance & Business Analytics at eBay

About the role:
At eBay, Trust is a critical global function tasked with ensuring the safety of the millions of buyers and sellers on the eBay marketplace. This includes developing best in class detection & prevention systems and protection policies to shield customers from those who attempt to commit fraud on our platform.

eBay’s Trust team is fast-paced, dynamic, and proactive. In this role, you will focus on three key areas:

  • Improving the buyer and seller experience across the safety measures the Trust team puts in place: that means ensuring that the end-to-end experience and tools the team uses to prevent bad actors from causing issues have a minimal impact and are clear and easy for our good customers to navigate protecting our sellers from the experience of bad acting buyers, which includes detection and prevention of scams, return policy violations and any form of virtual shoplifting.
  • This role will partner closely with key leaders in Category, Product and Risk teams across the company to inspire and earn the trust of our buyers and sellers.
  • Ensuring Trust is effectively supporting and enabling the strategies of our global business.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Protecting our sellers from bad acting buyers
  • Refining our policies to minimize the potential for abuse and identifying strategic areas where eBay will invest to protect sellers from abuse
  • Partner with our Data Science team and third parties to develop predictive capabilities to identify individuals at risk of abusing sellers on our platform through virtual shoplifting, return policy violations or policy gaming
  • Architecting product changes to prevent these bad acting behaviors and working through the annual planning process to get them prioritized

"Protecting our sellers from the experience of bad acting buyers, which includes detection and prevention of scams, return policy violations and any form of virtual shoplifting" - now there's an eBay initiative sellers can absolutely get behind!


This new focus likely comes at least in part due to increasing regulatory and legislative efforts to hold online marketplaces accountable for counterfeit and stolen goods sold on their platforms, like the SHOP Safe act and the INFORM Consumers act.

Will The INFORM Consumers Act Stop Stolen Goods On eBay?
Home Depot & other retailers push for online marketplaces to do more to stop sale of stolen goods sold on their sites.

Regular readers will know that reporting on fraud and scams on eBay is one of our top priorities here at Value Added Resource - in fact, it was my firsthand experience with triangulation fraud on the platform that lit the spark that eventually led me to start VAR in the first place.

When my previous employer was hit for over $160,000 in fraudulent orders using hijacked accounts and eBay Trust & Safety utterly failed to help in any significant way, I knew I had to act to help protect other sellers and consumers from becoming victims.

Triangulation Fraud - What Is It & How Can You Protect Yourself?
Multi-channel ecommerce businesses using 3rd party marketplaces may be targeted by this sophisticated fraud.

eBay has serious problems with hijacked accounts being taken over and used for all kinds of fraudulent activities, and they usually stick the innocent actual account holder with the bill.

Hacked eBay Account Costs Seller Thousands In Fees
Seller pleads for help as eBay attempts to collect thousands of dollars in fraudulent fees incurred after account hijacking.

Or sometimes the fraudsters will just use stolen identities to create new accounts.

eBay Identity Theft & Fraudulent 1099-K Problems Continue
As eBay send 1099-K tax forms for 2022, reports of fraud & stolen identities used to sell on the platform return.

Another long running scam on the platform uses hijacked accounts to list thousands of vehicles for sale in an attempt to trick buyers into making payment off the site using gift cards or wire transfers.

Why Doesn’t eBay Do More To Stop Car Scams?
It seems like eBay car scams have been around forever, why doesn’t eBay do more to curb this particular kind of fraud?

South Yorkshire Police recently nabbed six such fraudsters, but there are many, many more to go.

There's also the more recent Specialty Services scam where fraudulent sellers list hot items like computers and gaming systems in incorrect categories specifically to bypass eBay's Money Back Guarantee buyer protections.

eBay Specialty Services Scam Leaves Buyers Unprotected
An eBay scam targeting Steam Decks, Omega Moonswatches & more leaves buyers with no protection.

And the everpresent presale scams that eBay turns a blind eye to because they financially benefit from allowing these policy violations to continue unabated.

Is It Time For The FTC To Get Tough On eBay Presales?
eBay often turns a blind eye to sellers who violate presale policies & FTC 30 day mailing rule - is it time for tougher regulatory enforcement?

On the seller protection side, there's the ubiquitous "empty box" scam where the bad actor buyer claims to have received an empty box or some broken or less valuable item and eBay will happily force a refund from the seller with no questions asked.

Another variation on this scam is when the bad actor buyer ships an empty box or broken/different item to the seller as a return and eBay forces the seller to refund the money while the buyer keeps the real item.

One would hope eBay would consider such bad buyer behavior exactly the kind of "virtual shoplifting" that this new hire will ostensibly be tasked to address.

Same zip code tracking scams are also a scourge on both the buying and selling sides of the marketplace - since eBay depends on carrier tracking scans which only show delivery to a specific zip code, not a full address, all a bad actor on either side has to do is mail a piece of paper to a different address in that zip code and eBay will accept it as proof of delivery in a dispute.

eBay Same Zip Code Tracking Scams
Same zip code tracking fraud has been on a problem on eBay for decades - why don’t they do more to protect users?

And so called "friendly fraud" via credit card chargeback has been a growing problem for sellers since eBay took over managing payments. eBay provides very little protection when it comes to payment disputes and sellers often find themselves left without the money or the item - plus a $20 dispute fee added on top.

eBay’s Growing Chargeback Problem
Chargebacks are a hot button topic for sellers in Managed Payments. What can eBay do about this growing problem?

When I was fighting triangulation fraud perpetrated through eBay, the most disheartening part of the experience was the helpless feeling of hitting a brick wall with eBay's PROACT (partnering with retailers offensively against crime and theft) department - despite the cute acronym, they were anything but proactive.

Even though a category manager confirmed to me eBay had known about this type of fraud for years and had lost many large sellers because of it, PROACT dragged their feet and obfuscated at every point in the process, then eventually just stopped responding.

At one point I even offered to provide them over 4,000 tracking numbers from verified fraudulent orders that they could have used to trace back in their system to identify more accounts being used to perpetrate the fraud.

They declined that offer and refused to accept any additional information I had found through my company's internal research and fraud analysis efforts.

While it's encouraging to see eBay may finally be putting some real effort into protecting sellers from bad buyer behavior and putting an end to all kinds of fraud on the platform, I'll believe it when I see it.

That being said, if whoever ends up in this new Senior Manager Trust Transformation position is open to genuine seller engagement on the many issues that have led to eBay's seller trust problems - my inbox is always open and you're welcome to contact me any time. 😉

eBay’s Seller Trust Problem
An open letter to eBay CEO Jamie Iannone on transparency, integrity, feedback and gaining seller trust.

As an eBay seller, what would be your top priorities for the Senior Manager Trust Transformation?

Tell us your bad eBay buyer behavior stories in the comments below!

eBayFraud

Liz Morton Twitter Facebook
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Liz Morton is a 17 year ecommerce pro turned indie investigative journalist providing ad-free deep dives on eBay, Amazon, Etsy & more, championing sellers & advocating for corporate accountability.

4 comments
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joe3
ebay is a playground for fraud/crime/scamming and the best part is that ebay themselves are complicit with their deliberately incompetent policies and poor customer sevice that fail to address any inappropriate behaviour , even when they are presented with clear evidence, they more often than not take no action whatsoever.The issue is they have a preference and skewed relationship with their buyers who line their pockets successfully, so will happily turn a blind eye to them as long as they are making profits.Dont take it lying down...name and shame them:

https://shamebay.com/
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Rtliq
I’ve lost thousands of dollars already and I’ve only been selling for a year. eBays automated system is horrible and the program they’ve wrote for it is even worse.
There must be about 10 differ t ways to easily navigate to report a item. They even encourage buyers to file a claim by sending buyers an email asking if they want to report a problem with the item they just bought.
I’ve had buyers just demand a partial refund because brand new items were “not as described”. If you don’t give it to them they damage the item and send it back. The worse part about it that when you get items not as described they reduce your sells believing it’s the seller. This is true, I’ve had someone from their line tell me that in a round about way.
The only option a seller really sees on the return page is refund buyer or report a problem. I reported a problem and it responded with thank you for reporting a problem. Please refund buyer now.
Bottom line is that sellers pay them for a safe place to sell. If you promote a listing (which is stupid because they should be doing that anyhow so they make money) it can cost up to a sellers full profits and if you pick 2% of final sale, it’s almost 20% after selling and listing fees.
If eBay keeps this up they’re just going to have a bunch of stuff being sold for .99c from China. I’m just about done with them.
I’ve asked for my transcripts like 20 times thinking I was going crazy, no transcripts! Just transfer me around for a few hours. Yes, I want my transcripts!
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twilloo1
I have been a small seller on Ebay since 1998 and I can tell you, I never had any problems until Ebay changed its policy regarding sellers not being able to leave bad feedback on buyers and siding with the buyer 90% of the time. This just opened the door and invited in many buyers with virtually no feedback and most never sold on ebay. I stopped selling for 15 years because of this and being a small seller on small ticket items with low mark up, one scam and I am hurting. so I stopped selling and only now am going to try it again since Ebay now says they are taking bad buyers more seriously. Back when Ebay first started, it was a pleasant experience and there was not much to worry about, now it is a host for a den of thieves, mostly buyers not sellers.
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Banned in Chat
Please! Ebay has never cared about counterfeits or fraud on their site, as long as they get their cut. 9 years ago there was a big thread on the eBay boards about a seller of HVAC products who sold a several hundred pound unit to a buyer and shipped it via freight carrier. The buyer started a return and returned a 10lb brake part in a priority flat rate box. Ebay gave the buyer their money back, when the seller tried to appeal, he had very good proof, his item weighed 600 pounds, you cannot ship anything over 74 pound via USPS. But eBay ruled against the seller. Only when the seller got ahold of his eBay account rep, something most eBay sellers will never have, did eBay give him a "one time courtesy refund" of his $1400. So instead of holding the criminal buyer accountable, eBay paid $1400 out of their own pocket. That buyer is still active today, their last buyer feedback was sometime before Christmas this past year.

Recent Comments
Avatar PlaceholderMksowa9 hours ago
They need to fix a very broken system full of nasty attitudes. The patrons no longer matter.
Avatar PlaceholderMarty_JYesterday
Was just checking to see if it would post without creating an account but….
eBay seller since 2022
Just started selling about a year and half ago

800 items sold 99.7 feedback

Recently I went away for family things for 30 days set my acct to be away … got back with items not received cases opened

I wasn’t able to revise existing listings post new listings OR refund the buyer from my eBay funds …

The items were caught up in recent wild fires but ended up being delivered late. I had to beg the buyer to let me pay them off of eBay to close the case because it was on hold and I wasn’t able to refund them from my eBay acct etc…. So luckily they obliged and I did … but ever since then my acct must be strikes as high risk because funds have been on hold 3 days after delivery since then indefinitely might I add… I get the run around everytime etc etc FINALLY I got someone saying it’s temporary it’ll be back to normal etc. these r all reps from escalated departments… one lady told me that with my history and feedback I’ve proved beyond doubt that I’m reliable seller and shouldn’t be on hold she put in for a appeal never heard back got the run around for another few months… they keep telling me I’ve been chosen for the new update they r rolling out total BS … do you believe that sellers will stay on eBay with these holds ? No they will simply go to another platform … they r 100% making money on the holds and use any reasoning to tell you basically no and keep profiting…. The get around is creating a new acct… these cases were closed without eBay having to step in and might I add I lost $$ and its been truly frustrating esp since I’ve built the acct up but I know I can do it again.. when they tell me its going to happen to all accts I just mention how my brother just opened one n now has immediate payments they don’t know what to say I don’t think they really even know.,, its sad n scummy but I see a class action lawsuit coming honestly ! I don’t know💬 if I forgot anything but well written thanks for the information. Have a great one!
Avatar PlaceholderJkvinyl3Yesterday
As many have already quoted - us sellers now can not charge for packaging. I will be £500 a year out of pocket.