I'm sure it's no secret to some of the forum members that I own wireless stores for one of the major carriers in the US. Well the carrier has this rule that once a phone's serial number is used on a customer's account it is no longer eligible for commission again even if it never leaves the store. So whenever a customer changes their mind mid-activation (among several other reasons), I'm left with a brand new often sealed phone that I cannot resell in the store. So this leads to a regular supply of highend phones to put up on ebay.
It is mid to late November of 2011. I have a dozens of phones up on ebay. This lady wins a lot of 3 brand new iphones, pays quickly, and it is a non-eventful pleasant transaction. Three weeks later she emails me looking to buy three more directly through paypal at the same price. She tells me all the iphones are Xmas gifts. I agree and again it seems to be a smooth transaction.
Another 3 weeks go by. I get this email saying that the second batch of phones had bad serial numbers so the people she gave them to as gifts could not activate them. I checked it out and she wasn't lying. It turns out that the employee at my store had failed to properly remove them from the account he had originally activated them on. That account had closed in bad standing leaving those phones with bad serial numbers. This cannot be fixed. So I offered to refund the customer and pay her return shipping upon receiving the phones she was to ship back.
Instead, she opens paypal cases on both batches of iphones. Scammer alerts went off because there was no talk about the first batch having any problems or her wanting to return them. But maybe she just decided to send back all phones to spite me. Almost instantly paypal ruled in her favor for both cases and decided that she could ship them back for a refund.
The scammer alert further went off when she uploaded the same tracking number for both cases. The return tracking number showed delivered in five days and she was refunded by paypal. I arrived home that day expecting to see a box filled with iphones instead I was greeted by no packages at all.
The return address was actually my home address: a first floor condo. Now as a side story, I was in a serious beef with my upstairs neighbor so I suspected he might of stole the iphones. He knew what business I was in and the mail providers were known to just leave packages in our common entrance area. I was not gonna confront him until I had some hard evidence. After all the buyer had acted very suspiciously, the tracking only showed received in my zip code with no signature, and my neighbor was not known to steal packages. Regarless I was out $3000+ and the iphones were no where to be found.
I called paypal and pointed out that both cases had the same return tracking number and the buyer didn't get signature confirmation. The agent agreed to open an appeal for me. This was more then 3K in goods doesn't paypal policy state that when returning more then $250 in goods you have to get signature confirmation. You would think so, but knowing paypal, I was not confident that I would win the appeal.
Days went by and I thinking I would loose the appeal and would just be burnt. Desperate to solve the iphone mystery, it dawned on me to check through the buyers feedback to see if there was any indication that she had a history of scamming sellers. Right at the top of her first feedback page, was a negative from a buyer saying that the iphones she sold him had bad serial numbers. The auction had taken place after she opened the paypal cases against me. She had knowingly listed the bad serial number iphones as clean serial number iphones while getting back the money from me. The hilarious thing is she had used my exact auction format including my pics.
I immediately called up paypal and pointed this listing out to them. I told the agent how could she have sent back the iphones to me when she had sold and shipped them to another ebayer. Within days paypal ruled the appeal in my favor and credited me back the funds.
I am still amazed by the stupidity of this scammer and the dumb luck that the other buyer had left her negative feedback so quickly.
The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to Futuremogul888 For This Useful Post:
This is what makes you a future mogul indeed ha - way to keep at it. Very solid inspiration story on keeping up with the searching and push back. I am sure it was annoying as fug but I am glad you got it through.
These kind of scammers deserve problems - she will get her dues in time. Trash.
Very very good call and thanks for relating the story .. the methodical way by which you describe your steps comes over, and this can be key to solving things right.
So many times when a buyer causes something like this, it actually opens the seller up to make fundamental mistakes on other transactions i feel, distraction can be very destructive .. so it pays off in many ways to remain calm and work things through carefully.
Great to hear .. she tried her worst to screw you bad
Thankfully, this worked out in the OP's Favor,Chalk one up for the good guys,,However What the OP Labeled as "Stupidity", is unfortunatly, Arrogance,,Scammers KNOW that is EASY as can be to Scam a Seller out of ANY Item, Paypal is ALWAYS in their corner, this gives them a TREMENDOUS amount of confidence, It is NICE to see that that every once in a while one of these Scammers gets FUC^3D
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A funny/disturbing ebay scammer story 
