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Single buyer purchased 13 items over a year, all shipped to different buyers.
 

I have a single buyer that has purchased 13 items over the last year, all shipped to different buyers. I assume that he has another business somewhere and is using me to drop ship? That's fine, because I'm still selling my items and making a profit, so I'm glad that we can both make a profit! However, I'd like to know where he's selling them. Is there any possible way to find out? I looked on eBay completed listings and he isn't selling them there. What's weird is I don't think there's too much of a profit margin for him.

Has this happened to anybody else? Am I right in assuming he is using me to drop ship or is something else going on?

you can assume all you want. think of it like this, what if that guy was you and they tried to cut you out of the picture. like you said you are still making a profit, don't get greedy, it never leads to good things. why not discuss this with the buyer and see if you can broaden the relationship

I hate these type of buyers. They are called "Blind Drop Shippers" or as I call them Bottom Feeders.

The problem I have had in the past, is you have no way of contacting the REAL customer. And that is problematic when selling ink and toner cartridges or anything of a dispensable item.

Blind drop shippers pad their pockets by claiming a item was faulty and expect you to guarantee something that was sold twice.

Probably being sold on Amazon since the prices are generally higher there on most items.

Business is business. If I can increase my bottom line I'll do it any way I can. However, in this case, I'm not trying to cut him out. If we're both making sales, then I'm happy! I have thought about contacting him, but want to better understand the situation first.

I didn't think about him just selling them on Amazon for a higher price. I typically have the lowest price so I just assumed he was selling elsewhere... but buyers don't always buy the lowest price for one reason or another. I would think Amazon would be able to detect blind drop shipping and disallow it, no?

Is this something that you experience a lot? I can imagine that tactic is common for ink cartridges but probably less common for electronic consumer goods (what I sell).

EDIT: Really fascinating. I think this guy is just regular blind dropshipping, though. Not blind dropshipping.

He´s selling it on his own site,estore or on local classifieds.
its popular in your category (electronic consumer goods)
I dont think he would or could resell on neighter Amazon or ebay

I have a few of these buyers. I dont mind as I dont have any problems with the orders and im making a lot of money as they buy from me every week!

this most likely. I was listing a new item and checking out a competitor last week. He had like 96% feedback. I decided to browse his feedback and it turns out this guy was just reselling things. He had almost 1000 feedback on amazon and his only negatives he received was that people would receive shipments from "walmart" "office depot" etc with someone elses billing info besides their own....

I once received an order with a "PO" number on it...after googling the address I found out it was actually a online retailer(legit, not a basement retailer) that ordered it. My only guess is they ran out of stock on this item, got into a bind with a customer and needed a replacement asap.

You never know.

It happens here and there, shoot even I do it sometimes.
When someone purchases a product from me, and for some reason i don't have any, and my next shipment doesn't come till next week.

Better believe I'm going to take a couple $ loss to purchase one from another seller and have it shipped to their house.
It happens, but it isn't unusual to see this.

This reminds me of an old thread where the OP was talking about selling item that was at online store, then once he would sell the item he would order from the online store...