eBay Sellers Read This

I want to make sure my fellow sellers (and shoppers) are aware of this: Keep a close eye on your seller accounts. There is a glitch - or possibly fraud - going on with voided USPS shipping labels bought through eBay over the past 4 to 5 months. This has apparently being going on since about February, but I only became aware today. I received notice that a label I voided in February was supposedly used to ship a package from "Metro New York" to the original buyer. I was charged for this label. Confused, I did some digging and discovered a long thread on the eBay sellers' forum about all of this. In addition to being charged for a label that was never used, my seller account was dinged for a late delivery. I also saw that there was another supposed late delivery on April 29 for a different buyer, whose label I also had to cancel when the order was cancelled. I expect to be charged for that label in the coming days. From what I gather, USPS says it is a glitch with eBay, who says it is a glitch with USPS. I am awaiting confirmation from both buyers that they cancelled their orders and were fully refunded, and also confirming that they did not receive any package at a later time. This seems to be happening to dozens of sellers, so keep a close eye on your accounts.

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This definitely looks like fraud or hackers, as there is a common denominator that every seller has mentioned. Every reused tracking number has been used on packages going out of Metro New York.
@hamptonroadsva wrote:

This definitely looks like fraud or hackers, as there is a common denominator that every seller has mentioned. Every reused tracking number has been used on packages going out of Metro New York.

I'm definitely leaning towards a hacker. Unless I'm missing something, I cannot figure out how a fraudster would be making any money. If they were actually ghosting the label, then they would be shipping an actual package and it wouldn't be to the eBay buyer's address. I want to know how are the scans happening for a nonexistent package. Again, that would point to a hacker, maybe someone deployed a virus into the USPS system?
I also noted that the sellers were saying that customers whose labels were voided were receiving notices from the USPS saying a package was on the way to them, but when the tracking number showed delivery, the customers had received no package. So I’m wondering if someone was able to hack into eBay or the USPS and retrieve the voided labels, print them out and then paste over the address with a different address. They are then shipping packages and not having to pay the postage, that’s where the fraud comes in.

And when seeing all these packages are originating from ‘Metro New York’ it immediately struck me…I order often from Alibaba, the Chinese commerce site, and in the last year, many of those packages are entering the mail system from Metro New York. Coincidence? I dunno, that’s my conspiracy theory for the day smiling smiley

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2024 11:56AM by hamptonroadsva.
@hamptonroadsva wrote:

I also noted that the sellers were saying that customers whose labels were voided were receiving notices from the USPS saying a package was on the way to them, but when the tracking number showed delivery, the customers had received no package. So I’m wondering if someone was able to hack into eBay or the USPS and retrieve the voided labels, print them out and then paste over the address with a different address. They are then shipping packages and not having to pay the postage, that’s where the fraud comes in.

And when seeing all these packages are originating from ‘Metro New York’ it immediately struck me…I order often from Alibaba, the Chinese commerce site, and in the last year, many of those packages are entering the mail system from Metro New York. Coincidence? I dunno, that’s my conspiracy theory for the day smiling smiley

I don't order from Alibaba, that indeed interesting. One could indeed tape over the address. Humans are going to go by the address on the label, not what's tied to the tracking number. I just checked and the label I was charged for yesterday was $6.03. I originally paid $4.43 for the label. So that means something did get mailed and it was heavier/larger than the original package I was going to send.
I havent got this issue. My pain point was to get my products in google ranking and i found outreach and SEO the best tool. I have three seller accounts. One operating in Canada, One In Asia and the other one in America. ALl got huge bump with the help of outreach.
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