The Perils of eBay

Okay, so if any of you buy or sell stuff on eBay, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to be careful, because there are a lot of dishonest people out there. Take, for instance, a young lady I will refer to as Courtney. I’m not sure if that’s her real name, but it’s the name she’s been using, so that’s what I’ll call her.

A few weeks ago, I scored tickets for the Tool show in Detroit on Monday, May 15. It was originally supposed to be me, my friend Brian and his friend Nadine, but she had to back out. That left me with a third ticket to unload, and since it wasn’t eligible for Ticketmaster’s resale program, I put it up on eBay. When doing so, I was notified that, due to Michigan state law, resale of tickets was regulated so that Michigan residents could neither sell nor pay for tickets for a price higher than face value.

Everything seemed all fine and good. I received an email from Courtney, who, according to the header in the eBay message, was from Minnesota. (That’s the state with the abbreviation MN, right?) She asked me if I would consider ending the auction early and selling the ticket to her at an agreed-upon price. I decided not to so I could wait and see what I could get for the ticket. I received other offers like this from people from Michigan, because eBay would not allow them to bid on the item due to the state regulation. (The face value was $66.66, but I put it up for $70 to take the service charge into account. Plus it’s just easier to deal with whole, round numbers.)

When the auction ended, Courtney from Minnesota was the winner, and she ended up bidding about $100 for the ticket. Her boyfriend ended up being the one to pay for the ticket; she told me that there’d been some kind of internet outage in her neighborhood. The shipping address sort of set off a red flag, though, as it was in Lansing, MI. Since it was so close to the date of the concert, though, I decided to ignore it and send it to her anyway. Nice guy that I am, I had brought the ticket to work so I could run to the post office on my lunch break and send it out via Priority Mail. (I had originally planned to send it Express, but she said she’d rather pay a lower price, even if it meant it might take longer to arrive.)

I went to the concert, expecting her to be seated next to me, but instead, there was a guy in that spot. I couldn’t ascertain if his seat corresponded to the ticket I’d sold to Courtney, since A) everyone was standing, and B) the concert had already started by the time I got there, so I couldn’t really ask him. Anyway, the concert was great, even if we were a bit farther back than I would have liked and despite the fact that they didn’t play the song “The Pot.” (It’s probably my favorite song from the new album.)

The evening after the concert Courtney sent me the following message:

I have been informed that you selling this ticket for over face value (which was 66.66) was an illegal move on your part, and also against ebay policy. Therefore, I have been instructed to request that you refund the difference in the amount that I paid and the actual face value. If a refund is issued, then there is no harm done on either side of the deal. If there is no refund, I have to fill out the report I was given. This will most likely suspend your activity on ebay, ticketmaster, and possibly involve charges from your local law enforcement. In turn, it may also affect MY buying priveliges [sic] on ticketmaster. Please get back with me when you have a moment. Thank you. Courtney

At first, I panicked. After all, I didn’t want to get into any trouble, but at the same time, I didn’t want to get screwed over, and this certainly seemed suspicious. I asked her to forward the report to me, to which she said she’d be unable to do until she was able to scan it at a friend’s house. She also offered to have a friend fax it to me directly from the police department.

The next morning, I contacted a couple people I know who live in Michigan. My friend Trevor was most helpful in this, as he sent me these two links, http://pages.ebay.com/buyselltickets/rules.html and https://www.paypal.com/au/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/use/index_frame-outside&ed=event_tickets. As I read them, it appeared to me that I had done nothing wrong and that any responsibility should have been on her to make sure she wasn’t violating the law.

It was then that I thought that I should check her feedback rating and see what other sellers had said about her. It turned out that the other auctions for which she had feedback were all for tickets for the exact same event. At that point, I contacted the other sellers and asked them if they were experiencing the same problem. Of the three, two wrote back and confirmed that Courtney had contacted them for a refund. (I ended up calling the third and discovered that, even though she’d won the auction, she never paid for the tickets and therefore didn’t receive them.) Taken with the fact that her eBay account was only a few weeks old, it seemed to me that she was definitely trying to scam us.

I wrote to eBay and gave them all the details I had and decided to wait for a reply from them before telling Courtney that the jig was up. In the meantime, she forwarded the message she’d received from eBay’s Fraud Protection Group, since she’d apparently already contacted them about this. In turn, I forwarded it to eBay to ascertain that it was genuine, and once again, I gave all the details about her that I had. (I still have yet to hear back from this particular message.)

eBay’s response wasn’t extremely helpful. They more or less just told me to go through their normal dispute settlement procedures, which didn’t really apply to this situation. It wasn’t quite the slam-dunk I was hoping for, but it still seems to me that eBay would have told me if I’d done something wrong. So I decided to go ahead and write her to let her know that I knew what was going on. The message reads as follows:

After having read these pages: http://pages.ebay.com/buyselltickets/rules.html and https://www.paypal.com/au/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/use/index_frame-outside&ed=event_tickets, it appears that I am not in violation of any laws or policies, and it is up to the buyer to make sure they themselves are not violating them. Being an Ohio resident, I am allowed to sell for a higher price, but since you are a Michigan resident, it was unlawful for you to bid on them for any more than face value.

Strangely enough, other Michigan residents who tried to bid on the tickets wrote to tell me that eBay wouldn't even allow them to place a bid. You were able to do so, however, since you told eBay that you were from Minnesota, rather than Michigan. Aside from that, the only auctions for which you have feedback are all for the exact same event, and I doubt that you somehow managed to go to the same concert at least five times. (Oops! Wait, make that three, since you never actually paid for and therefore never received the tickets you won from [seller’s name omitted].) Plus, I contacted eBay sellers [name omitted] and [name omitted], and they have both confirmed that you contacted them for refunds after the transactions had been completed.

I have made sure to bring all this information to the attention of eBay and have encouraged the other sellers to do the same.

Have a nice day. :)

I made sure to keep the email free of any accusations, as I didn’t want her to come back with some sort of harassment charge, saying I was libeling her or something. Instead, I just let the facts do the talking. As of now, I’m waiting for a reply from her. I’m not sure just how dedicated she’ll be to trying to turn a larger profit on this scheme, but I refuse to be screwed over.

I’ll keep you guys up to date.