Is this unheard of ?

lee26g

Hi,

I was moving house so sold my TV on Ebay as it iwas no longer needed. It was a Samsung 32" LCD in as new condition and went for as surprising £320 at auction. Surprising as at the time there was a brand new Sony 32" going for £300 on Hotukdeals but I just thought that most people were unaware of good deals like that.

The buyer paid with paypal and collected in person. At the time I thought I was fully covered with paypal so went ahead with it. And as you have probably guessed, 2 days later I the payment held due to an 'unauthorised payment'. Paypal seller protection is void without a tracking number. NEVER EXCEPT PAYMENT THROUGH PAYPAL AND ALLOW THE BUYER TO COLLECT.

I raised it to the police as I had CCTV footage of me handing the TV to the buyer, provided his phone number which I spoke to him on, provided his address as registered on ebay, email and paypal account, and another ebay users details who was also scammed (he contacted me after seeing the feedback I left) only to recieve a letter a week later saying they could not pursue the case as there was not enough information.

After around 5 emails to paypal and a letter to the FOS paypal have agreed to settle the balance !!

I am amazed ! after reading all the negative posts about paypal I had pretty much written off this money!!

Here is a snippet from the email :

'I have initiated the courtesy credit for the overdrawn balance, which
currently stands at -£3**.** GBP. This type of credit is reserved for our
valued customers, is not subject to any receiving fees and is not
repeatable. The credit will take up to 72 hours to complete to your PayPal
account balance.'

See, Paypal aint all that bad

I must have scared them somehow, my arguement with them was that a paypal payment option is mandatory on ebay, however ebay also provides the option of item collection without a warning of the seller losing seller protection. I said that I thought this was a loophole that could easily be exploited by buyers and that I had a case I was willing to go to court over.

I also stated the following which I found on wiki :
' If an unauthorized third party obtains and uses someone’s PayPal login information and completes a transaction using the accountholder’s debit or credit card, EFTA/E and TILA/Z make PayPal responsible for the breach. '

I am very happy with this outcome

Maysie

well done i am glad to hear you had a positive outcome sounds a total nightmare senario!

soolin

You were very lucky, this is a very well known scam and the reason why many sellers no longer offer collection as an option on their ebay sales.

I have never heard of paypal refunding payment, even for goodwill since they explicitely state that paypal is not suitable for items that cannot be tracked to delivery.

lee26g

soolin wrote: »

You were very lucky, this is a very well known scam and the reason why many sellers no longer offer collection as an option on their ebay sales.

I have never heard of paypal refunding payment, even for goodwill since they explicitely state that paypal is not suitable for items that cannot be tracked to delivery.

Yeah I know, I'm still amazed!! on every email they refered to the terms and conditions of the seller protection. Guess I must have just said something right. Also, I have been a paypal user for 5 years with no other disputes and quite a large amount of monthly transactions.

frivolous_fay

lee26g wrote: »

I also stated the following which I found on wiki :
' If an unauthorized third party obtains and uses someone’s PayPal login information and completes a transaction using the accountholder’s debit or credit card, EFTA/E and TILA/Z make PayPal responsible for the breach. '

Pardon my ignorance, but... who?

Well done anyway

lee26g

frivolous_fay wrote: »

Pardon my ignorance, but... who?

Well done anyway

I have no idea

so2006

yep looks like someone used someone elses account, and like others said paypal was responsible, and was just hoping you would pay up.

soolin

so2006 wrote: »

yep looks like someone used someone elses account, and like others said paypal was responsible, and was just hoping you would pay up.

Paypal is NOT responsible if users do not follow the guidelines. Paypal require proof of delivery using one of just a few stated postal methods and say that paypal is not suitable for collected items.

Therefore paypal had no liability in this case and the OP was extremely lucky, as he has realised, to be reimbursed.

lee26g

soolin wrote: »

Paypal is NOT responsible if users do not follow the guidelines. Paypal require proof of delivery using one of just a few stated postal methods and say that paypal is not suitable for collected items.

Therefore paypal had no liability in this case and the OP was extremely lucky, as he has realised, to be reimbursed.

took a lot of threats though

soolin

lee26g wrote: »

took a lot of threats though

Exactly, they might have easily stood their ground as they had no case to answer. The OP was very lucky and realises that.

v0n

What worries me in this case is this bit: you had CCTV footage, name, address, phone number, email and paypal account of the scammer and another ebay users details who was also scammed (therefore proving this was repeated offense) and Police could not pursue the case as there was not enough information??

Conspiracy to defraud and deceive, and even more so the act of obtaining property/goods by means of deception is a criminal offense (section 15 of Theft Act 1968, section 1 of the Theft Amendment Act 1996, whole Fraud Act 2006). Not pursuing such offense when all the detective work and information gathering has been done for them is just unbelievable. I would insist on escalating this to their superiors, get local press, possibly TV to do noise around it, it is that kind of stance from Police that encourage more and more people to scam over the internet. They just know noone will pursue them as Police is trying to keep number of crime reports and numbers to absolute minimum. And in the long run it's the stance like this that develops into vigilantism. You report it once, report it twice, the third time you'll pay couple of Lithuanians in the bar to go and smash that TV on scammers head.