Bitcoin Forum

Ok maybe this is not the right place, so mods you can move this if you need to, I just needed to vent.

I sell Bitcoin/Scrypt miners on eBay and on my website (don't worry I'm not going to plug it here) and most transactions have been pretty smooth, at least for the first half of this year.

But recently I've been getting these NEW customers that have no clue what they're doing, just trying to make a quick buck, scam me, and take unfair advantage of the eBay/PayPal buyer protection to the fullest.  I know how most people feel about mining rig vendors BUT trust me when I say I take care of my customers 100%.  I'm just a low level reseller of Chinese products like LKETC and Innosilicon.  I just get people the hardware they need at a fair price and offer them much needed warranties when things get difficult.  Anyway back to the story..

About a month ago I sold a 90MH/s scrypt ASIC machine via eBay to a customer in Hungary. My cost on those machines was close to $10K so you can imagine it's a high risk transaction already, especially since it was paid via PayPal. The machine got held in customs because he asked us to put a lower value on the customs declaration which is usually a bad idea. After receiving the machine about 10 days later the customer thanks me and says the machine is working as expected, all good. A couple days later I see a new dispute open on eBay from my Hungarian friend and he's says (quote) "It will never reach the 100% ROI! So it is a very bad investment indeed! So please refund my money!"  Of course my response is quoting my eBay auction which says we cannot be held responsible for Exchange and difficulty fluctuations, yadda yadda.  He did not respond for another 12 days.  Then I see a message from eBay saying "This case was decided in the buyer's favor, so we've asked the buyer to return the item to you for a full refund".  WTF.  This is after Litecoin/Dogecoin have been in a deep slump and the machine is worth 3/4 what it was before.  And nobody is buying Scrypt hardware at this point.  I got on the phone with eBay right away and the guy pissed me off further by saying "honestly we really hate dealing with all these bitminer cases, and usually we will favor the buyer in these situations".  Completely ignoring that my ad says we cannot be held responsible for market fluctuations, my ad has a NO REFUND policy, that I have 100% positive feedback and ALWAYS close my disputes with a happy customer.  Okay now it has been 6 days since eBay made their decision and this guy still has not shipped the machine.  Guaranteed he's sitting there mining with my hardware with a big smile on his face making LTC until the very last day, then he'll drop that shit in a box and kick it to the post office.  I'll be lucky if it even powers on once it arrives to me.

I have 3 similar cases open right now with customers who bought Scrypt ASIC hardware and are having buyers remorse. 

PSA: If you don't know what you are doing DO NOT buy thousands of dollars worth of mining equipment!

/rant

This is a huge problem with ebay and paypal. They do not have a way to account for the fact that miners are deprecating assets and that giving the customer a full refund would essentially be giving them free money.

I would say that you should price your machines with the understanding that you may be forced to allow a buyer to receive a full refund.

IMO you got off easy as many paypal/ebay scams involve the selling loosing everything, at least you will have your original product that you started with.   

not a surprise ... (i use regulary ebay/maypal and known the chargeback system)

Ok hmm, now I'm worried that he might be able to figure out a way to keep the machine. :(  Apparently eBay will not refund him until he ships the machine and the item shows as delivered (hopefully with signature confirmation).

The funny thing is last year I stupidly bought an old BMW sight unseen on eBay and got it shipped to me.  The seller did not disclose that it had a completely burnt clutch, hole in the fuel tank, and was not driveable.  I contacted eBay via their vehicle protection program right away.  Since the vehicle was 10+ years old they told me to screw off.  Nice..

I ditched ebay and paypal a long time ago. all i need is for amazon to start taking btc (newegg is a good start but we still need amazon) and then i will ditch my credit card too

Dude, why on Earth are you selling mining equipment using eBay/Paypal?! I thought everybody who did that were paid in Bitcoin. And at least with Bitcoin you don't have to worry about chargebacks. You're right, some people are just scum for doing that to you. And of course it is NOT your fault that it's getting harder to make a profit mining Bitcoin.

I was already selling a few other things on eBay and was overall happy with the experience and ease, till recently. Now I've been burned on the buyer and seller side. 

The problem is that most people who want to get into mining don't have BTC yet so PayPal is 90% of my sales unfortunately. :(  I am looking forward to a day when the advantages of Bitcoin makes people see why it makes more sense.

I'm very sorry to hear about your issue. I'm yet to hear about anyone who's happy with their PayPal/eBay experience...

What really makes me sick is that he will be able to mine a few weeks at least with your gear and then get a full refund. You should figure out how many litecoins he should have made and bring it to his attention, not like it would matter, but at least he will know that you know he is screwing you over big time.

Wouldn't be nice if we could just say "this machine wont make as much as I thought" and get a full refund. I wish Butterfly labs had that philosophy, lol.. Ebay/paypal is 100 percent pro customer and totally against vendors. They know that they can screw vendors over and since Ebay is so big, the vendor doesn't have many options than to take it.

Dude, that's just painful. That's a lot of dough to lose. I was scammed yesterday but nothing compared to your loss!!!

And then there's all that talk about Paypal wanting to implement bitcoin. REALLY?! I'm not feeling it!!!!

I think it's safe to say they WON'T be an early adopter. More like kicking and screaming when they have no choice.  And by then there will be a thousand better solutions!

I agree...definitely not feeling it.  I had some bozo in TX 'buy' an S1 and said it didn't match the description.  Sent me back a box of parts from AsicMiner Blades and Ebay refunded him and told me since he sent something back, that was all that was required.

After a little bitching and submitting some photos, they went ahead and credited me back, but the guy still has the S1 and Ebay is out the money.  I looked him up and found he was already arrested on some stealing charges.  Emailed the Sheriff just to let him know about the incident. Just being a concerned citizen and all :)

As some one said above you should price the risk in. Also consider offering a nice discount for paying in bit coin since you are assuming less risk. If ti is a big enough discount you might get some of the shadier buyers to buy bit coin to make their purchase.

Unfortunately the whole experience for the seller in regards to eBay/PayPal is totally unfair! The buyer has all the rights and through my experiences with them, very rarely does a seller come out on top on these issues! Sorry for your troubles!

Damn man. I hope thats not the case and this guy doesn't ship on time. Sorry to hear that. Some people are true low lifes. Speaking as an honest person who deals with paypal for the occasional BTC, I can tell you that there are a few of us who do it right.

My story is similar, but with a twist. 

The time between the original purchase and my getting the miner back in the mail was 4 months.  I immediately relisted and resold the item.  My EBay buyer filed a complaint with PayPal instead of EBay.  I took PayPal to small claims court and requested the difference between the 2 purchase prices.

The Judge told them to pay up!

Pay up they did!

I recommend trying this approach if you have a little extra time on your hands.  PM me if you need some pointers.

buyers are probably more happy.. they get protected, not the seller. im sure there are many people who are okay with paypal, but there are a lot of people who are unhappy too.

Just wait until one of your "buyers" ships back a brick in a box (delivery confirmation of course).  PayPal will gladly give him a full refund.  If you haven't gone bankrupt doing what you are doing on ebay well your lucky.  If you keep doing it, well it is only a matter of time.

What makes you think they don't know EXACTLY what they are doing.  They are getting to use ten thousand dollar rigs for a couple week free while they rapidly depreciate.  You assume the buyer is an idiot, it is far more likely this was all premeditated.  The "dumb buyer" is simply an act to get PayPal to rubber stamp the dispute.   

Buying mining gigs and use it for a while, then return the hardware, keeping the free coins.
This has been bad practice on ebay/paypal system, even some credit card will help these dudes.
Stay away from eBay.

I am surprised that there is not more of this type of scam going on already.

I got f*ckEd by paypal back then. I once sold an ebook I created a tutorial on PDF file and I sold it to few forums where its needed by webmasters and one of them is a Chinaman. After a week, maybe he didn't understood it well for of course the tutorial isn't for newbie but then I assume he did after clicking the "buy now" button.

He files a dispute after a week and got his $80s while he also got the pdf file. sweet!  ;D

Stop using ebay and PP for these type of transactions. It's pretty clear that they are always going to favour the buyer so just find an alternative payment method (Bitcoin *cough cough*). While your concern about your customers not using Bitcoin may be valid, I don't see why only offerin Bitcoin as a payment method would be a big issue. After all if they are going to use an exchange/LB to sell their mined coins they might as well get set up with the documentation and buy some coins to pay you.

This happened to me a couple of times... then I learned how to exclude buyers... if you see a newb bidding on your equipment they can be added to the
"Blocked Bidder/Buyer list"... you can do this to the point of only accepting long time reputable buyers.
The last two sales have gone smoothly by using this feature.

Ebay and paypal need to implement a "final sale" policy on cryptos and crypto related products (and really stick to it).   If a miner is broken that is one thing, but if it is functional and is exactly what was advertised, a person shouldn't be able to get their money back from you after they purchased and paid for it fair and square.

The crazy thing is that I have never really had a problem with people being dishonest as sellers or buyers on ebay (but I have never sold anything BTC related).   It is as if the scammers flock to ebay for these items and it really sucks :(

I can do nothing but sympathize with you.  Buyers need to educate themselves, and if they do not read the print in the marketing material, they have nobody to blame but themselves.

There are several problems here:

1. Dishonest and stupid customers.
2. Ebay who does not care about you and does not listen.
3. Reversible payment options.

Some of those just need to go. But I guess there are other things to take into considerations as well, such as where the customers are.  Look closely at each point, and see what changes you can make. For instance, if you're located in the US, you could reject to send shipment outside US unless a non-reversible payment option is selected.

Only thing that i would ever "sell" on Ebay using PayPal as payment option are services. Something that takes only my time so if i get scamed it wont hurt as much (yes i know, time costs and all that but it hurts much less than when you invest $$$ and get scammed out of it).

becareful you don't refund the money and don't get the item back... thats also a common ebay/paypal scam/tactic...
basically the guy can just say he sent it back and paypal don't give a crap.

You know what really stinks is that eBay does this whole thing now that you can't leave your buyer bad feedback. You can leave "positive" feedback and then in the wording advise that he is a crook, but that's about it.
You should post his name here for all of us to avoid when we do business on eBay!

Maybe a thread about ebay crooks should be posted where we all can check. This way we get to avoid future transaction to the said seller. I just loggedin in ebay and found there are actually hundreds of users there selling bitcoin hardware, mining contract and bitcoin itself.

Of course you have to prove the seller scammed you.

This is why BTC's unreversable transactions are awesome, also fuck spelling and I feel bad for you OP :(.

A few people have suggested accepting BTC as a form of payment on my Ebay ads. Let me assure i tried that, actually several different ways, and each time Ebay cancelled the auction and gave me a warning. I tried using images with no text, using BTC with the special unicode chars, etc.  I didnt want to keep risking getting banned or my account with 600+ positive feedback closed.

classic ebay scam.

E-bay allows escrow for high-value transactions. I suspect if the buyer said they were happy, and the escrow released the funds, it would be harder to reverse due to buyer's remorse. Presumably, if they buyer says they are not happy, the escrow does not release the funds back to the buyer until you get the equipment back.


I sent paper mail to E-bay's escrow provider about 3 years ago briefly explaining what Bitcoin was.

This is interesting! Looks like this is only available to vehicle sales via eBay Motors, right?

As far as I know, escrow is available for any transaction, but the ~$50 fee means it only makes sense for large transactions.

Your listing were likely flagged by users of eBay instead of being scanned/scrubbed by ebay's servers. Also once you have several listings that were canceled they would likely watch your account a little bit closer. 

Sadly eBay and Paypal have stripped what limited power that sellers had to protect themselves long ago. You are defenseless to scammers on eBay as a seller.

Ebay needs to reevaluate their priorities. Favoring the buyers over the sellers has become pretty much the default position. Without sellers they have no buyers. The market is ripe for a competitor for sure.  

Dude that really sucks ass!  Feel really bad for you.  At least you got your equipment back though right?

Rezillient, sorry for your loss.  However, do you still have some left?  I am a novice miner myself and was looking for a scrypt miner that may still have some use.  I'm serious and I can transfer funds via BTC.  If the price isn't too outrageous that is.  Not sure if scrypt mining is even worth it anymore, but I want to try.  I'm fascinated with crypto and all facets of how they work.  I think last still have some life left yet.  Let me know.  And again, sorry for the eBay boondoggle. 

I was one of the first users to join eBay and I stopped selling on that shithole almost 8 years ago.  The second they got in bed with Paypal that was it.  I did make money using their services but in my last year I was down about $2400 thanks to crooks - and the buyers sucked too  :D

Main problem with ebay / paypal is that they don't really do what they advertise (sellers protection). They do not follow any strict rules, they do "what they feel is right". If they don't like particular item you are selling, you are screwed. You (seller) pretty much depend on agent that get's your case. If that particualr agent likes crypto, you have a chance, if it does not, you are screwed. You can send em all proof in the world that you did EXACTLY what was in auction and still they will take your money and walk away with it. You are lucky if you get your stuff back.
It's like escov service without of any strict rules....damn nightmare for seller.

Hi guys.

Just wanted to give you guys an update on this. It's so ridiculous it's almost funny.

So I received the 90MH scrypt miner from Hungary. It's working fine, no damage or problems (thankfully). Ebay/Paypal reimbursed the buyer 100% so now I've got this machine that I paid about $10K for, someone else mined coins with it while difficulty was really low, and now I will be lucky to get half what I paid! :( This miner is up for auction right now actually if anyone wants it pretty cheap (and get a discount if you pay in BTC). http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=171385066979.  I just want it out of my hair so I can recoup SOME money.

The funny thing is now I can almost smell when the dispute/chargeback is coming. They contact me weeks after and start complaining that the machine never worked from the start (ya right).

Someone bought a couple of 1TH Bitcoin machines from me.  Now he e-mails me through Gmail saying the machines never connect to the network. I remotely help him and right before we get his miners connected to the pool he cuts the Skype session.  Nice.  Then I see his Google+ account videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2rLkpGmVluoO3FNLs6KB_A/videos

Seriously?? Are you guys seeing the 50+ videos he made as evidence for dozens of disputes he's opened?  WTF!  ???

The seller has no protection and no power on ebay / paypal. It is a sad state of affairs.

My turn!  :(

But I'll add a twist to this.

I used a stealth account and I already emptied the pp account so I'll get a negative balance soon.

They can go to the stealth address and collect if they want.

The bad part is that after a buyer wins a dispute with paypal and the return is done to the seller, they will not allow the seller to leave the buyer bad feedback for the waste of time and money.

I once did this and a few days later checked to make sure i ruined his perfect feedback for all the headache he caused, nope it was back to 100% positive. eBay prunes their feedback for them so it jives with the decision that Paypal made.  

Funny how they even have a feedback system when you have no choice in the matter.

What do you mean by stealth account?
In my experience if you have any bank accounts on file they will charge it against the bank or your credit card.

What if the account is anonymous and have no funds already?

I got a 60ghs bfl miner in october 2013. thanks to the spike in usd/btc price in november through feburary 2014 I made double my money back.

Miner stopped working in july, and although I believe it is software problem I have simply turned it off as it only spat out ~ 0.04btc every 2 weeks, so not worth it. mined a total of 6 btc during its mining life.

I cant be bothered to sell the miner because it isnt worth much to anyone. I have tried to give it away twice and both parties said no thanks. you cant give these things away.

I dont want to lose my ebay rating so it looks like I will continue to own a curiosity and relic of btc history (unless some genius figures out some other use for this thing...i've heard there may be some sort of video gaming application, but idk if that is scrypt miners only?)

This sucks.  I don't necessarily think you're foolish for suing Paypal and ebay but may I suggest only dealing with people in your home country?  Then you can sue.

I think that the dispute process kind of takes the place of the feedback process. If something is done against your will (like a charge back dispute) then you would likely be unhappy with the situation, however paypal/ebay would have determined that it would be "fair" to have a resulation be a certain way.

This is such a downer to hear. The worst part is not how low the buyer is, but how paypal/ebay knows that the buyer is out to screw you, but they'll still force you to give a refund. Nothing you say will matter. This is a problem with the payment processor, so best thing to do is completely avoid them whenever possible.

I was caught in the same situation, although not with mining equipment. Some brand new ebay account purchases some expensive items from me, said it wasn't as described, filed a chargeback with his CREDIT CARD. Naturally, paypal has to fight his bank, so they preemptively withdraw the money from my account. I provided all proof, and I even documented the condition and packaging. It does absolutely nothing.

For paypal, some disputes don't really matter (as with both our cases), and with ebay, you can never control who buys or bids on your items. There are no filters.

This is why remediation that settles in the buyers favor for Ebay and Paypal Sucks!
I can feel for you on this one and would say avoid dealing with them but yah ... can't do much but vent here.
Seriously on a depreciating asset refunds should not be accepted in most cases.

To, OP, I cant really help but chuckle that you're learning these very basic things about ebay and paypal on $10k crypto miners.

I mean, you are selling machines that create the currency of the future, and yet you chose not to accept BTC and instead tried to make "extra" by selling on ebay rather than sell at a fair price for BTC.

The very system which Bitcoin solves just bit you in the ass. I hope you appreciate the profound irony of this situation.

Dear sir, if you read the thread carefully you would have noticed that I do accept BTC however eBay immediately cancels my listing if i mention the word BTC, Bitcoin, or show the Bitcoin logo anywhere.  I have been a seller on eBay for over 10 years and I am comfortable selling product there.  I haven't had a problem with their policies in the past, however the nature of these Bitcoin machines is different because they depreciate so fast and the learning curve to understand how to make money with them is steep.

That said, this thread is several months old and I have stopped selling machines on eBay at this point.

This does not surprise me at all with eBay and PayPal to be honest, they don't have great ways of dealing with things like this which can in turn leave you high and dry. I personally avoid PayPal and eBay as best I can a lot of  the time because of these kind of problems and will only deal with them as and when I know I need to and it's usually not for anything like this.

It's a shame that the scammers seem to be winning to be honest because of their change in policies.

Sigh I thought I told everyone to use something you have a trail on, like a tracking number, even if u print a paperwallet,  I also say before you do business with Ebay contact the supervisor and that you wanna submit proof of ownership of what your selling and a business plan this can help get better protection from scammers.