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U.S. postal inspectors shut down website selling counterfeit postage labels

281 points · 169 comments · ilamont

zucked · 1790713521 · focus · HN ↗
I am pretty sure I bought from a seller using this (or something similar) on eBay. It sent me down a rabbit hole of reading about this type of scam that exploded earlier this year: <a href="https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2026-04/25-072-3-r26.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2026-04/...
Here's how it went down:
<a href="https://www.ebay.com/fdbk/feedback_profile/theperfectpart" rel="nofollow">https://www.ebay.com/fdbk/feedback_profile/theperfectpart
Note that they’ve sold so much that even 1k neutral ratings are barely registering - they have “100% positive feedback”
I bought a cheap tool from this seller on ebay. Tracking number was provided showing my town as the destination. About four days later, I get an unprompted ebay message from the seller: “I monitor all my shipments and sometimes there are problems so I’m proactively sending you a new one, here’s a new tracking number.”
The original tracking number showed a message I’d never seen before “Item seized - counterfeit postage”. The new tracking number showed postage that had been bought back in January, but never entered the mailstream. Huh. I suspect that buys them time while they re-ship.
I did eventually get the item after another tracking number was provided.
My suspicion is that the seller uses counterfit USPS postage on 'x' number of packages to juice their margins. If you look at the neutral reviews, you can see a pattern — slow postage, lost package, had to replace, blah blah. Look at the positives — rave reviews at how fast things are arriving. Probably because the seller is “paying” for higher end postage via scamming the USPS.
And only when they get caught by USPS do they need to re-ship an item. They must get away with it enough to make it worthwhile
1. ericpruitt · 1790746991 · focus · HN ↗
  > Note that they’ve sold so much that even 1k neutral ratings are barely registering - they have “100% positive feedback”
  I'm pretty sure eBay's neutral ratings never impact the positive feedback rate regardless of how many you get.
  1. abanana · 1790770934 · focus · HN ↗
    Clicking the Information icon on the end of the line "Positive Feedback (last 12 months): 100%" shows that this is correct. Never forget it's a marketing line, to encourage you to buy, not to help you. Percentages ideally shouldn't be rounded to 100% at any time, but generally are; but ignoring all neutral feedback makes it even more meaningless.
    We calculated this positive feedback percentage using the total number of positive and negative ratings... Positive feedback: 189647 Negative feedback: 9... 189647 / ( 189647 + 9 ) = 100%
    ericpruitt · 1790790358 · focus · HN ↗
    Funnily enough, I've run into long time eBay sellers that don't seem to realize this, either (assuming they're not just lying). I've given neutral feedback to people that complained about how I was jeopardizing their shop by ruining their 100% positive feedback rating, and I have to explicitly point out that their rating was unchanged.
    zucked · 1790800945 · focus · HN ↗
    Turns out you're correct, but this store also has a fair number of negative reviews, too. Fortunately for them (or unfortunately for us) they end up a rounding error in their favor.

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