I've wondered before if there isn't a nice business for scammers on ebay where they buy high value broken parts for nothing then sell them and graciously accept returns from anyone who notices. Eventually the part lands on someone's shelf as a spare or for a delayed project and the issue isn't discovered until long after the return window.

I doubt this would pan out for a rpi-- too low a price relative to the cost of accepting a couple returns. But there are many items it probably would work for...

You could try it, but all you'd achieve is paying half a dozen lots of return postage before getting your account limited for having bad metrics.

Can't you just also sell some random cheap crap (perhaps via drop-shipping) to pad the activity on your account and avoid having a bad rate of returns?

I mean, you could, but you'd still just continually be paying for returns on faulty items over and over again.

I dont know how much the user paid to get my pi returned - but it couldnt have been much. They are pretty light and fit in a small envelope. It wasnt rush delivery or anything.

I imagine if the rate of return was 80%, and eBay didnt ban you, youd make money (minus your time)