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You guys aren't going to believe the deal I just got. 800 bucks for a brand

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new RTX 4090 on

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eBay. Oh well, I guess it was too good

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to be true. But no worries. eBay,

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Amazon, even AliExpress, they've got robust buyer protection schemes that

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make it simple to get your money back if your product doesn't show up or uh isn't

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as advertised. So, the question then is,

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why are these scam listings still all over these platforms if they can't

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possibly work? I had to find out for myself. So, I hit buy it now on an

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obvious fake listing. And well, it didn't happen exactly like we just

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showed, but we did learn a ton about how

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scammers are operating on these platforms and how they could still get

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your money and leave you empty-handed. But it's totally avoidable with our

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sponsor, Jawa. Four. I'm not a lionist.

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Shaw is a legit marketplace for selling and buying PC parts like GPUs. Not only

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do they have PC experts screening listings, but they also offer refunds

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you receive a

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brick. This topic originally came up on the WAN Show when a viewer pointed us to

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this listing and asked, "Hey, what gives with this?" And then I impulsively

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responded with, "I don't know. Let's order it and find out." Well, we didn't

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even get as far as placing our order before another helpful viewer reached

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out and laid out how they almost lost

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their money with a similar listing. As it turns out, these scammers have found

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some ways to get valid tracking numbers without actually shipping you anything.

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We'll get to the how later, but what you need to know for now is they can just

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pick a tracking number that's going to your city and then give that to eBay or

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another marketplace seller to prove delivery, making it much more difficult

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for you to file a dispute. But like, that shouldn't work, right? Well,

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whatever the reason for it, have you noticed how couriers give less and less

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information about a shipment these days? Forget about a zip code. You're lucky to

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even get an origin and destination city. And because eBay can't see the specifics

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of the tracking number that our scammer provides them, any delivery to roughly

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the same area in roughly the same time frame will make it seem like the seller

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has done their job. So, dispute closed.

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But here's the problem. You still don't have your GPU or your money. So, what

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can you do? Reaching out to the scammer is a waste of time. They already know

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it's a scam and you could try to escalate your dispute with eBay, but how

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do you prove that you didn't get your shipment? The tracking says you did,

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plain as day. Well, okay. How about the courier then? Surely they can see that

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the tracking number has nothing to do with you. And they can, but that's

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actually a problem, too, because they're not supposed to give out information

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about shipments that seemingly have nothing to do with you. And then even if

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you do convince the courier's support representative that your story is true,

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eBay is going to want something tangible, not just an email from a

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meat-based chatbot. So what happened with our viewer then is they ended up

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having to physically go to the UPS store and convince an agent there to provide a

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note on UPS letterhead that stated that

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the tracking number that the seller provided was not associated with the

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buyer's address. Only when that was scanned and sent to eBay was a refund

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finally approved. So, how does the scam work? Well, in a nutshell, the scammer

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hopes that either you aren't persistent enough to go get that hard evidence or

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that the courier support team is too stubborn to give it to you. Now, I think

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that many of us would be pretty persistent when it comes to recovering

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that amount of money. But here's the thing. If a scam didn't work, nobody

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would be trying to pull it. All right, that's the short version. But this scam

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didn't just pop fully formed into someone's brain. So, how did we get

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here? Well, it's kind of a funny story because get this, it didn't actually

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start out as a scam. Rather, it started as a clever way to deal with marketplace

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restrictions. So, before we get into that, let's do a quick refresher on

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online marketplaces and drop shipping. I'm sure you've seen these little sold

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by notices when you shop on basically any major online retailer these days.

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Well, just like eBay, these sites are acting as marketplaces. The benefit for

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smaller sellers is it allows them to list and sell their items on large

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recognizable brandame stores in order to reach a wider customer base. The benefit

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for the marketplace is they get a cut of every sale without needing to do

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inconvenient and costly things like maintaining inventory or in some cases

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even fulfilling the orders. This system allows just about anyone to list their

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product on, say, bestby.com. But hold on, they're going

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to need a warehouse and a logistics team, right? Nope. Thanks to drop

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shipping services, the seller can just give the marketplace a list of items and

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inventory that they have access to through thirdparty warehouses, and then

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they wait for someone to place an order, quickly buy it from a supplier who

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packages it up, sticks the seller's logo on it, usually for an extra fee, and

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then ships the product to you. In these cases, neither the retail site that you

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used nor the seller ever even touched the product that they sold you. It is

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nothing like buying from ltstore.com where you can check out our new Labs

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collection and rest assured that we're involved in every step of the process

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from design to ordering to warehousing to shipping to customer service. Sorry,

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where was I? Oh, right. I'm sorry. Marketplaces. In spite of this lack of

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control, marketplaces, they still want to keep their brand respectable. So,

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they do take precautions to protect their customers. Like for example,

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holding on to the money for a couple of weeks to ensure that the order actually

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gets delivered or insisting that the seller provide a tracking number for the

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shipment. And it's that last point that brings us finally to the tracking number

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piece of the puzzle. See, no retailer likes to send you off platform. So when

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you want to track your order, they like to pull the tracking details from the

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courier's API and then wrap it up in their own pretty little interface. fall.

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That means that they need to limit their sellers to the couriers that they have

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integrated into their site. Now, sellers mostly played along at first, but as

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marketplace fees have risen, sellers have felt the need to get more creative

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to preserve their profitability. Say, for example, by using discount couriers

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that their marketplace doesn't support. will. Somewhere along the line, someone

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had the bright idea to use discount Joe's delivery, but then give the

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marketplace a madeup string of numbers and hope that well, as long as the item

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arrives, no one's going to notice or care. And that worked, at least for a

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little while. But then the marketplace is wised up and they demanded that the

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tracking number be valid. Okay, so now

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our sellers need a more legit fake tracking number. How do they get it?

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Well, a quick Google search shows how these numbers are formatted. And most

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couriers will let you check dozens of tracking numbers at a time on their

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website. Hundreds if you use their API. So, what if we just write a bot that

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generates and then checks tracking numbers, logging any that work into a

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database so that we can use them later? But Lionus, you say, writing that bot

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could take dozens of minutes. If you've never heard of chat GPT, well, don't

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worry. There's an even easier way. A quick search surfaced a wide selection

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of professionallook websites that offer valid active tracking numbers for sale.

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And I'm not talking about the dark web here, guys. This is plain old boring

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internet. Let me show you. All I got to do is select a destination city. Let's

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say Siri, Canada. I can specify an

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approximate estimated delivery date range. Uh shipment status in transit.

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And I want it to come from the States. I click get tracking number

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and there it is. Origin Kernersville, US

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um shipped yesterday. You can even pick details like the approximate weight of

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the package if you want to get fancy. And that's it. We now have the tracking

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number for someone else's shipment for the low low price of just 25 freedom

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cents. Now, some of these sites claim

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that you are trading tracking numbers, while others try to imply that your

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actual shipment will totally be trackable with the number you're buying.

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But in both cases, that is obviously complete These services are

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all about tricking marketplaces. But the thing is, solving

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this is not as simple as you'd think because the marketplace isn't the

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shipper or the receiver. Even if they had someone on staff whose job it was to

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check that everything lines up, the couriers wouldn't be at liberty to share

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any information about a shipment that doesn't involve them. And let's be real,

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even if the marketplace did notice the tracking was sus, what are they going to

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do? They're going to email the seller and then wait for a response. A response

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that will almost certainly be, "Oh, sorry about that. That was a mistake.

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Let me get back to you with the right number." Well, that's going to buy Discount Joe at least a couple more days

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to scooter up to your driveway with that egirl keyboard that you so desperately

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need. At which point, everyone loses interest in the

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investigation. But where are these fake

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real tracking numbers coming from? Did these guys hire a guy on Fiverr to whip

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up some of those bots we talked about? Well, maybe. But we also came across

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another possibility while digging through eBay forum threads. Have you

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ever used one of those third party tracking apps or websites to track your

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shipments? You know the kind. They promise to track any parcel from any

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courier, no matter how obscure, which saves you the arduous work of typing in

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multiple three-letter domain names. Well, many of these sites are in

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countries with, let's call them, loose data protections. And if you take the

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time to peruse their terms and privacy policies, you'll find that they

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generally do not consider tracking numbers to be personal or private

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information. So, we've got these sites that are just slurping up active

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tracking numbers all day, every day, keeping track of where they're going and

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when. And we combine that with the market that happens to exist for valid

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tracking numbers. And well, let's just say there's some synergies to leverage,

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as they say. Now, to be clear, I don't have any hard evidence, and I'm not

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saying that all of these tracking sites are selling data. I'm just saying that I

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would be shocked if at least some of them weren't. And if they are, well, up

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until this point, it isn't that bad of a

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scam. It is dishonest and it completely

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defeats the purpose of tracking, but most of the sellers that are buying

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these tracking numbers really are shipping your product and you really

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will get it eventually. They're just trying to jump through marketplace hoops

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and ship from the most advantageous sources, most of them. But eventually,

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someone realized that they could use those numbers to gain their metrics.

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Let's say someone places an order for this here, this gaming mouse. After the

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order comes through though, their supplier goes out of stock and they

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can't get it. Well, marketplaces don't

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take kindly to sellers who take orders that they can't fulfill. So, I'm in a

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pickle. That is until I get an idea. An awful idea. A wonderful, awful idea. I

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can avoid a strike on my account if I just buy one of those tracking numbers

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and then just not actually ship anything. Then when the tracking says

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delivered and the customer inevitably reaches out asking, "Hey, where's my

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order?" I can say, "Oh, I'm so sorry.

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The courier must have messed up. Well, don't worry. I'm already processing a

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refund for you." At that point, as far as the marketplace is concerned, it's

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the courier that screwed up. I'm off the hook. Well, once that little technique

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spread around the drop shipping community, it was probably a matter of

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minutes before someone thought of using it to just straight up scam people,

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which brings us finally to my GPU here.

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Now, I got lucky and they terminated this guy's account before he could

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pretend to ship my order. That made it much easier for me to file a dispute and

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get my money back. But it should be noted I still had to manually file my

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dispute. and you might not be so lucky.

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So then, what can you do to avoid falling victim to this scam? Well, step

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one is to exercise restraint before you yell, "Shut up and take my money." Take

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a breath. Really look at the listing. Is the price too low? Like unreasonably

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low? That's a red flag. Look at the seller. Do they have no or low feedback

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numbers? Red flag. What else are they selling? Nothing. Totally unrelated

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knick-knacks. Why are you even still looking at this? That's all the red

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flags you need. You got to ask yourself, what's more likely that someone totally

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ignorant got their hands on a new Inbox 4090, realized it was worth money,

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signed up for a brand new eBay account, and then listed it for maybe half of

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what it's worth, or that someone knows

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that a cheap 4090 is going to bring all the boys to the yard, and that you

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should just yell, "That's my purse." and kick them in the plums. Bottom line, be

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careful out there. The 50 series launch means that there are going to be plenty

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of perfectly trustworthy bros out there that are looking to upgrade and move

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their older cards onto new owners. And I'm a huge advocate for buying

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secondhand hardware to save money and selling it so that somebody can be using

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it. Just take your time, find a good

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deal, not a too good of a deal, and when

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pair at checkout today. If you guys

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enjoyed this video, maybe check out the one we did on fake SSDs being sold on

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Amazon. Why do people feel the need to scam each