Scammed on Buyee / Yahoo Japan - Paypal time?

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Hey everyone

I’m looking for some advice on the best route to take when dealing with a scam on buyee / Yahoo Japan Auctions and getting g your money back.

I’m aware there are tonnes of scam items on there and out of 4 purchases, two have been legit (a beautiful PSA 9 Unlimited Japanese Crystal Lugia and a binder of vintage base) but two have been scams (one was my fault and took a bit of a risk, other one was 100% not my fault).

Story time

So won a Gold Star Japanese Rayquaza for 1.6k ish usd.

The listing had really no red flags. There was a decent description, good title, and images looked great. Seller had 90+ transactions.

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The card looked super clean too.

Here is a shot from the back

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And front pic

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The first red flag was when my max was outbid and then I won the auction, so seller may have removed their shilled high bid. Idk.

Anyway 1.6k$ payment done through paypal

Card arrived at buyee warehouse and I requested photos from Buyee of the item. The card is very damaged and was nothing like the photos or listing description.

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Whats the play here with buyee?

I heard they don’t really support buyers in this case.

Another spanner in the works is that I ultimately took the “Insured Delivery” plan with buyee, as opposed to the “Standard” plan as they were the same price (500yen).

Supposedly insured delivery plan only covers damage taken in shipping (:angry: bugger) and they don’t care if it’s not as described etc.

So i contacted their support saying it must have been damaged in transit.

If buyee deny a refund, paypal is the next route - but what type of claim should I make?

It’s still at the buyee warehouse, so do I make an “item not recieved” claim or “item not as described” claim?

Just pretty bummed out as I’ve been looking for an nm copy of this card for ages!

Appreciate any help or advice from people who have been through the same bs.

Cheers :beers:

Fur

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Yup, this is unfortunately a common scam. It may not even be shilling, unscrupulous sellers will delete higher bids until the highest bid is from a middleman service, as these services are easy to pull a bait-and-switch scam on.

If buyee does not refund you, which they likely won’t, paypal is your last recourse. Ship the card to yourself, and then you can make an item not as described case with paypal, which you’ll likely win. Buyee will ban your account following this, so be prepared to use another middleman service for future Japan purchases.

For future reference, selecting the standard plan on Buyee is better than insured delivery. Standard plan includes inspection and insured delivery for 500 yen, while just insured delivery is the same price. Their “inspection” is pretty limited and I’ve heard of people who selected this getting screwed as well, but at least it’s a possibility of getting your money back.

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Thanks for your detailed reply.

So I read about the insured delivery vs standard delivery options after I won the auction (rookie mistake) - but that is why I contact their support saying it was likely damaged in transit to them.

Fingers crossed for that :laughing:

I read some other paypal cases who won from saying the item wasnt shipped and as buyee cant provide a tracking number as its still in their warehouse, they won the case automatically.

I would prefer to take that route as I don’t want to have to pay for any import + shipping fees from an item I was scammed on. Cant really explain it to customs :sweat_smile: and their import duties would be around 350$ (I’m in the EU).

Has anyone won a similar case on Paypal against Buyee, eg item not received? Just hoping buyee dont randomly decide to ship to my account address!

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For what it’s worth, I’ve had a terrible time dealing with PayPal over the past year or so in terms of disputes/customer service. I felt like I needed a lawyer when I was dealing with it, and in my case I ended up losing $75 trying to deal with a seller and they wouldn’t acknowledge my claims I made despite providing a detailed paper trail/evidence.

I don’t know if it’s because of Covid or interest rates or what, but I think PayPal has greatly tightened up the whole “buyer protection” thing the past while. I realize this is very anecdotal, but in the past I had a lot of success dealing with PayPal, but not recently that’s for sure. I personally no longer have confidence in their buyer “protection”.

With respect to Buyee, I’ve only done Yahoo Shopping and haven’t had any issues, but with auctions I haven’t taken many chances with any larger purchase to give much feedback on that. I hope something works out for you, but it may be tough dealing with PayPal :-1:

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I recently had the same thing happen with a Masaki Gengar. I paid around $1300 USD when all was said and done, and the seller had pristine feedback (likely all from buyee auto-leaving feedback). The card in the listing was well centered, super clean, no edge wear or anything. A solid 9, dare I say even 10 candidate. Well once I got the card, it clearly wasn’t even the same copy in the listing as the centering was off. I ended up with a 7-8 condition card. You win some, you lose some. I’ll grade it, sell it, and move on. I’d rather not do the paypal claim and get banned from buyee for future purchases.

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I could do the same but I honestly don’t want to deal with the customs issues etc. It would be a big loss, over $1k for me. Never done a chargeback in my life in Pokémon but Buyee really need some kind of authentication or buyer protection policies as at the moment they are just facilitating scammers.

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That particular card with the same exact photos has been relisted several times on yahoo japan (no matter the final bid). The first few times it was the same seller relisting it (I stopped paying attention after a couple of times). Saving searches on buyee helps with identifying which listings are relisted (red flag imo)

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I also saw that after doing some more research. Multiple red flags indeed.

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Will Buyee block your IP or just your account? Because it would be super simple to just recreate a new account?

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I think Account and Paypal that was linked.

There are other forwarding companies so Im not so bothered.

Hopefully it doesnt come to that.

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I’ve not encountered the exact same problem as yourself but I did go nearly the 6 month window back and forth with buyee before getting paypal involved to step in.

Bought a card which was shipped to me and got lost somewhere in customs when it hit the U.K. While I understand it was out of buyees control it got lost here, it was still their responsibility to follow it up with Japan Post which also took no responsibility. I had endless email logs trying to explain the situation and as it got to a month before paypal would not step in I decided to go that route.

Paypal sided with me once they reviewed the drop off of tracking and non delivery and buyee did not provide any counter claim evidence.

Account banned and that was it. I created a new account on buyee no problem under a different email address and no issues with that.

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Can you not just delete your PayPal beforehand? So It won’t be linked?

Because I also had a bait and switch in my package and thinking about doing the same.

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While you might not want to hear this, scams are part of the game when you buy in Japan. It is indeed quite a big loss you would be taking, which sucks. That is why I always advice people to first learn about all the scams and about buying in Japan, before buying big ticket items like these. This is advice that does not work for you, but might be for others that are looking into buying in Japan.

I unfortunately cannot give you any advice, I take the scams for granted and have not been scammed for this amount so you might see this differently. You would be screwing buyee and not the scammer, so please keep this in mind.

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Probably will do that yes, will update you if it gets to that!

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I agree, more info needs to be out there on this.

I really like the idea of buyee, but honestly if they are making money from people facilitating these transactions, they need to offer a much higher level of customer protection.

They will also have business insurance to cover the loss if it comes to a chargeback.

I will tell buyee to block that sellers account as he currently has some very high end items for sale that he is also saying is mint.

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paypal was super easy to deal with when I got a card in much worse condition that I thought it was in. Got the refund no problem. It was with Neokyo, though, but I assume the process with Buyee is the same.

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Did you have to send it back to them?

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No. I didn’t even need to send paypal pictures. I just had to open a claim, message Neokyo a few times via paypals messaging system, then Paypal refunded me.
actually I’m not 100 percent sure about the picture thing. It was last year, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t ask for any

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Ah interesting. And which type of claim did you open?

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Unfortunately this wouldn’t help you in your situation, but when you buy your next $1000+ card on Yahoo Japan you may want to visit the original site (not from within Buyee) and switch on the authentication filter:
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Cards listed with this option will be sent to Card Rush to check if the card condition matches description before shipping to Buyee. More details below:

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