Sellers Beware - Fraudulent Buyer Tried To Scam Me Out Of $1200

A warning for anyone selling valuable items on Ebay or elsewhere.

Last week an Ebay buyer called Kaydene Chea (also apparently registered as Kaydene Brown) tried to steal $1200 from me by filing a false "Item not as Described" claim. Immediately after delivery, she switched a valuable stamp for a worthless one, photographed it on the packet I sent, and then told Ebay I made a fraudulent sale.

Online I found a Court document showing she was sued for non-payment of a $3800 debt in 2020.

She is a resident of Saint Cloud, FL. Her Ebay ID kayche has now been de-registered, but it's easy enough to get a new one. Sellers beware!

ROB

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Were you able to get this resolved?

You should be scanning anything you put up for sale in a large detail scan to keep for your records if the value is over a certain point .

It would be nice to drop a letter to the Post Office in St. Cloud and their Police Dept .

True, but I could see an unscrupulous person doing exactly what the OP said, and trying to claim that the picture provided did not match the stamps that arrived. And, demanding the return of the stamps would only result in the return of the incorrect one. Not a good situation for the seller here.

I already sent a complaint to the Saint Cloud PD, and a "stolen property" alert to all the main stamp dealers in Florida and the APS. She will find it hard to move the stamp on ...

Fortunately, I have a 20+ year unblemished Ebay record, and the buyer had very little. I'm not sure what factor won the day, but this morning Ebay released my payment and banned her account.

If that had not happened, the real problem is how to prove to Ebay that you actually sent the item listed for sale. Glen Stevens suggested using his method of putting a foil seal on the envelope, which reads "VOID" if anyone tampers with it. But as the DHL shipping agent pointed out today, when I asked about their seals and protocol - any seal added by me or them still does not prove that I didn't switch the stamps before sealing the envelope.

Unless you went to extreme lengths of videoing yourself putting the sold item into the packet and adding a uniquely numbered seal, it seems almost impossible for any seller to prove conclusively that the item sold is what went into the package. And Ebay almost always take the buyer's side in a dispute. Sadly, that makes it a very easy scam for a buyer to run.

What Floortrader suggested makes lots of sense - just scan the stamps in question.


Peter

That doesn't make very little difference if someone changes the stamp - you have some images, but there's no guarantee that ebay will accept them as proof of anything.

Why not post an image here also?

Why not indeed.

A scan does nothing to prove that a particular item was sent. It is a "he said-she said" situation. Nor do seals or meta-data from the photo if taken. It is a tough one and the only thing that stops more of it is morals and punishment for the crime.

The thing that would make the stamp harder to move would be the old-fashioned handstamp on the back of the stamp.

And therein lies another whole conversation.......

The truly sad part of this thread is the fact that we have to even debate this issue.

I know I'm altruistic and want to believe people are all truly good. Then I remember I'm a realist these days and know that if someone can come up with a way to get away with something, they will.

I'm happy that you at least got your payment.

And yes, Bobby De La Rue "Therein lies another whole conversation. "

For sports cards which sell for $250+ (and some other items), ebay recently introduced 'Authenticity Guarantee' where the seller ships the item to ebay's authentication partner, and they inspect it, and ship it on to buyer if everything is good. It is free. It solves the problem of either buyer or seller putting a different item in the package than what was described. I have had at least 10 purchases go through, and am very happy with it. Would love to see something like this for stamps.

As long as it is optional and not mandatory, sure.

It also appears to only apply to graded cards (or the cards are graded as part of the authentication process). For this approach to work, eBay would have to get the PF or PSE involved to do the grading, and given that professional grading is nowhere as market-prevalent with stamps as it is for other collectibles, I don't see that happening.

https://pages.ebay.com/authenticity...radingcards/

Not to mention that there are a lot of stamps that a seller likely would not want to be graded given their penchant for over-describing stamps. Say a stamp goes for to the PSE and is found to be reperfed or has a filled thin and cannot be graded or a stamp sold as XF ends up with an 80 lowering its book value. It just seems like a process that would be messy at best.

Via a Google search, I also found a public records website showing that she has a third alias, with different spelling of her given name as Kadene.