I put a BMC Track Machine up for auction on ebay that clearly stated that I will ship to Canada and U.S. only. A couple days in I receive an email asking if I'd ship to Japan. I replied no. The buyer that sent the email has Positive Feedback:0%, Feedback Score:1.

Guess who the winning bidder in the auction is? I received payment immediately but the shipping address is in Toronto and is unverified by PayPal. I sent the buyer an email over 24 hours ago about my concerns and have not received a reply. I'm ready to do a Paypal refund.

I'm thinking this could go horribly wrong, for me!

What you need to do when you set up an auction is go into the seller terms for shipping and exclude all the parts of the world / countries you do not wish to ship to. Then, any buyer that is located in an excluded country will have his bid rejected.

you can also set it up so that buyers with feedback less than some number can't bid. But i think it's feedback of -1 or less. If they have 0% they can still bid.

However, you can specify in your listing that interested buyers with 0% (hey, maybe they're just new to ebay. weren't we all at some point or another?) must contact you, otherwise you reserve the right to cancel the sale.

I have a love/hate relationship with ebay.

So, what exactly are you afraid is going to happen?

Maybe the buyer has a friend in Toronto willing to ship the bike to Japan on their behalf. Having "verified address" just means that the buyer's billing and shipping addresses match. This would obviously not be the case if the buyer is using a friend's address.

If you have received payment and ship the bike to the given address, then you have upheld your half of the bargain. Be sure to include tracking, so the buyer can't claim they never received the item (this should always be the case regardless of who won the auction).

Buyer paid you, you sent item to listed address. Everyone's happy, no?

(And I'm guessing you mean you hate people on ebay sometimes, since it's not exactly ebay's fault that the dude lives in Japan . . . )

JB - The problem is that if the buyer is unscrupulous, he can claim that he never got the item, since it was not sent to his address in Japan. He can then file a claim with PayPal, and PayPal will not defend the seller. Meanwhile, eBay is going to charge the seller for the auction sale fee regardless, so if the seller refunds the payment he's still going to be out the auction fee. It's a lose lose scenario for the seller. That's why I simply auto-refuse bids from countries I do not wish to sell to.

call ebay, tell them you want verified payment, see if you have the ability to cancel . Tell the buyer you need it in a money order or cashiers check.

But the buyer is not asking for OP to ship to Japan. The buyer is asking for OP to ship to Toronto. If buyer ships to Toronto and has tracking to prove that he did ship to Toronto, the buyer can't complain, because he got what he asked for: to have the bike shipped to Toronto.

No. I already went over what a "verified address" means. Also, asking for money orders/cashiers check/anything NOT paypal make the seller suspicious. The OP already got his money in paypal anyway.

If it helps, I have sold a lot of stuff on ebay, with a large majority of my buyers being international customers. Knowing how ebay/paypal protects its sellers helps a lot in case anything unfortunate ever happens . . .


TL;DR If the OP is still uncomfortable making the sale, he is more than welcome to do whatever he wants. Doesn't mean that the buyer is necessarily trying to scam him, though.

don't ship to toronto.
There are plenty of wannabe fraudsters in Toronto.

I know from working in a retail shop, that we have fake credit cards floating around too.

paypal will screw you over so badly.
Do NOT ship anything that you've sold on ebay if the address is paypal unverified. PERIOD.

Now, if it was paid by a credit card, like VISA, Amex or mastercard, who have better seller and buyer protection in place, then yeah, go right ahead. Paypal offers no such protections unless both ends are verified.

Basically paypal holds onto my funds for 20 days unless the buyer leaves me positive feedback. The frame would be in Toronto in 5 days but the buyer would not be to open the box and inspect the frame and leave me feedback. That leaves 15 days for the frame to make the trip to Japan where I have lost control of the item.

The buyer had plenty of time to make arrangements in Toronto, he also had time to inform me of what his plans were if he were to win the auction. The fact that he has not yet reponded to my concerns also leaves me cold. AEO I think I'll take your advise. Thanks for the comments everyone.

What? Did no one read my posts? An "unconfirmed address" doesn't mean that the seller is OMGTRYINGTORIPMEOFF.


I have never heard of this. Please share the info page that states this.
According to ebay:
Money claimed = money not being held for 20 days, unless there is some other policy in place here that I'm missing . . .

Once again, I am not saying anything about the actual trustworthiness of the buyer*. I just think it's silly when people freak out because the address is unconfirmed, without really understanding what it means. People make legit purchases to unconfirmed addresses all the time, such when shipping things to work addresses (whereas the billing address is listed as their home address).


*A feedback score of 0% with 1 feedback means that at least one person didn't like the buyer, so I personally wouldn't do it. Still doesn't have anything to do with the confirmed addresses, though . . .

Insure the shipment and require a signature from the recipient. If the seller claims the item was never received, all you need to do is provide the item tracking # and explain to paypal it was insured. The onus is then on the recipient to make a claim.

Using eBay/PayPal really isn't this complicated.

Here:

https://forums.ebay.com/db1/forum/New-To-Ebay/120

surprisingly, it doesn't work that way.
Because I've had a package that was insured with tracking and when the payment bounced a month later, paypal did nothing.
It's called "end of month charge back fraud".

This.

Without saying a terrible lot about myself i've worked for an ebay company for a few years and I've dealt with both ebay and paypal resolutions/cases. As far as Paypal goes, the customer is not happy, they get their money back. Almost no questions asked. Why? Because Paypal wants to be seen as safe for the consumer. I would never touch paypal again if I could avoid it. They're a horrible company and they pretty much float above the law by making you agree to their user TOS.

You'll probably be fine but if you cannot afford it. Then don't risk it man.

JB it's a Paypal policy not ebay, here is a copy and paste,
Transaction Details


Ok to ship

Payment Status: Completed As part of our ongoing effort to make PayPal an even safer place for you and your customers to do business, this payment will be on hold for 19 days until we're sure that your customer is satisfied with their purchase. We do this to ensure you have money in your account in the event your customer asks for a refund. If you ship immediately, the hold may be lifted sooner.
To find out if your transaction is covered, check the Seller Protection eligibility.
Learn more about payment holds.

The buyer is the one that holds the cards, paypal makes sure of it.

wow this definitely sounds shady. best of luck.

Over the past ten years or so, I've purchased and sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff on eBay and have never even seen a transaction like what you're describing. Why don't you just keep the item and refund the guy's money?

If you ship to an un-Verified address, and you have a Personal i.e. not Business Paypal account, you can still be subject to an Item Not Received, or Item Not A Described and therefore a guaranteed full refund to the Buyer, even if Buyer has left you positive feedback, and even if you have a Proof of Delivery. Unless you already moved all your money out of your Paypal account and into an un-linked bank account. Whereas if you ship to a Verified address anywhere in the world, and have electronically retrievable Proof of Delivery, then you the Seller are not at risk. In practical reality, however, mostly only USA, Canada, UK and Australia tend to have Verified addresses. This is mostly due to the nature of these 4 countries banking and credit systems than anything else. You may still find Verified addresses in other countries, so this is not a blanket rule.

If you are a Business Paypal account holder, you are covered by Seller Protection in the case of a chargeback for Item Not Received, so long as you have shipped to WHATEVER SHIPPING ADDRESS PAYPAL HAS PROVIDED FOR THE TRANSACTION, and you have an electronically retrievable Proof of Delivery that can be forwarded to Paypal, and you follow Paypal's process for disputing the chargeback. ALSO PROVIDED THAT said Shipping Address is in the USA, Canada, UK or Australia; for these countries it doesn't matter whether the Paypal-provided Shipping Address is Confirmed or un--Confirmed, or whether the Buyer is Verified or not. For all other countries, you are under Seller Protection only if you have electronically retrievable Proof of Delivery and have shipped to a Verified address (the problem here though is that both PofD and V'd-addresses tend to not to occur, so you just live with the risk.)

Phwew! That was a mouthful, it took me a freakin' half hour to type this up accurately. But that is the Paypal/Ebay policy as I understand it. Sometimes I'm glad I went to law school. If you see any mistakes in my analysis let me know.

I'd also like to add that THIS (amongst other things) is why Ebay has become such a hyper-complicated PITA which deters so many people from wanting to sell there.

That is the simplest way to dodge this bullet. If the Buyer then leaves you Negative feedback, you can ask Ebay to have the Neg removed, and it will be removed, if your shipping policy clearly states shipping only to Canada and USA.

Ah, OP, you have a payment hold because of this:
TL;DR You are not a volume seller, so paypal can't guarantee that you are trustworthy.

Just do this* and get it over with. It's obvious that you do not wish to ship to the buyer.

This is not true. Ebay does not remove feedback because you ask them to. And yes, the OP says he will only ship to Canada and USA, and he was given a shipping address to Canada.
Pretend the buyer never sent his email asking about shipping to Japan.
Buyer wins the auction, and the OP gets a Canadian address. NO ONE DID ANYTHING WRONG.


*OP, you need to do this: https://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/canc...n-process.html

Don't just send the money back and refuse to ship the bike; follow the instructions for canceling a transaction! Then, no one's ebay account gets negative feedback, and you are free to ship to the second highest bidder at your leisure.

you should have said you won't ship to unverified addresses. but you didn't. so ship it, *****.

"This is not true. Ebay does not remove feedback because you ask them to. "

Actually, eBay will remove feedback if you ask them to, for problems that fall under their guidlines:

https://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/...k-removal.html

But yes, OP needs to refund the money then cancel the transaction. If he wants to back out.

Once transaction is canceled, Buyer can't leave you any Neg feedback as I recall. If Buyer leaves Neg feedback before transaction is subsequently canceled, and OP/Seller's policies state no shipment to Non-Verifieds, then I am quite sure eBay would remove the Neg if requested, although I can't quote you chapter and verse under their policies.

Or just ship to the un-verified Canada address and assume some risk.

BTW It wasn't clear to me from this thread whether OP's auction terms refused to ship to un-Verified addresses.

if its a mutually agreed transaction cancellation buyer can leave feedback. If you close it due to unpaid item they cannot. as for "unverified address" i'm not sure.

Even if he does leave bad feedback, who cares? A seller having one strike against them - especially if they have a lot of positive feedback - isn't something I'd ever be concerned with as a buyer.