An ebay scam you may not have heard of...

[rosstheboss]

This happened to a friend of mine...

Sells phone on Ebay and receives payment, sends off recorded 1st class.

Nobhead Lady receives phone and claims it is broken.

Ebay tell her to send phone back recorded and refund her money

She sends back package to friend, who signs for it.

Friend opens package after signing for it, discovers a box containing no phone.

Doesn't have leg to stand on as it turns into a case of 'who do you believe?' for ebay, meanwhile Nobhead Lady has a nice phone effectively for free.

Be careful out there!

 

[sylus]

I always record the imei and if it's locked to a network in a case like above I would report it as stolen to the network so they can block it. I've never tried it on an unlocked phone so not sure if the last company sim you used would also block it for you?

 

[rosstheboss]

Not sure, he didn't go into too much detail, he certainly didn't mention imei numbers.

 

[JamesM]

Bit of a silly thing to do as the person you've scammed will have your name and address and could be a proper nutter.

 

[mattr]

Thats almost as old a scam as ebay itself!
Just got more common with the number of small, high value items being sold (phones, tablets etc)

 

[rosstheboss]

It seems pretty obvious in many respects, I've never actually heard it before though. Just giving people a heads up!

 

[Anthony]

Surely when you sign to say you have received a package, that's all you are doing? Your friend was no more signing to say he had his phone back than the buyer was signing to say she had received an intact phone when she signed for her package. He should inform both the buyer and eBay that the package was empty when he opened it. The fact that he signed for it doesn't detract from that.

 

[rosstheboss]

To the best of my knowledge there is a lot of email tennis occurring between my friend and ebay to that effect Anthony!

 

[RadNomad]

Give a refund BEFORE inspecting the returned goods? It's obvious that's unwise.

 

[john]

Bad news. Can he not just get the Police involved, surely it's straight forward theft!