My wife accidentally uncovered a pervasive new scam that is impacting sellers all across the eBay world.

How it works:

Bidder wins an auction. In my wife’s case, she’s been selling off pieces of her Juicy Couture charm collection. Average price sold is somewhere between $40 and $100, with $10 or so paid by the buyer for shipping. Buyer pays, shipping label is generated, the package is put into the mail via USPS and shipped.

After about a week, the buyers will contact the seller inquiring about package status. Seller will look at tracking and see a bunch of weird status updates. “Packaged received by shipper”, “Package sent to customs”, “Package offloaded to fullfillment agency,” etc. In my wife’s case, two out of 10 charms sold were sent to different named buyers at the same address: Internationale Blvd, Glendale Heights, IL.

Yes, that’s one of eBay’s international shipping hubs. No, my wife does NOT offer international shipping.

The packages arrive at the international hub then the buyers start harassing the seller about not getting their item. As the days progress, the buyers get increasingly hostile with the seller - eventually threatening to dispute purchases with eBay and demand money back.

Both my wife and I are pretty savvy when it comes to sniffing out scams, but had she not called the USPS and then called eBay, she would have just refunded the buyer. Then she would be out the money and the item, without recourse.

Rinse, repeat.

Can’t imagine how many fraudsters are exploiting this everyday, but I’m going to try my best to get this shutdown.

If you are selling on eBay, set your shipping appropriately- if you don’t want to sell internationally, set your sellers profile correctly and clearly state in the product description your policy. Also, clearly state your refund policy and be sure to explicitly exclude participating in eBay’s international shipping program. If there is a problem with shipping (or if the buyer reports as such), do your due diligence before refunding them. If you think you’re being targeted by a scam buyer, call eBay seller’s customer service.

Stay vigilant.