A Word of Warning, particularly for everyone shopping the video game collectibles or baby furniture markets.
And here it is: be extra careful nowadays to check the seller's feedback before you buy. There are always a few scammers out there, of course, but there's a particular scammer recently trolling both markets who's been prolific with listings and seems bulletproof against eBay enforcement.
In short: the account of hers with which I am familiar has 8 negatives (and no positives) over the past month from defrauded buyers who never received their items. eBay was supposed to have recently imposed tighter restrictions on deadbeat sellers under which she should have been kicked off the site, but she's still being allowed to sell (and buy).
In my experience and that of the others to whom I spoke, the scammer remains completely incommunicado. Every user is required to keep an e-mail address on file, yet no e-mail was initially listed in her contact information, and the phone number listed is disconnected. She will not respond to the My Messages function or any e-mails to the addresses that were eventually listed with eBay and PayPal.
As you can guess, I transacted with her as a seller; she attempted a chargeback on a package whose tracking information stated it had been delivered. The case is in appeal, but the chargeback was initially granted; I am not the only seller with whom this scam has been pulled, as I learned after speaking with others from whom she bought. She seems to be out to defraud both sides of the eBay market.
I can't tell you her nickname due to eBay rules; it might not even help, because she has multiple shell accounts. (Her e-mail addresses bring up multiple undisclosed accounts in Advanced Search.) She operates out of Devon in the U.K. and seems to use reliably the nickname "baby tasha", "baby tasha j", or "tashee" in her e-mail addresses and logos. (Again: these are not her IDs; they're only nicknames.)
When I checked her feedback last, I was taken to the page that listed her feedback as a buyer - which was mostly positive, since sellers haven't been able to leave negatives to buyers for a while now. If you're a buyer in a hurry and not checking carefully, this could leave a false impression. Again, eBay's buyer and seller protection policies should have kicked in on mulitple occasions; sellers are supposed to be automatically evicted once they receive a certain percentage of negatives, users are required to list current contact info, and, at the very least, a light should have gone on at PayPal once eight buyers filed for chargebacks within a month.
Please note that this is not a case of a vindictive seller kvetching about a chargeback. Every seller has to deal with chargebacks, and packages get honestly lost in the mail. The problem is that I know of about dozen folks, mostly buyers, who've been scammed by this user, yet nothing is being done. It's a serial situation, and I know of no way to stop it but spreading the word to watch out.
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