The Top 7 Scams on eBay for Sellers

And How to Prevent Them

Buying and selling physical goods online has never been easier and, due to the recent epidemic, often necessary.

Months of forced lockdown and economic uncertainty proved to be a fantastic combination for e-commerce marketplaces like eBay which saw their traffic, number of listings and sales conversion to surge above their expectations.

But a similar increase has inevitably been accompanied by a growth in the fraud rate across the e-commerce platforms, often targeting new and inexperienced sellers who joined en masse in the last few months

There is very little transparency about the number of fraudulent transactions happening on eBay, especially because the more sophisticated scammers simply abuse the degree of protection that eBay and PayPal confer to buyers and, therefore, many of these illegal activities are not even recorded as such.

The unfortunate truth for anyone who sells items on eBay (and on other platforms) is that a) you will be targeted, often on a daily basis, by scammers and b) no matter what precautions you will put in place, at least some of these attempts will be successful.

This bleak image should not discourage anyone from selling online, but to be simply better prepared to face one of the aspects of doing business online. However, for those that are willing to sell but that would prefer not to deal with fraudsters as well as with listing, advertising, shipping and customer service the option is to use existing businesses like CameraFlips (for photography equipment) or other companies (depending on the type of items) and either sell the items directly to them or to work with them on a consignment basis (where the shop will sell the items on your behalf, taking care of everything)

1) The “Let’s Talk Outside”

I probably receive a similar message a couple of times every day.