An Online Seller Called a Scam Buyers Bluff, AND WON!

Here’s a short but super interesting story for all of my fellow online sellers. If you have been selling online for 6 months or more, chances are you have had a buyer claim their order is missing items. Sometimes they claim a full item is missing, other times they try to convince you a part is missing from the single-item they purchased. Of course mistakes can happen but it’s usually pretty darn easy to see if you did not ship an item or you can look at the product photos and clearly see that, no, the keyboard actually ISN’T missing the space bar. But what do you do when a buyer claims they were shipped an empty box that was supposed to contain a pricey item? Here’s the genius was online seller aisle_nine dealt with this exact issue:

Aisle_nine, who we will called Alex, listed a motherboard and it was quickly purchased by a buyer that we will call Jimmy.

Alex packaged the motherboard with care and shipped it out fast, but to his surprise Jimmy claimed the box was full of CARDBOARD and no motherboard was present. Immediately Alex knew this was a total lie, yet Jimmy, like most scammers, insisted on a full refund or a replacement shipped out. But Alex called his bluff!

Alex first asked Jimmy to look through the packaging again, and assured him that the motherboard is present, but again, Jimmy insisted it wasn’t there. So then Alex said that he would be happy to issue a refund however “Mail Fraud is a very serious crime” and that this issue would absolutely have to be reported to authorities prior to the refund being issued so it can be investigated and the motherboard can be located. Specifically, this crime would have to be reported to the local sheriff and detectives in the buyers home town as well as the USPS Inspector General.

Immediately after Alex informed Jimmy of the actions that must be taken, Jimmy magically located the motherboard and claimed he "had been looking in the wrong box this whole time”.