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Hack 28 Tools for Dealing with Fraud

Your last resort to get your money
back.

eBay provides two tools to help buyers deal with suspected fraud by sellers, mostly to the end of
retrieving any money sent. These should be used only as a last
resort, if diplomatic efforts fail and if the buyer
didn't use a payment method with built-in protection
(see [Hack #29]). These tools can also
be used by sellers who suspect fraud by buyers.

The first tool is the Fraud Alert form (crs.ebay.com/aw-cgi/ebayisapi.dll?crsstartpage),
which is little more than a moderated discussion between buyer and
seller. The two parties air their complaints in a private forum on
eBay's site and, in some cases, resolve the dispute
themselves; the prying eyes of the typically silent eBay moderator
act as a stern parent separating two kids in the back seat.

If you wish to pursue a fraud investigation, you can also file a
report with
SquareTrade
(www.squaretrade.com).
SquareTrade is a separate company, but has a partnership with eBay
and offers dispute resolution services at no charge. (See [Hack #6] for another service provided by
SquareTrade.)

Note that eBay's buyer and seller protection services are available only to participants in officially completed auctions. This means that if you weren't the high bidder in an auction or if the reserve wasn't met, you won't have access to these services.

3.10.1 Sleuthing Tools at Your Disposal

An eBay user who knowingly commits fraud will undoubtedly take steps
to hide his or her true identity, but there are a few things you can
do to learn more about who you're dealing with:

Start with the obvious: check the user's feedback
profile and look for a possible pattern of behavior. Next, contact
any other buyers and sellers with whom the user has completed a
transaction. Use the buyer search and seller search to find relevant
auctions for the last 30 days, or use the auction numbers in the
user's feedback page to view auctions up to 3 months
old.

Use the Find Contact Info form (Search Find Members
Contact Info) and enter the user's ID and
the auction number, and eBay will email you the phone number and
mailing address on file for that user. The user will also receive a
notice that you've requested the information. But
don't be surprised if Mr. John Doe lives at 123 Fake
St. in Springfield.

If the user has an unusual domain name (as opposed to something
common like aol.com or
hotmail.com), the domain itself may provide more
insight. Use a Whois tool, such as the one at www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois, and find
out who owns the domain behind the user's email
address.

If you've received any email from the user, look for
any IP addresses in the email headers. For example, you might see
something like this:

Received: from mx22.sjc.ebay.com (mxpool11.ebay.com [66.135.197.17])

where 66.135.197.17 is the IP address of one of
the computers responsible for routing the email to you. In this case,
the IP address is a machine at eBay, but if the user emailed you
directly, his IP address will show up somewhere in the headers. If
the machine name (here, mxpool11.ebay.com)
doesn't appear next to the IP address, use the
NSLookup tool to resolve the address.

NSLookup is a program included on most modern computers, such as those running Windows XP/2000, Unix, or Mac OS X. Just go to Start Run, type nslookup 66.135.197.17, and click OK. If you don't have NSLookup on your system, you can use an online NSLookup gateway (try www.his.com/cgi-bin/nslookup or www.webreference.com/cgi-bin/nslookup.cgi).

The computer name is often useful in determining the
user's own domain, or at least his ISP (such as
aol.com or notmyrealdomain.com). Use the Whois tool to
find out more about the domain in the machine name.

Try searching Google for the user's
name, email address, postal address, phone number, zip code, or
anything else you know.

Use eBay's forums to reach out to other eBay users
for help. You may even find someone else who has had dealings
(negative or otherwise) with the user in question. See [Hack #81] for more information.