Crazy eBay story
 

I sell a modern basketball card to a dude for $2400. Print off the ebay label and noticed it was to the Kentucky distribution center, which I guess means it's being sent International. Whatever. Couldn't care less.

A check that my shipment is logged in Kentucky, and they do what ever it is they do, and its officially being sent ownward and upwarded. He's in Canada,

About 5 weeks later I hear from the buyer "Hey, never got the card. Did you send it?" I say sure did, send him screenshots, he's nice about it. No big deal, I'm in Canada, sometimes things get a little complicated., etc. No prob. All good.

A few weeks later tells me he's been in touch with eBay and apparently a big delivery snafu. They tried to deliver it by some service and he has a PO Box so it couldn't be delivered and now its being rerouted back to the distribution center. Huge hassle but eventually will work out. He's like "that's cool, eventually they will send it back." Still no big deal. Guy is great. Very professional.

Finally he opens an eBay case. It sits. They send me a few messages to hang on, its being worked on.

Then a few weeks later the guy reports to me he has been on the phone with eBay repeatedly and now officially its been investigated and deemed lost. My accocunt is frozen for withdrawals. Not very convenient, but whatever. So it then sits for a few more weeks.

Eventually I get eBay on the phone. Am told I am innocent, they know that my account will be unfrozen, and buyer will get a refund. Just sit tight. Account needs some kind of approval.

Still sits longer. He texts me that it will all happen at the end of the week. Doesn't happen. Still drags. Eventually my account is unfrozen.

Today I get an eBay message that the eBay case is closed, that my sterling reputation is unblemished, and all ends well.

Soon there after a note from the Buyer, says finally over, sorry for your invonvenience, etc. Very nice guy.

I then, just for shits and giggles, search for the card on Ebay. There it is for sale. A promoted sale at that. Being sold by a high volume vendor with over 5000 positive feedbacks. Not a one off seller who accidentially got a mis delivery of mail at the wrong house.

I'm whole. Got paid. But I'm still going to pursue this. How about if someone in that center is stelaing stuff? Obviously many other possible scenartios.

If I was ripped off I'd pursue this kind of crap for YEARS.

That is nuts.

Just curious when you pursue it what is the potential end result since you were already paid and everything “worked out”?

Absolutely unbelievable. I had a slightly similar situation years ago when USPS misdelivered a 53 Bowman Mantle that I won off of Ebay. It ended up being put back up for sale by some guy in jersey. I got the listing taken down, received my money back, but would've much rather have gotten the card. I wonder what has happened to it, in the meantime.

holy crap. That is a special kind of nuts. Please keep us updated. If it is an inside thing I would say the major seller is unaware and just took it on consignment. Obviously any major seller who is complicit in stealing from ebay would make sure to get a new serial number before selling the card.

I would absolutely report it because someone is a thief and even though you didn't get "ripped off" for the $2400 every honest seller and buyer gets ripped off a little bit by the thieves that do stuff like this.

Yeah, it's odd. Will just report it and let people do whatever they want to.

Called eBay today and discussed. And told the seller he's attempting to sell a stolen card.

No chance it happened in the "Authetication" Process? I think I remember that there is no authentication for shipments outside the US, but not positive.

Learned for the first time today that you cannot flag something on Ebay as stolen property unless you certify that you are law enforcement personnel.

No, was no authentication.

That is my assumption too. Why I'm not giving any names.

Though would be a little weird if he doesn't respond to my "Hey, you are selling a recently stolen card" message.

Sucks that they froze your account. Should have been out of your hands the second it was accepted and signed for at the distribution center, if that was the Ebay address that was on file.

I wouldn't be surprised there are some pretty dumb criminals. I'm not saying the seller is guilty but I would check some of the other items he has for sale and see if they were sold on ebay recently by someone else.

Was the seller located in the same state as the distribution center?

Agree. Was ridiculous. But there was like $146 in it and I tried not to let it bother me.

Unbelievable set of circumstances
 

This just confirms my feelings that eBay (like our "great" banks such as Chase, Citi, B of A, Wells, etc.) is one of the poorest run large companies on the planet.

Your eBay stories, my eBay stories, every serious collector's stories are so negatively insurmountable, it is a wonder how they exist?

I haven't even said anything about their "authenticity" program either. We know how everyone here feels about it already....

Had not thought of that. . . . no.

Correct no AG program for out of the country sales or to those having PO Boxes as their destination shipping address.

Crazy situation and glad you are pursuing it. If you can let us know the outcome I would appreciate it. I am not shocked about what happened.

I guess it shows when you ship expensive cards around the country (or world) it does not go unnoticed by others. . . .

If that's true then just report it as mail fraud.

If it were me, I wouldn't let it go.

It's understood that everyone is back to ground zero (whole) and only time was wasted, but this would just get under my skin to the point that I'd demand ebay to engage some how. Either have ebay set up an account and try to win the auction, or you win the auction. And then see how it plays out.

If ebay doesn't engage and acknowledge the issue, then that's problematic. If ebay allows this to occur because they don't want to chase it down (would rather cut a check and just accept it as a cost of doing business), then they really don't care about their buyer/seller community, they only care about counting beans and trying to ensure things balance out for them rather than doing the right thing to protect their consumers/sellers. You know it's going to continue to occur by the same criminal until they are caught and penalized.

In 690 deals on eBay as buyer and seller, I have had zero issues.

This goes down as one of the all-time worst experiences I have ever heard. I don't know how you kept your composure.

I had something like this happen with eBay also. I sold a really nice Quaker Oats babe ruth picture on eBay. (There was a little written about it before on here)
I was told it needed to be sent to psa for eBay’s authentication program. Begrudgingly I sent it to them instead of the winning bidder. It seemed stupid at the time to mail it to them since I had just got it back a couple months prior. So the buyer paid and I mailed it back to psa. After a few weeks I wrote to the buyer and asked if it had been sent to him from eBay’s authenticator., because it showed it still being looked at. He said he hadn’t heard anything from them yet. I gave him a lot of credit at the time, because even as the seller my patients was long gone with the amount of time that passed. Finally after almost close to 2 months the buyer opened the claim with eBay and they froze my account as well. I wasn’t happy about it but wasn’t worried because I had all the proof I mailed it. In the end I got what the buyer bid on it and he got a refund from eBay. As a collector I was bummed for the buyer cause I know he wanted the picture and not his refund.

I have never just not received something mailed to me. Likewise, I have never sent something out that was not received. However, I have received things with obvious signs of tampering. Thus, I cannot help but wonder why the Post Office, UPS, FedEx, eBay and their "authentication service" cannot be coerced in some way into tightening up their own internal quality control. Once something is bar coded, accepted and tracking number assigned, why cannot their be another layer of accountability incorporated? Perhaps QC checks at every stop, and if the item shows any sign of tampering, it gets removed from the system, immediately, at that point in the process. Obviously, that level of due diligence and attention to detail is not in place at this time. Just as obviously, this level of service would cost, so assign this to high-dollar items, which are insured anyway, at whatever value, $1000? $2500? This would eliminate these items from going missing, lost or stolen, in my opinion, and would indicate that the culprit is their own employee, and who that employee is, airtight.

Steve can you give us the link to this card ?.

This is a USPS issue, along with a million others, and it's anybody's guess why they can't get fixed.

Authentication items do get mailed to ebay under a select service level, but I couldn't tell you whether that makes any difference as far as if that increases their likelihood to get delivered.

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What a mess. Maybe it ends up like a fraudulent charge to your credit card and the company (in the case Ebay), just writes it off as a loss. Pathetic.

Something I didn't know. Last year I sold a card on Ebay for 8K. Something I don't do every day, but I learned a little. The purchaser was in Japan - this was the only time I have sold a listing overseas, but made an exception in this case. When I went to purchase insurance, I had to purchase from USPS because of the $ limits. USPS was the highest at $5K, but still I mailed the card underinsured which I wasn't really comfortable with. The card ended up being mailed to the PWCC vault, the first time I had done that also. I didn't receive feedback until the purchaser received a picture of the card being received. All in all, it worked out well. However, I was still uneasy the entire time.

In your case - someone takes a loss - AND - someone committed a felony.

Well after a little research the seller of the card has a business that specializes in "large scale asset recovery and liquidation retail."

Where is the link to this transaction

I am troubled by the fact that your account was frozen. My understanding was that once it got to KY and eBay had it, that was the end of the risk for seller liability for a lost item. One more reason to drain the eBay seller account as soon as funds are there.

Its probably an eBay account selling it - there are a few.

These shipments cannot be delivered to PO Boxes, that's where the snafu was - since I guess eBay didn't notice until they shipped it or don't have proper policies for international shipments that don't apply, sounds like they just ate the loss (and you had to suffer temporary consequences when they did). When you do it domestically, they just have you skip the process all together (when its going to a PO box)

I had a similar problem several years ago with a package sent from Phoenix to Oakland that never made it but ended up on ebay later. I thought of it when I saw Pat R.'s post that Steve's card ended up with a seller who specializes in "large scale asset recovery and liquidation retail." Here is the thread I posted:
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=196491

and here is the post basically explaining what happened-- it wound up with someone who sold "bulk merchandise and lost freight":
It ended well (from the same thread):

Is there a summary to this thread?

Here's my understanding:
1) Card sold on ebay
2) Card paid for
3) Card shipped
4) Card reported not received
5) Cases opened
6) Buyer/seller made whole by ebay
7) Card for sale on ebay - by another seller.

QUESTIONS
A) - how did the "new" seller come to posses the card?
B) - is the price of the card higher or lower than what it was sold for originally?
C) - what was the explanation provided by ebay for this peculiar situation?
D) - can the item for sale be disclosed in this N54 thread?

Something just sounds amiss.

That's a fair summary. Something seriously amiss, but I have no evidence where it went amiss so I am refraining from pointing fingers. Here is a link to my sale for anyone interested. (I will probably be laughed at for the ridiculous card, but I took a flyer on it once at a Goldin auction.)

Interestingly, the seller hasn't responded yet to my message that he's selling a stolen card.

My sale:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275556956809

New listing:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/165872106462

eBay told me they had opened an investigation before I had even called them. Curious to see if they actually investigate anything.

If you've never tried getting a live person to the phone at eBay, consider yourself lucky. Truly insane how hard it is to get someone to speak with. And then the person you finally get is at a call center on the other side of the world and doesn't have great facility with English. Nothing against polite hard working people in India packed into a room answering phones for an American company making bllions of dollars a year, but when someone has only the most basic grasp on English its awfully hard to have a genuine conversation with them that is more than a lot of pleasantries and lines off a script.

It looks to me like the new seller is re-using the images from your listing. He didn't use "hover to zoom" so we can't see the texture of the background surface, but the slight clockwise rotation looks the same.

Which would lend itself to the notion that he is quite well aware of the fact that he is selling stolen merchandise.

Steve, no judgement here, but bwaaaaaaa hahahahaha,,,,,, :p just kidding.

Thank you for sharing the links. I think ebay has finally evolved into that company that can make $billion$ a year and figure why deal with customer service. This is just messed up. There's a hole in their system and they've allowed the bean counters to dictate customer service policies and figure that it may be easier to just pay people off than actually figure out what's flawed in their system. Well, it'll be that way until the find they're losing more money than they figured. Look at the feedback number of that seller. Wow, it's over 165,000. Surely those items could not all be ebay screw ups. Perhaps this is a place to see if lost items are being sold.

Ha ha. Yes, pretty silly I agree.



QUOTE=Fred;2309199]Steve, no judgement here, but bwaaaaaaa hahahahaha,,,,,, :p just kidding.

Thank you for sharing the links. I think ebay has finally evolved into that company that can make $billion$ a year and figure why deal with customer service. This is just messed up. There's a hole in their system and they've allowed the bean counters to dictate customer service policies and figure that it may be easier to just pay people off than actually figure out what's flawed in their system. Well, it'll be that way until the find they're losing more money than they figured. Look at the feedback number of that seller. Wow, it's over 165,000. Surely those items could not all be ebay screw ups. Perhaps this is a place to see if lost items are being sold.[/QUOTE]

Hi steve
 

Thx for the link man. You cant make this shit up ,,glad it worked out for you man .octavio

New seller is in a small town in Michigan which appears like a possible / not completely illigcal place for this package to have ended up back at if it was in fact being rerouted back to Kentucky. However it originally went Kentucky to Cinncinnati OH to Ontartio.

And the ebay tracking data ends in Ontario. Doesn't document either delivery or shipment back to US.

This is just insane !!!!

Someone committed a felony and I presume a zero chance this will be pursued seriously by anyone.

I don't think anyone did because I think the seller purchased it through one of the lost or unclaimed package auctions. The auctions however seem pretty idiotic and full of potential problems. First of all they basically give anyone who purchases packages through these actions the equivalent of diplomatic immunity on anything that goes missing during shipping and is reported stolen.

Another potential problem is what if you didn't notice it listed by this seller and it passed through one or more persons hands and was back up for sale and you then reported it stolen that person better have records of where they got it from or they would be in hot water.

I think your card is a case of someone being too lazy to make an effort to get the package to the buyer or at the very least back to you.
The information says that the packages are only auctioned after every attempt has been made to deliver it. You sold the card on November 29 right in the height of the busy holiday shipping season the seller listed it on January 6. It doesn't seem like anyone spent a lot of effort in trying to get the package to the buyer or back to you.

This is a picture from the sellers warehouse on his business listing.
Attachment 554863

This one pretty much takes the cake.

Patrick - you probably described the scenario which occurred, but as you indicated, it seems like there was little effort spent trying to get the package back to Steve.

Well there are (5) new watchers of this item on ebay in the past 24 hours. I guess this is either a popular item that many people want or there are people with popcorn in hand waiting to see how this all unfolds.

My guess is that ebay considers the matter closed and will not answer further questions because seller was inconvenienced for a short period (that seems wrong) but suffered $0 loss. The buyer is probably only out not having the card but is not out anything more.

I'm still a little lost on what occurred (other than the package was obviously not delivered) after it left Steve's hand and released to the delivery service. I'll assume it's the US postal service.

The package still has the shippers info and should have gone back. Fact remains that this is a shoddy way of doing business.

Just curious, is that considered Jaz-Z's rookie? Bwaaa, hahahahahaha... :p just kidding. Steve, really - I am just kidding. I don't follow new/shiny stuff so I have no clue what's out there. Sometimes I think the smart people the ones that are figuring this out and making a few bucks on it to roll into vintage cards. Still, this is totally mind boggling to me.

The serious answer is no, Jay was in pretty much all the 2005-06 Topps basketball sets for some reason. Base, Chrome, Draft Picks, Bazooka, Total, etc. Nothing against celebrity or rap cards, but it seemed odd he was hijacking into every basketball release then. Presumably he has something less mainstream before this spate of Topps cards.

[QUOTE=G1911;2309284]The serious answer is no, Jay was in pretty much all the 2005-06 Topps basketball sets for some reason. Base, Chrome, Draft Picks, Bazooka, Total, etc. Nothing against celebrity or rap cards, but it seemed odd he was hijacking into every basketball release then. Presumably he has something less mainstream before this spate of Topps cards.

https://robbreport.com/shelter/art-c...ing-card-sold-

I have no doubt his 1/1 sticker autos are worth lots of money still.

Real question / Inquiry.

If seller contacts his collectors insurance to make a claim during the ebay process. Then alerts his insurance about the sale of stolen property... would they be able to pursue this? Or would they drop their investigation since you were paid by ebay?

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Hard to imagine the insurance company is going to chase this unless they ended up paying out a claim on it.

As the seller as soon as you get paid it is over. Even if you see the card selling on eBay it is over and you have absolutely nothing to do with it anymore.

Once you get paid by eBay your insurance company is also done. There is nothing for them to do.

Also nobody will give the seller any details of anything once they get made whole.

This is my experience anyway.