When I was in high school, around 3 years ago, I started using the eBay website to sell my rare Pokemon cards. It was then that I encountered a clever scam that opened my eyes to how creative these scammers can be. It all started when a potential buyer on the platform’s messaging application asked about the price of one of the cards I was selling, and it all went downhill from there.
The goal of this scammer was simple, get me to buy a gift card with my money and send it to them. Gift cards are unique in that once you have the code and verification numbers on the back of the card, they aren’t traceable, and you can’t refund a gift card. The way that the seller was able to persuade me to(almost) buy the gift cards was by saying that they couldn’t process the payment, so they needed me to buy gift cards to do so.
Here is how the scam worked from start to end:
1. I received a message on eBay from someone who seemed genuinely interested in my listing. They asked a couple of questions to appear legitimate.
2. After a brief conversation, they said their eBay payment wasn’t going through and claimed that eBay required some type of “seller verification.”
3. They then insisted that I, the seller, needed to buy gift cards to get by the “verification system” and process the transaction.
4. While I was stressed about trying to get the money to buy an expensive gift card, the scammer pressured me by saying that things like this are “standard eBay policy” and that “You’ll be reimbursed as soon as you send the codes.”
5. Then, the moment I started to question the entire thing, they used urgency saying “Please do it quickly or we’ll lose the transaction.”
Though I was new to eBay, the urgency and fake policy seemed uncommon. It is now evident that the scam relies on catching people off guard, especially new sellers like myself who don’t understand eBay’s system fully.
How did I realize it was a scam? Well, I figured first that eBay would never require gift cards to process transactions, which, standalone, revealed the scammers’ lie. The buyer never went through the real checkout system, and also the messages were filled with grammatical errors and strange wordage.
How can you tell if something like this is real or fake in the future? Well, make sure you know the selling policies of the website you are utilizing. Watch for urgency or unnecessary pressure during a transaction. Keep all communication on the platform you are selling on, and make sure to double check strange requests and think logically. Finally, and most importantly, I think. Trust your instincts; they are usually never wrong.
If a buyer is asking you to purchase gift cards, stop, think, and know it’s a scam every time.
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