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Buyer scam with eBay server hacking
Good morning, I’m opening this conversation to see whether anything similar has happened to anyone else and to get some advice about it. I receive an offer for an item I have for sale from a buyer in Germany, I accept the offer, so the item is marked as sold and awaiting payment. The next day I receive a message from the buyer saying that he will make the payment that day; I do not reply to this message. Almost a week passes and there is still no sign of the payment, and a few days earlier I had already sent the invoice to nudge the buyer. I therefore decide to report the item as unpaid, I go into the order’s private area, and I don’t even have time to press the button when I see the wording paid to ship. I exit, go to my personal email and find the usual eBay message, “Good news! Your item has been paid for.” Sent and signed by eBay.com (no sign of forgery, nor any strange originating addresses, indeed by analyzing the original message, the originating IPs are in the range used by eBay). I decide to wait a few days before shipping, also to make up for the buyer’s late payment. During this time, every time I go into my private area, the usual reminder message appears: “Paid, to be sent”. I should point out that I never had any contact with the buyer, nor did I press any button that marked the item as paid. After 4 days, at the usual eBay shipping reminder, I press the shipping button, I am transferred to the eBay shipping service by Packlink and I ship the item. Meanwhile, I sell another item. After another 3 days I receive from eBay the transfer of the money to my account for the sale following this one in question; for this one, nothing, and on top of that they charge me the fees without having received the payment. At this point I call eBay customer service, who after countless checks tell me that the item does not appear as paid and that the fees were charged to me because I shipped the item anyway. So the buyer managed to SCAM ME. Now I wonder, the payment confirmation email undoubtedly came from eBay’s servers, the reminder messages were in my private area on the eBay site, so everything came from inside eBay, surely some hacker managed to get into eBay’s system and do all this.
So if the problem is a lack of eBay cyber security, why should I be the one to lose money?
Why does eBay play the blame game (customer service), as if it were my fault?
I filed a report with the Carabinieri about what happened, I sent to spoof@ebay.it an email explaining everything, together with the report, confirmation email, original email message etc. I contacted customer service again to ask for a refund, and the only thing they told me was to send a registered letter to eBay’s legal headquarters in Germany (without even specifying which office), and, to make matters worse, they told me to write to customerhelp_it@ebay.com to report the incident to themselves in writing and then request reimbursement for the money lost. Would you believe it, this support email address has been discontinued!
I’d like to ask you for some advice and thank you in advance, have a nice day.
