Hey everyone, we've been vending for over a year and have 99.9% positive feedback and want to know your thoughts on what we believe to be a scam attempt against us before we accuse anyone of any wrongdoing. We've never seen this attempt before:
Scam works like this: Customer 1 with little feedback history orders low priced item with FE, Customer 2 with positive feedback orders high priced item with escrow. Both receive orders and both claim they received wrong item, both want re-ship which totals about $1000 loss for us if we agree to their terms. We've never made a mistake like this before and we've been vending for over 1 year, but mistakes happen so it is possible but unlikely.
Reasons this could be a scam (all of them add up to make this scenario very suspicious):
Received 2 separate orders from 2 different customers, one for highest priced item we have with escrow, total $900+, and one for the lowest priced item we have with FE, total $40.
Both customers only sent messages to us at the same time, never spaced out in time (example: message from customer 1 comes at 12:35, message from customer 2 comes at 12:38)
Both customers have the same exact PGP program, "Version: GnuPG v1"
both customers have a key that was created to expire in exactly 5 years.
customer with no feedback created their pgp key AFTER we asked them for it.
Both writing samples received look similar to each other because of the way they are formatted and spelling used.
both spell word "thru" the same
both have same semicolon error in the word "I;m"
both address us as "man" in the first sentence
both use elipses incorrectly [two periods instead of three].
both use word "norco" instead of "vicodin, lortab, etc." to describe Hydrocodone
both use word "shatter" instead of "wax, bho, co2, oil, extract, etc" to describe cannabis concentrates
Both customers offered to send pictures of their order in the last sentence of their paragraphs but we never asked for this and both offered in the same manner.
Both customers asked for only a re-ship, no refund mentioned.
Both customers have exactly the same amount of letters and numbers in their username, in the same placement. Example: "Abc123" vs "Sad333"
Both customers had the same "tone" in their messages.
Messages received on day 1:
Customer 1 ($40 spent on order, registered same day of purchase, only has 1 feedback from a $1 item): "Kinda freaking out here man. I;m an ex-dope fiend and was totally not expecting to get a package of norcos today. I don't want anything to do with them, seeing as I know I'll get back into dope hard, fast. I have nobody I can sell these to, because I cut those people out of my life. And I really cant afford to pay you for a bunch of norcos that I did not order. i understand you're proabably taking a huge loss, but would you mind reshiping my shatter, I have seriously no Idea what to do, but I can't keep these around me.. If you need proof I can upload what I was sent thru anony.ws. Really was looking forward to that shatter :/ "
Customer 2 ($900+ spent on order, registered 2 months ago, has done many deals with many vendors and has good feedback): "Hey man, for my norco order, I received what is believed to be your shatter, Not sure what;s going on, but I;m not scammer, as my buyer feedback speaks for itself.. Would any customers be loyal enough to step forward and say that received a bunch of norcos, or you think they;d take the come up? Don't want to open a dispute, just want my order reshipped. I can provide pics thru imgur of what I received today as well"
This reads like a "What Not to Do When Scamming a Darknet Market Vendor" manual