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I just sold a $3,000 watch to an eBay buyer with 0 feedback. Please give me some advice.

alam
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ffej4 ffej4
I listed a WatchCo SM300 on eBay and it just sold for over $3,000 to a buyer with 0 feedback. ....... PayPal chargebacks are a very real and scary thing...

a valid concern IMO.. and if you don't get a response to your concerns from the Buyer, then it was me, then I would do as suggested below..

lcolors1 lcolors1
..Just refund and cancel. I did it with some shoes. No big deal.
馃憤

Gordon Heavyfoot Gordon Heavyfoot
...What's your eBay username, so I know not to buy anything from you? If the buyer is so inclined he/she can hit you with a nice negative feedback as well.

I will sleep rather well with a neg feedback but rather pass on w/the potential dealings and nightmare of a PP charge back from a scammer....

speedamatuer speedamatuer
...t's a dice you have to roll here apparently.

No, he does not have to...
 
Larry S
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Interesting thread. I was all about the golden rule but as I read all this ... refund and make your regrets.
 
Shabbaz
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Except communicating with the buyer (very important) you could also do some online research. Sometimes I google a paypal name of the buyer to find out if it's a existing name. A lot of people are on linkedin etc so you can find out if somebody has a job, is coach of the local soccer team, etc. You can compare it with the paypal picture (if there is one). You have a adress. Use google street view to get an idea of the house. Like suggested ask a ID. But indeed if the seller does not contact you with a 3k purchase with 0 feedback I would never send the item.

By the way, I stopped selling through ebay real fast after the first 5 purchases were scammers. I received seperate requests for my email so they could send me false PayPal payments, shipping to Lagos Nigeria, strange messages, etc., etc. For a while it was funny but each time I needed to relist a item and that was not ok. Anyway, I said goodbye to ebay and only buy from it now.

Good luck!
 
Wryfox
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Shabbaz Shabbaz
I stopped selling through ebay real fast after the first 5 purchases were scammers.

I'm curious what you were selling to attract that attention...I assume watches?

Like I mentioned earlier, I have been on ebay for over 20yrs, and although I have had problems with buyers AND sellers, I doubt I could count all the issues on both hands over that timeframe, but I do know for sure they were ALL from zero feedback users. Ebay requires you to honor the sale to anyone who wins your item, BUT they also publish buying&selling guides warning of the dangers of low feedback users. They know most of the fraud comes from the quick hitters, and in the past...hijacked accounts. My account was hijacked about 7 yrs ago and was forced to close it and start over...which was a shame because I lost my extensive feedback rating too. So its not so long ago I had to suffer through being a zero feedback newbie all over again.

Fun fact. I like to collect art as well as watches, and I was surprised to find that art was one of the big fraud areas of ebay with tons of low feedback sellers. They defend their low feedback by acting as tearful sellers of recently departed grandma's or husband's possessions. They pull the old switcheroo from authentic to fake with beautiful sealed back frames. If you suspect its fake, you have to open the frame to prove it. Then they claim you damaged the product or switched it yourself. And of course many are simply money laundering...10k for a picture of a cat(ultra-rare!!). Who can put a value, right? This is rampant on Amazon as well.
 
Shabbaz
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Wryfox Wryfox
I'm curious what you were selling to attract that attention...I assume watches?

Like I mentioned earlier, I have been on ebay for over 20yrs, and although I have had problems with buyers AND sellers, I doubt I could count all the issues on both hands over that timeframe, but I do know for sure they were ALL from zero feedback users. Ebay requires you to honor the sale to anyone who wins your item, BUT they also publish buying&selling guides warning of the dangers of low feedback users. They know most of the fraud comes from the quick hitters, and in the past...hijacked accounts. My account was hijacked about 7 yrs ago and was forced to close it and start over...which was a shame because I lost my extensive feedback rating too. So its not so long ago I had to suffer through being a zero feedback newbie all over again.

Fun fact. I like to collect art as well as watches, and I was surprised to find that art was one of the big fraud areas of ebay with tons of low feedback sellers. They defend their low feedback by acting as tearful sellers of recently departed grandma's or husband's possessions. They pull the old switcheroo from authentic to fake with beautiful sealed back frames. If you suspect its fake, you have to open the frame to prove it. Then they claim you damaged the product or switched it yourself. And of course many are simply money laundering...10k for a picture of a cat(ultra-rare!!). Who can put a value, right? This is rampant on Amazon as well.
Just a couple of Rembrandt paintings. Dont have a clue why it attracted so much attention from our good friends in Nigeria.
 
Shabbaz
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But serious, just a couple of omega's. Nothing special. 14k 168004, 14k SMDV. Probably they look at new ebay sellers who are unexperienced.
 
Wryfox
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Shabbaz Shabbaz
Just a couple of Rembrandt paintings. Dont have a clue why it attracted so much attention from our good friends in Nigeria.

Shabbaz Shabbaz
But serious, just a couple of omega's. Nothing special. 14k 168004, 14k SMDV. Probably they look at new ebay sellers who are unexperienced.

Whoops, just saw you were kidding...I was already fashioning a response to ask what the Rembrandts were, as they are a particular area of interest for me. The surprising thing is that although some of his are crazy valuable, many are quite reasonable. And yes, there are Rembrandts on ebay, some of them are even real. Some are unexpectedly real, hence my interest in looking anyway.
 
Shabbaz
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Wryfox Wryfox
Whoops, just saw you were kidding...I was already fashioning a response to ask what the Rembrandts were, as they are a particular area of interest for me. The surprising thing is that although some of his are crazy valuable, many are quite reasonable. And yes, there are Rembrandts on ebay, some of them are even real.
Haha. Sorry for my humor.

What kind of Rembrandt's do you have then? My focus is is more on Van Gogh generally (this is a joke). Or maybe I'm polluting the thread...

Edit: you dont have to answer that question on a public forum...
 
Screwbacks
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i dont understand. the buyer is supposed to provide his shipping details. certainly, you should be able to know the buyer's name. if he has paid you, seems like there is nothing to wrry about.
 
Wryfox
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Shabbaz Shabbaz
What kind of Rembrandt's do you have then?

Yeah probably thread creep but just a quick note that Rembrandt was also one of the most talented Intaglio artists ever. It is an extremely painstaking process of etching/engraving/drypoint on a copper plate and printing with it. In his lifetime in the 1600s he was primarily known for this style over painting. Its a fascinating niche with lots of history, and lots of intrique after his death as to the travels of these plates through time. The real bugaboo concerns the preservation successes and failures of both the plates and their prints. Paper and ink doesn't survive well compared to canvas and paint. Some go for 100s of thousands to a million, some for only a few thousand(authentic examples, not reprints which are 99.9% of what you see). So sometimes I have to make a choice between a Speedmaster or a Rembrandt.....hmmmmm.
Edited:
 
rcs914
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Wryfox Wryfox
Yeah probably thread creep but just a quick note that Rembrandt was also one of the most talented Intaglio artists ever. It is an extremely painstaking process of etching/engraving/drypoint on a copper plate and printing with it. In his lifetime in the 1600s he was primarily known for this style over painting. Its a fascinating niche with lots of history, and lots of intrique after his death as to the travels of these plates through time. The real bugaboo concerns the preservation successes and failures of both the plates and their prints. Paper and ink doesn't survive well compared to canvas and paint. Some go for 100s of thousands to a million, some for only a few thousand(authentic examples, not reprints which are 99.9% of what you see). So sometimes I have to make a choice between a Speedmaster or a Rembrandt.....hmmmmm.

Ahh, so in this case the Rembrandt is "real" in that it was made from the intaglio plate that he created, but may have been done by someone else well after his death?
 
Wryfox
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rcs914 rcs914
Ahh, so in this case the Rembrandt is "real" in that it was made from the intaglio plate that he created, but may have been done by someone else well after his death?

Ay, there's the rub. Its a very detailed science of determining the prints he made himself, and those made after his death. Those he made himself are called 'lifetime prints'. Rembrandt was very good at keeping up his plates, subsequent owners were not. Sometimes the difference is huge and obvious, sometimes the only difference between a lifetime print and 'after rembrandt' print is a small defect somewhere in the print field. And sometimes subsequent owners attempt to 'restore' the plate, almost always failing horribly, so that makes it obvious too. I have shelf full of books on the subject. It is an intense field of study for art historians, with new evidence adding to the research every day. A new multi volume set of research on the subject of Intaglio artists has been recently published...it's $5000 just for the Rembrandt section.
 
staristheanswer
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Once I tried to sell on ebay a watch and the buyer was with excellent reviews.
I was so excited he also send me a message and it seemed everything was going well.
He knew my email and I received an e-mail from paypal that was confirming 700 euro.
I was entering on my paypal and it was saying there was no money in the account only 9$.
I send a message to him and I said I don't see any money on my paypal account.
He said that it takes some time for the procedures and the money will be there in 24 hours.
I entered again on my e-mail and than I understood what was happening.
Luckily on my email i've putted my surname to end on ...xal and my real surname ends on ...ali.
The recipt from paypal was on ...xal.
Hw was a fraud.
I started to mess with him.
I told him that tomorrow early in the morning I will ship your watch.
He was asking me if I had anything else to sell.
I told him like what?
Any Ipad he said or something electronic.
I told him I have a samsung galaxy 7 edge.
He said how much you want for it.I said 600 euro.
After a while I received an e-mail with 650 euro.
He said I am paying also for shipping.
I said to him Thank you so much.
Than I told him I have something else to sell.
He said what?
I said A big black dildo for your mother.馃が
I received no other message.
This was going for 3 days.
The address I was supposed to ship the items was somewhere in Nigeria.
After some days I received an e-mail form ebay telling me that the account of the person was hacked and there were sorry and hopefully
I did not made any sell.
If I had money on my paypal account from this person I would ship the watch for sure.
I have not such a big experience with selling online or with paypal rules but I think if the moeny were on my account we would find a way for it to work so if you have the money on your paypal account you can proceed with the shipment or try to send a message to paypal to confirm his account.Good luck with it.Just don't rush and let us know how it goes.
Edited:
 
rcs914
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dennisthemenace dennisthemenace
One more member in my little black book listing people I would never do business with.

I don't get this - what is wrong with the seller trying to protect himself? As stated several times, just because the "buyer" has paid via paypal doesn't mean much of anything in terms of being protected from buyer fraud. There are some SERIOUS red flags with this purchase and the buyer, as outlined. The reality is that the seller is likely being scammed - so he should go ahead and ship the watch out because "that's what he agreed to by selling on ebay"? This makes little sense to me, especially with the buyer not yet responding to communication from the seller.

I will state that I've sold a couple things on ebay that went for more than $1K (a sterling Dunhill Unique enameled lighter and a McIntosh MC-30 monoblock tube amplifier) and both of them made me very leery because the buyers were non-english speakers. A Google street view examination of one of the addresses showed a fairly dumpy apartment. The other address was a re-shipper "Bob's discount storage" or something like that. The conclusion I came to was that both were purchasers for likely Chinese clients. But neither one had zero feedback - both had decent feedback, if not huge numbers (I think less than 20 in both instances). In the end I didn't get burned on either sale, but I was super worried about getting a "Significantly not as described" or some other form of fraud, as I would have no recourse.
 
rcs914
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Wryfox Wryfox
Ay, there's the rub. Its a very detailed science of determining the prints he made himself, and those made after his death. Those he made himself are called 'lifetime prints'. Rembrandt was very good at keeping up his plates, subsequent owners were not. Sometimes the difference is huge and obvious, sometimes the only difference between a lifetime print and 'after rembrandt' print is a small defect somewhere in the print field. And sometimes subsequent owners attempt to 'restore' the plate, almost always failing horribly, so that makes it obvious too. I have shelf full of books on the subject. It is an intense field of study for art historians, with new evidence adding to the research every day. A new multi volume set of research on the subject of Intaglio artists has been recently published...it's $5000 just for the Rembrandt section.

You have to sell a Rembrandt to afford the books on Rembrandt to know if your other Rembrandts are real 馃槈

This just illustrates again for me though how with everything, pretty much the best we can hope for without years of in-depth study, is only the barest understanding of any given topic. The more we learn about something specific, the more we understand just how little we know.
 
Wryfox
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rcs914 rcs914
This just illustrates again for me though how with everything, pretty much the best we can hope for without years of in-depth study, is only the barest understanding of any given topic.

Yep, I've lost a good bet even with years of knowledge. I will never understand it to the point I'm satisfied. But it's the journey not the destination, eh? I'm about to spend two weeks with a masters art gallery to immerse even more. The most important aspect to understand is the conservation...some of the collection is 500yrs old so the mindset is you're not actually paying for the art, you're paying to be a steward of it. And like all non intrinsic things, art is a terrible investment(dare I say like watches?). I meet people all the time who buy and store art to resell later(google freeport to learn about a fascinating aspect of it). Rembrandt as an example, one simple etching was sold for $300 30yrs ago, the same for $10,000 10 yrs ago (the peak time for the art world in general), and $3,000 two years ago. If you love it, its worth it, nothing more.
 
Uniqez
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Did somebody say, that you might not get your money until you get positive feedback from him (on top of everything listed above)?
 
Wryfox
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Uniqez Uniqez
Did somebody say, that you might not get your money until you get positive feedback from him (on top of everything listed above)?

No, not with ebay. BUT, you could be assessed higher fees if you receive poor feedback. That's the bigger reason you don't want poor feedback. Outside of the perception of low integrity to potential buyers (your seller rating is posted on each of your auctions), anything less than steller can increase your sales costs if ebay increases your fees. Managing your rating is a big deal. Everything but perfect transactions count against you. That's why some buyers try to extort sellers with threats of poor feedback. They know it matters, alot.

Realistic scenario with zero feedback buyer:
Buyer: I received the $1000 watch but there is a ding on it that wasn't in your pictures.
Seller: I showed every aspect of the item in my listing. You can return it if you like.
Buyer: No, I'm gonna keep it but give you bad feedback because you didn't show this ding.
Seller: Don't do that. The pictures showed everything. You got what was in the pictures.
Buyer: Give me a partial refund and i'll forget about it. Say $200.

This happens, but doesn't work with me because I'll engage them until they indict themselves. If they then give bad feedback, I appeal with the evidence to ebay and it gets removed. But I wonder how many fall for it out of fear.
Edited:
 
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