FreakinLobster wrote:Welp, dang. The seller I placed the pre-order from that HS just closed their account on ebay. It was too good to be true, right? Even if it was a KO. Now, I gotta wait 10 days to contact ebay for them to step in and open a dispute... don't even know how will it go out, since the seller got out of the platform. They had near 4k reviews and few of them were negatives with different complaints, so I thought it was legit. This is the first time I got scammed... there's always a first time, huh? Bummer.
Wish me luck. If you guys have any advice to deal with ebay in these situations, I'd appreciate it a lot.
Many of these accounts are the same people. They cultivate multiple accounts, get them high rated, with genuine selling, then when a good scam opportunity comes along, they make a huge influx of money and inevitably lose said account. They keep their main, solid 10k positive accounts, and just start another new account to build up. I'll bet this head sculpt wasnt the only non existent item they were selling on that doomed account towards its end. They probably made a quick heap of money in the tens of thousands, for zero outlay, and all it cost them was an easily replaceable account.
Another scam they pull, is to suddenly change banking details, make a bunch of fraudulent sales, go quiet for a couple of weeks, and then when ebay takes action, they claim their account was hacked and a fraudster made those sales using their reputable account as a hook. They get banned while ebay investigates, then eventually the account gets reinstated, reputation intact.
Ebay aren't great at catching fraudsters, but then they make a mint, either way, so they dont really care. It's easier to just refund people.
I used to be an external security specialist investigating corporate fraud. You'd be amazed at how many big "reputable" companies do similar things every day.
Good luck with your refund. It's likely their account got banned by ebay due to scam complaints. So you should have no issues getting a refund. It's just a waiting game.