Ebay scam, If you are looking to sell using ebay and paypal, my advice don't do it!

adsingleton

soolin wrote: »

I have tried to avoid this thread as I do feel for the OP, I really do. However, ebay and paypal are safe if you know what you are doing. Whenever I suggest that there should be tighter guidelines in place before people are allowed to use it I think I am seen as being discriminatory.

We have established this is a very common scam, 99.99* % of us would not fall for it, just because one person does doesn't mean ebay is not safe, it just means that people need to be better educated before they use ebay. Maybe ebay should have some sort of stricter guidelines in place, make people do a tutorial or something to prove they understand the rules. It appears that merely posting warnings on every single paypal email is not enough (and yes there are warnings there on every email if you read them)

It is a very unfortunate fact of life that some people, usually those in most need are vulnerable to scams, the oP has also fallen for the scam website offering 'ebay' support at a premium rate (different thread so not relevant here).

Suggesting that we should all avoid ebay because a small percentage of people do not understand it is merely scaremongering.

I do not believe there is much here at all that can be done however on two occasions I have seen reports that paypal have reimbursed the seller as a goodwill gesture, both of those cocasions were done without prejudice and without admitting liability but as a direct result of press involvement. One of them was on watchdog and one in the financial bit of the Mail on Sunday, it might be worth considering asking for advice somewhere like that. It may mean the OP wil look quite foolish to many people, but if it results in any sort of goodwill gesture it might be worth a bit of loss of face.

I ajm happy to look foolish and yes I was naive, but when I received the message from the ebay buyer with his phone number on it, I also have text messaqges arranging his collection with me and proof I psoke to him on the phone, I have taken screen shots of everything along the way, I hope this will be enough evidence to back my claim up, I have now been to the police they were not much help but did give me a crime reference number, I have also contacted the press but am waiting to hear back.

I am understand you think I am foolish for this but as I stated I had never used ebay before the claim paypal is the safest payment option, the guy made it out as if I could be dodgy when I requested cash on collection, he sad oh no always do everything through paypal.

martindow

Maybe Ebay should not allow a new seller to sell top end items at all until they have sold a number of cheaper items to build up some history and a knowledge of how it works. As you use it you tend to picks up the dos and don'ts as you go.

To be honest how many of us really familiarised ourselves with all of the rules and regulations before we started? I certainly stumbled into it and was lucky that no one took advantage of my naivety in the early days.

Ebay do themselves no favours when a large loss like this happens with all the negative publicity that goes with it.

Crowqueen

The problem with the idea of a tutorial is the people who know the system are the ones who exploit it. If someone knew that Paypal required proof of delivery to disallow an INR, then they would be tempted to do it on a collection item. On the other hand, the people that don't know that I would imagine would probably be less likely to try and scam someone like Ad.

I have never sold collection items and probably would never try to do so through eBay (or buy them as I have no personal transport), so this is always a moot point to me, but increased buyer verification processes or tutorials will possibly only show scammers what to do rather than dissuade them from trying. And if someone is out to pull off a scam, it's the equivalent of the question on US immigration forms: "Are you a terrorist? Yes/No".

macfly

Also a bit rum to infer everything about ebay and paypal is fine if you know how it works. The fact that you have to accept paypal, more fees for the company, makes this scam possible. Ebay have done this for their own profits, fully aware it puts a seller in a no win situation. I allow local collection only, but am also aware a buyer needs the security of paypal protection. It would be mad to expect a buyer to pay £20 for shipping when they live 5 miles away. So I have to take the risk. In this case, ebay participates in a share of the profits, but takes none of the risk. I don't even think that's legal, it's certainly immoral.

Crowqueen

macfly wrote: »

Also a bit rum to infer everything about ebay and paypal is fine if you know how it works. The fact that you have to accept paypal, more fees for the company, makes this scam possible. Ebay have done this for their own profits, fully aware it puts a seller in a no win situation. I allow local collection only, but am also aware a buyer needs the security of paypal protection. It would be mad to expect a buyer to pay £20 for shipping when they live 5 miles away. So I have to take the risk. In this case, ebay participates in a share of the profits, but takes none of the risk. I don't even think that's legal, it's certainly immoral.

If you think it's illegal, you can bring a test case to try it out.

You pay eBay to find you a buyer, the risk is all your own.

Astec

soolin wrote: »

I have tried to avoid this thread as I do feel for the OP, I really do. However, ebay and paypal are safe if you know what you are doing. QUOTE]
Disagree, ebay/paypal are only safe if the BUYER is. If the buyer is a scammer, then you can be done over as a seller.

If the OP had posted it, the buyer could claim a snad, send a box of bricks back and the OP would lose out. Paypal would refund the buyer. What rule of ebay's would the seller have broken here?

Mandatory paypal is a scam. Ebay want their 3%, sellers lose out.

soolin

Astec wrote: »

soolin wrote: »

I have tried to avoid this thread as I do feel for the OP, I really do. However, ebay and paypal are safe if you know what you are doing. QUOTE]
Disagree, ebay/paypal are only safe if the BUYER is. If the buyer is a scammer, then you can be done over as a seller.

If the OP had posted it, the buyer could claim a snad, send a box of bricks back and the OP would lose out. Paypal would refund the buyer. What rule of ebay's would the seller have broken here?

Mandatory paypal is a scam. Ebay want their 3%, sellers lose out.

Personally if i thought that was a common thing to happen I would not sell online at all.

You have to know what is likely to happen, no one can protect against anything, where would we stop, should I worry about planes crashing and dumping all my airmail items into the sea? You have to decide what is worth worrying about and what is not.

Also I am a business seller, I need buyers, if i have no buyers I have no business. Therefore if I started expecting my buyers to use cheques I just wouldn't sell anything, so what's the point? If sellers don't want to take paypal then they can sell elsewhere, Amazon for instance for items stocked in their catalogue, or even ebid.

Even if paypal was not compulsory I would still use it as an exclusive payment option on most of my auctions. However as I have a brain cell or two I understand the risks of paypal on colleection so just don't sell highly scammed items that cannot be posted.

cyberbob

Astec wrote: »

If the OP had posted it, the buyer could claim a snad, send a box of bricks back and the OP would lose out. Paypal would refund the buyer. What rule of ebay's would the seller have broken here?

Mandatory paypal is a scam. Ebay want their 3%, sellers lose out.

Unless the bricks were the exact weight you could normally defend this by showing the difference in postage weight.

If your that paranoid about ebay and paypal you really shouldn't be using it. In reality millions of transactions take place on a daily basis on ebay using paypal worldwide and in reality there are proportionally very few problems. The message boards are not a good judge of what actually happens. They just have the few cases that there is a problem not the majority of perfectly safe and satisfactory transactions.

C_Mababejive

pamania82 seems to have been an ebay member for over 8 years..only 5 feedbacks?

A google also puts out some results

adsingleton

I am not scaremongering, or even saying that you shouldn't use ebay, its just my experience has been terrible but they have details of all the correspondence I had with the buyer, They also were the ones who showed on my account payment received. T

There is no warning that says until you have cleared a paypal payment in to your personal bank account then it is not actually cleared funds.

As there customer do they not have an obligation of duty and care to protect me or at least refund either the money (or I will accept the same model TV, but sell privately this time).

It sems funny to me that literally a couple of hours after collection I got the fraud message and after I had left feedback.

Also I explained the fraud situation in full to paypal and that is why they agreed to release the funds, but within an hour after withdrawing they reversed it again.

I may have been foolish but I certainly believe it is ebay who should be taking responsibility here.

As this is my first time using ebay and as far as I was aware I had done everything correctly and had used paypal their recommeneded payment method, I do not undersand why they will not accept this I have offered them proof of the conversations I had by ebay message and by telephone and text mmessage with the man I belived to be pacmania82, they allowed this acount to be hacked how is that my fault?

All I can say is from this is experience how can you expect me to trust either paypal or ebay?

All I want is to get the money, not spending all day on the phone or live chat just to get no resolution, not only that ebay by allowing this account to be hacked have given my personal details to a criminal.

They should be obliged to ensure that new users are protected unleast unitl they fully understand it.
personally I will never recommend them to anyone after this and I hope they go under for aiding criminal activity but that is just my opinion.