Learn How To Avoid Being A Victim Of eBay Buyer’s Fraud in South Africa. You might think that because of everything you’ve heard about the risk of fraud on eBay, it’s only buyers who get scammed – but you couldn’t be more wrong. Here are a few common con tricks that sellers fall for on a daily basis.
The Rubber Cheque is a fictional character.
This isn’t limited to eBay; it’s been going on for years in a variety of industries. It works like this: a buyer sends you a check for which they do not have the funds, and you deposit it in your bank. You immediately send the goods, only to discover a few days later that the check had bounced.
The solution is straightforward: don’t send anything to a buyer until their payment has cleared, no matter how urgently they claim to require it. If they don’t want to wait as long for their items, advise them to pay electronically. However, if your items are small, you may be able to live with the occasional bounced check. Consider it a small price to pay for quicker and better service.
‘I have never purchased anything!’
This is one of the most dangerous scams to fall for. The real owner of the credit card still has control over it in this case – no one has stolen their information. They’ve realized, however, that they can call the bank that issued their card and tell them their card is being used fraudulently and that they never bought anything like that, and the bank will often reverse the transaction without even looking into it. The only way to avoid this scam is to sell everything on eBay, as they keep track of everything.
The Address That Wasn’t Confirmed
It’s relatively simple to steal PayPal accounts from inexperienced users: all you need is their email address and password, after all. PayPal tries to prevent credit cards registered on stolen accounts from being used to make purchases by requiring each buyer to provide a ‘confirmed address,’ which must match the address on file with their credit card issuer.
Many scammers will ask you to ship to a different address, which is a bad idea unless you’re 100% certain they’re not trying to steal your credit card. Anyone who wants to pay a higher price for overnight shipping, especially if it’s not even to the same country as the confirmed address, should be avoided. The con artist is attempting to get the item to them before they are discovered.
It’s up to you to take responsibility for PayPal fraud, as eBay’s preferred method of reimbursing fraudulent payments to their rightful owners is to simply reverse the transaction from you! This is regarded as an inherent risk of using PayPal, and sellers who have been severely burned have been known to switch to a competing electronic payment service.
We’ll take a closer look at PayPal in the next email and ask if it should be the only method of payment you accept.
