Selling a digital good on Ebay? ALWAYS ship out SOMETHING. ANYTHING.

About a week ago, Amazon was selling the NBA Live 19 One Edition for the PS4 digital code for $3.99.  That seemed like a very good deal, so I bought a copy.  I then listed and sold it on Ebay for $15.  The buyer immediately messaged me with this (note the name and feedback rating):

I then messaged him back with the code and thought we were good.  A day later, I get this message:

I’m not sure when it happened, but he even left me positive feedback already.  Now I don’t know if he’s telling the truth or not, but he’s had 4 purchases this month.  Anyhow, I didn’t respond to his last message.  At least he was nice enough to message me this because I immediately printed out a shipping label for $2.75, balled up some paper and put it in the envelope and dropped it off at USPS.  

You see, when and if you sell a digital good on Ebay and you get an ‘unauthorized transaction’ chargeback on Paypal, you will lose 100% of the time since you don’t have a tracking number showing you sent out said item.  However, to win those types of chargebacks, you just have to show a tracking number and I believe a delivery at the person’s zip code (meaning if you recall the item, then I believe you’ll lose because a physical good wasn’t delivered.)  Maybe things have changed since my Ebay Itunes days, but that’s how I think it still works today.  The great thing is that ‘unauthorized xaction’ scammers usually never charge back as “item not described,” since that’s much harder to win and takes a lot of Paypal back and forth (by then the scammer has moved onto another account.  Usually if you get hit with “item not described,” it’s a real buyer trying to fraud you, which is different than ‘unauthorized transaction’ chargebacks.  Plus, “item not described” usually goes through Ebay instead of Paypal.

I know a few of you have sold gift cards on Ebay and messaged the gift card codes to the buyer.  I also know a lot of you got charge backed for it and lost.  That’s why you have to ask yourself the risk tolerance – if you sold a digital good for $5, then I wouldn’t waste $2.75 for a shipping label.  However, for a $50 gift card or even this $15 digital code, then the $2.75 was worth it.  I still find it odd the person messaged me saying he got hacked vs contacting Ebay, Paypal, or his bank to resolve the matter (so maybe he is just a bad scammer.) 

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