KEEP PHOTOS OF EVERYTHING YOU BUY AND SELL

WHEN you shop on eBay, you are protected under the firm’s Money Back Guarantee policy.

This means that if an item doesn’t arrive or isn’t as described, eBay will refund you the cost of the purchase plus any delivery charges. To be covered you must have paid via PayPal.

There are some exceptions. You are not protected when buying a car, for example.

Some sellers try to abuse the system. They know the customer will get their money back from eBay so they try to get away with not sending items. Some buyers are no better. They will buy an

item, claim it is faulty and demand a refund.

Then, instead of sending back the original item to the seller, they post off an empty box so that if they need to prove they returned something, they can.

I’m told one buyer sent back a cheap, old pair of headphones instead of the new pair.

If the seller complains they’ve been the victim of this so-called brick-in-a-box scam, it is up to eBay to step in and help resolve the disagreement. It will use any information it has on record to do so, such as ratings from other users, how long they’ve been on the site and if their account is linked to others known to be suspicious.

As a seller, make sure you take detailed pictures of all your items so you can prove they weren’t damaged when you sent them.

It is then up to eBay as to whether it will swallow the loss, report the case to the police or pursue the case using a collection agency.

Fewer than 0.1pc of transactions are affected by fraud or counterfeit issues, and just 1 pc of those are escalated to law enforcement as serious cases.