I had this in another thread, but will re-ask here.
Let’s say that I am an Ebay seller and you buy a $500 item from me. I ship you an empty box and you file a complaint with Paypal. You claim that I ripped you off, and I swear that I really did send you the item.
Obviously we can see the problem. I could have really sent you the item, and you pocket it for free by saying the box was empty. I could also ship an empty box and steal your money.
Who does Ebay/Paypal side with?
They look at the relative feedback ratings and the histories of both parties. If both are about equal, they seem to side with the buyer.
Typically the buyer unless the seller has fairly definitive proof that the item was shipped and received. After numerous claims that items were never received and giving several refunds I started using USPS delivery confirmation and all those claims stopped dead.
I’m not sure but I think paypal may also look at sale histories. If someone with 5 feedback is accusing someone like me with 1500+ perfect feedback of scamming them, I’m hoping I would get some benefit of the doubt.
But if I sent you an empty box, I would have a delivery confirmation w/signature.
Maybe that seems fair. I hope I’m not a new buyer or seller. I guess my word means nothing, huh? 
Why send an empty box when you could send a bobcat?
It depends on how the sale is funded. If it’s funded with a credit card, the buyer would win no matter what paypal says 'cause the credit card company would do a charge back.
Paypal has it’s own protection but it’s useless for buyers, as witnessed by the above example.
Of course that doesn’t happen much because if Paypal had more than one complaint of shipping a rock or an empty box, Paypal would cut the seller off ASAP. The eBay buyer would leave feedback and kill off any future sales.
So it could happen once conceivably but it’s not good for a long term scam.
Just like Walgreens doesn’t require a signature for credit card purchases under $50.00. You could walk in charge less than $50.00 and dispute the charge with the CC company. You’d win 'cause there’s no signature. But it would only work once.
The empty box would cost far less in shipping. Better put a couple of rocks in it.
As the other’s have pointed out this scam would tend to have a fairly short life.
Think about it on a practical basis . If the buyer and seller both have good feedback over a few+ years the chances of being scammed are pretty remote. It’s when you have little or no feedback buyers and sellers that you really have to be careful.
Well, the box would have to be about the right weight.
But yes, it can and has been done.
eBay will always side with the buyer in any dispute for Item Not as Described.
The buyer will file a dispute with eBay, then eBay will tell the buyer to ship the “Package” back to the seller with tracking for a refund.
Of course the buyer can easily remove the item from the package and put a few rocks in the box and then ship the rocks back with tracking to the seller.
Once the tracking shows the “Package” has been delivered to the seller, eBay will return the buyers money to their paypal account.
This is why eBay no longer works for sellers. ANY buyer can get ANYTHING for free now.
Some people say you can only do it once if your a buyer but all you have to do is start a NEW eBay account with zero feedback, then open a new PayPal account under a new e-mail address, then just buy something else, file a dispute, ship a few rocks back to the buyer with tracking and you get a FREE item and a FULL Refund.
This is the problem with eBay, as a seller you CANNOT CONTROL who buys your items. Even if you block a bidder, they can just create a new account.
I quit selling on eBay last year and I plan to NEVER list another item till they fix this nonsense.
eBay needs to allow the SELLER to control the refund process. If a buyer is unhappy then FINE let them be unhappy but don’t set the system up where the buyer is guaranteed a refund no matter what.
Buyers are scamming sellers left and right on eBay now… It’s a Scammers Paradise.
What happens the second time? Walgreens would flag your card?
I just got through a bit of this myself. I bought an HTC Hero off of eBay from a fairly reputable seller (over 80K feedback). I’m on the Sprint network which means no SIM card and the phone is activated through the carrier. Turns out the phone was reported lost/stolen so they would not activate it. I had to send the phone back to the seller who, upon receipt, gave me back my money.
I have heard sellers claim this, but I have never actually seen any evidence of it happening. Certainly, it’s not widespread.
Note that the seller could do the same to a buyer- load the box with rocks. Once the seller had DC, the buyer would have to return the box of rocks- at his expense.
In either case, it’s mail fraud, and carries a hefty Federal Prison term, which is why few risk it.
Like I said, I have never actually seen any evidence it has happened.
My wife had a going on a year or two ago, she sold a phone (no idea what, i think about £60 worth) to somebody with a few hundred feedback, 100% good, and received a complaint saying it was the wrong colour (despite the photo on the listing being an actual photo of the actual phone that was sent). So my wife tells them to return it, they can have a refund, minus the postage.
So a week later we receive the box back, sent by special delivery, tracked and to sign for, which our landlord (who had a shop downstairs and passed along all our post) did. When we noticed the phone had been removed from it’s box, she was on to ebay and paypal, who essentially told her that they had had contact from the buyer, who gave them the tracking code for the parcel, and they could see that it had been signed for at our address, so they refunded the buyer from my wife’s paypal account, dispute closed.
Upon closer inspection of this ladies feedback record, it turned out that most of the good feedback was actually negative, and it seemed that she had been doing this trick for at least 3 months that we could see, but as sellers can only leave good feedback, she still had a 100% rating!
The moral of the story being, just because someone has a good feedback rating, doesn’t make them a good buyer. Check what the feedback actually says before dealing with people. It is within Ebay policy to remove anyone’s bid from your auction if you decide not to deal with them, but I think if they win the auction that makes a contract between you, though I’m not 100% on that last bit.
Hey, I’ve been having a severe problem with ebay and was googling around for advice when I stumbled across this thread. This seems particularly relevant to my problem so I hope you guys can offer your opinions even though it’s an ancient thread. Apologies for the length of this! I bought a God of War Ultimate Trilogy Edition from a guy in Greece for my boyfriend for Christmas and here’s my tale (F.Y.I. I’m in Britain so use ebay.co.uk):
I saw that there was only one photograph supplied in this item listing, which did not show any Greek language, so I messaged the seller before purchasing to ask whether the item was in English, and the seller replied confirming that it was. I purchased the item on the 21st November but when it arrived it was in Greek, so messaged the seller again to tell him this and asked if I could return the item and obtain a refund. I hadn’t even taken it fully out of the cardboard box it was posted in and didn’t remove the sticky tabs over the ends, I had merely slid it a little way out of the box, seen the Greek writing and gone “Oh B****CKS!” and put it back in and sealed the postage box back up. The seller agreed to issue a refund for the item but refused to refund my return postage cost.
I returned the item via Airmail insured on the 28th November and obtained proof of postage with the weight of the item at 2.319kg. On the 6th December 2011 I messaged the seller again to ask if he had received my returned item. The seller replied telling me that he had received an empty box without the item inside. This cannot be possible because I have proof of postage stating the weight of the item, which could not be achieved by posting an empty box, also contradicting his claim: “the box was closed very well and it wasnt opened except by me”. I then messaged the seller to ask if he could provide me with a photograph of this in order to resolve the issue with the Royal Mail, but the seller refused to comply and instead threatened me with legal action if I opened an eBay case.
In the next message the seller was rude and abusive towards me, used offensive language and also threatened me with legal action. Quote: “paypal advice me to send the police report to them if you open a case in order to protect me and move legally against you. So do what ever you want to do scammer!!! and dont do that kind of bulls**ts again!”.
Now that I have opened a case with ebay, he has responded to the case, not providing me with a solution, but instead has said: “When we say that the box arrived empty we dont me the package…the game is collector edition and inside the game box which is the pandoras box includes booklets and 3 game discs the buyer didnt send that items back and send back only the pandoras box.The weight that he mentions is not an evidence because the weight of 3 discs its not even 400gr.The game is not in GREEK.We will provide ebay the police statement and we will wait for ebay to protect the seller now and not again the buyer because you can scam easy but if you do that many times you wont be able to do that again!”
Strangely, on the 6th December I discovered that the seller had also listed this item on ebay.ie but in these particular listings he had provided additional photographs of the item showing the Greek language on them, which were not provided in the listing I purchased.
Okay I think that’s all of it. Again, sorry for the length of it!! Things you need to know when giving your ever-so-much-needed advice: I honestly did NOT open the God of War box itself, I did not steal it, I already bought one from a completely different (UK) guy before this one and had to return it without any problems because the guy had sent me a “Ultimate Edition” instead of “Ultimate Trilogy”.
My main terror is: can this Greek guy actually file a police report against me?? Am I going to end up with a criminal record for something I didn’t do?! Surely if he took this to the police, they’d be like, “well from all the facts we can see, you’ve got her money and apparently no item, so what’s the problem?”. It’s his word against mine. He has changed his story twice and refused to fulfil a simple request of a photograph, though that could be due to the language barrier. He’s just been so mean to me in every message 
What is ebay most likely to decide in the end with this case?
I used to have an Ebay business with over 2000 positive feedbacks (one negative in 6 years). Yet during the few PayPal disputes that I have had PayPal ALWAYS sided with the buyer. If you go to the Ebay forums you will find many complaints from sellers about PayPal siding with buyers. Or how about when a customer orders a big ticket item (in excess of $500) and PayPal gives you the okay to ship, by showing a green arrow on the transaction page with the text, it is safe to ship this item (or something wording like that). You ship and a few weeks later you find your PayPal account debited $500, because the credit card was stolen and PayPal is coming back on you. Yep, they aren’t supposed to do that, but it happens.
I loved PayPal, easy way to get paid, had a debit card for instant access to the funds. However PayPal seemed to be more loyal to buyers who they made zero money on than protecting the sellers.
I have been both a buyer and seller on Ebay, so I have experience on both sides of the coin. I’ve never lost a dispute, as a buyer OR a seller.
Stop going back and forth with the seller. He’s interested in a pissing contest and bullying you until he wins, or is going to keep talking until you get tired and fed up enough to go away. The police aren’t going to give a shit.
File a dispute. Short, simple and factual. Leave out all your personal protests. Like this,
Before I placed a bid, I emailed the seller and inquired if the item was in English. The seller replied that it was. See attached email.
I paid ___via ____.
On ____, I received a box containing a version of blah blah in Greek.
I contacted the seller to inform him of this error and sent the item back.
Here is the proof of my return.
The seller maintains that the box was empty upon arrival, but he has listed what I believe to be the item I returned.
Here is a copy of that listing.
The seller refuses to refund my money or ship me the English version of blah blah.
The seller has become abusive and is threatening me.
I want a full refund.
Then let them handle it.
Thank you 
I feel much better now. I have unfortunately replied to him but only in order to keep hitting him with hard facts I have about the processes I’ve gone through, and of course keep telling Ebay that I have NOT stolen a damn thing from him, and if I’d wanted just the discs I would not have paid a few hundred for them! They are worth nothing on their own. Purely so that ebay customer service can read all my extremely good defence when it gets handed over to them in a few days, because I know that this douche is not going to change his mind. Or stop lying. I have nearly 400 feedback, 100% positive, and the seller has only 9. I hope that helps ebay decide that I’ve done nothing wrong.
Also, I did file a dispute, and the original message I posted on here was part of it, stating all the facts about it, and I have unfortunately replied to him via the case “responses”.
And the seller has now changed his story, saying that the box isn’t actually empty, and that I have instead stolen the game discs and left all the extra merchandise that comes with them.
You’re welcome.
People fall into the trap of over-explaining and over-responding thinking that it will somehow build up their case, when in fact most of it turns out to be self-serving statements or emotions. You don’t need to keep hitting him with the facts. Don’t you think he already knows he sent a greek item instead of english?