Basically, earlier this year, my nice iPhone 13 Pro started not being able to see the SIM card. Since it's for business, and it's not under warranty, I bought a new one and put the old in the drawer. I recently sold the phone on eBay to a person who made multiple offers over the course of a week. Eventually they placed a bid and won. The phone condition was listed exactly as that. So that sale closed jun 27 and it was shipped immediately. Fast forward to today and they messaged me and said the phone gets hot when charging, the speaker sounds fuzzy, phone randomly reboots from time to time, WiFi disappears from time to time, and the phone doesn't read the SIM card.

The SIM card issue was outlined explicitly and I never had any other issue with the phone. That's a lot of issues to tell me about a month later.

Is this an eBay scam? They paid for the phone on the 24 and it was delivered on the 27. Am I obligated to do anything about it? Should I even respond? Is there a catch here?

You are right at 30 days. They probably can't even return it. If they want to return they can submit a return. If they can't they can't.

Even if they are able to submit a return, do not refund anything until you get it back in your hand and can confirm it is the same phone with same SN and IMEI l. And same condition as when you mailed it to them.

If not same numbers or bad worse condition, reach out to eBay to see what they advise. You could always refund minus whatever you think is fair based on condition received, or not refund at all if not same phone.

You should even, if possible, open it up to make sure you didn't get hardware replacement scammed.

But based on the dates you gave, I don't think they can even return which is why they messaged instead of just submitting return.

Edit: my recommendation is to just not even respond at this point. They had a long time to figure out they didn't like it.

this is how I would approach it based on my experiences with terrible buyers.

I've been selling on eBay since 2007 and SERIOUSLY selling on eBay the last 2 years.

Do you have proof or a picture of the serial # of the phone you shipped? If so, that will help if they try to return a different phone. If not, you may be screwed.

I had a similar issue years ago where the buyer bought an iPhone from me then claimed the box was empty when they received it. Luckily I was able to prove the shipping weight matched the exact weight of that specific iPhone and I didn't mail an empty box but the buyer opened a case and eBay immediately removed the funds from my PayPal without my consent. My advice would be withdraw any PayPal funds and unlink bank accounts that you can from eBay if you plan on ignoring the buyer because eBay will go in and take the funds back if they think the buyer has a claim, then it becomes a case that both of you have to submit evidence and then they decide who to side with. Sucks, and the main reason I don't sell anything on there anymore. Goodluck.

No paypal funds available and pretty surprised to hear they can just take those anyway. It's been 36 days since sold.

Jason_Roofer said:

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No paypal funds available and pretty surprised to hear they can just take those anyway. It's been 36 days since sold.

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Good to hear. The old policy was they would hold the funds in PayPal and you couldn't withdraw until the buyer either left feedback or x amount of days. Not sure if that's the case anymore.

How are you using PayPal with eBay anymore? eBay made me set up a direct link to my bank account and stop using PayPal awhile back I thought?

Anyway, whenever I'm selling anything that not is not in good working condition I always make sure to market as "for parts and repair only "and "sold as is no returns."

It was clearly listed as no returns and I outlined all the issues there were. They are going to have to pound sand. I didn't respond. I am the only owner of that phone and there is no way ALL of those problems just cropped up on day 32. Hell, I've had iPhones since their inception and I still have a couple of original ones and even those don't have those issues and they are decades old. Not to be a fanboy, but iPhones just don't have a lot of failures in my experience.

Not sure about the PayPal question. I've had everything set up for decades.

In that case I agree with Mucho above - ignore him or let him pound sand.