i've been scammed :(

vickynleon

i purchased a few laptops that were on offer to make a bit of money by selling them on so i advertised 2 on ebay. one sold pretty quickly and we recieved a message straight away that the guy wanted to come and collect. so my partner rung the number he left and he said i'll pay through paypal straight away so my partner got off the phone and check paypal and he had paid but not by clicking through ebay but just by sending a payment but i assumed he just didnt realised so thought this was ok but before he came i wanted to be 100% sure it was ok.

i rung paypal and explained the situation and i told the lady he was coming to collect and i wanted confirmation that he couldnt return the payment and the lady said there is no way the payment can be returned unless you refund it so i though ok great. if she hadnt of said this i would not of handed the laptop over to him.

he arrived within an hour to collect the laptop and while he was here he said oh can i have another one and clicked buy it now again through ebay and paid the same way as before, but he said he would come down the following day, when he came to collect this one he said he would have the final one but again he paid by paypal but my partner said only if you pay by gift as we thought that this would be even better because he couldnt even say he hadnt recieved it because he didnt want to pay by cash (for obvious reasons now)

he seemed tidy enough to talk to but lets just say he wasnt the smartest looking guy i'd seen, after a few days i had an email on paypal to dispute 1 of the transactions so i rung paypal to explain and to explain the reason we even went ahead with the transaction which was because the lady had said it was ok. by this time i was starting to panic then all of a sudden it changed to all 3 transactions leaving my paypal balance at -£810.56 by this time i was crying my eyes out, how can someone be so cruel, i then check his ebay to realise that he had actually scammed 2 people on ebay for around £800 so thats obviously why the transactions were disputed.

i have been in contact with one of the guys that had been scammed and waiting for the other to get back to me. he kindly gave me his police ref no. so that it was linked to mine,

i now have one big problem obviously we need to resolve our balance with paypal but this guy also knows where we live so what happens if we do report him to the police, i suffer with panic attack sometimes as it is and this is obviously not helping. im heartbroken that people can be so evil. i only wanted to make a bit of money to help with paying credit card debts and hopefully then start saving to have another baby but now were worse off than we started.

i have definetely learned a very big lesson and i just hope i can get everything sorted

zenseeker

He saw you coming a mile away...you fell for the biggest and most obvious scam How did you think you would ever prove delivery on a collection?

Paypal is pretty much closed to you, it's the police or nothing.

vax2002

Have you withdrawn the money from paypal to your bank ?
if so, close the direct debit with the bank ASAP ! and let paypal whistle.
They dont do court, as they would loose and open the floodgates.
Paypal need to be taught a few good hard lessons in streetwise common sense.
If Paypal are stupid enough to let a scammer run all over them, then good for paypal.
So if you have the money, Paypal gave him a refund without speaking to you, then let it be paypals problem.

vickynleon

yea money is out but they told me they send it to debt collectors within a few days. and zenseeker i can see that now. me and my partner have sold so much online and all we've ever had is genuine people and i though i could trust people. what an idiot i feel now. i am cancelling my ebay, paypal, facebook and never ever selling on the internet or at all to be honest i feel so stupid for trusting someone i didnt know

RFW

vax2002 wrote: »

They dont do court, as they would loose and open the floodgates.
Paypal need to be taught a few good hard lessons in streetwise common sense.

If it was £1-200 I would be inclined to agree, but I'm fairly sure that there have been cases on here when Paypal have taken people to court in similar circumstances and won, so I would suggest getting independent advice. Citizen's advice bureau would be my suggestion for you.

vickynleon

RFW wrote: »

If it was £1-200 I would be inclined to agree, but I'm fairly sure that there have been cases on here when Paypal have taken people to court in similar circumstances and won, so I would suggest getting independent advice. Citizen's advice bureau would be my suggestion for you.

thanks for that i really dnt think we have much of a case because we have no proof well apart from cctv from my partners works hopefully where he collected the last 2. he was a weird character 2. he couldnt catch the number plate of the car because he wizzed off before we had chance and when he came to my partners work he came out of no where so my partner didnt see then either. my partner may be going looking for him tommorrow not to kick his head in ( although thats what he needs) but just to say we want it sorted now. either give us the cash or we want the laptops back. see where he gets with that. hes taking someone from work whos bigger than him and looks kinda scary haha so hopefully that will move him along and make him see that were not a joke and he cant take the p with us.

vax2002

RFW wrote: »

If it was £1-200 I would be inclined to agree, but I'm fairly sure that there have been cases on here when Paypal have taken people to court in similar circumstances and won, so I would suggest getting independent advice. Citizen's advice bureau would be my suggestion for you.

I have never heard of a genuine one>
despite, paypal would need to win the case, in order to do that they would have to have a damned good reason for refunding and that would need the buyer to turn up at court and be questioned.
I can not see that happening somehow .

I would leave paypal to squirm, Paypal have refunded this guys money without any investigation, thats paypals problem. let them bring the witness to court if they feel they have a case.

PS cancel all direct debits with paypal before they overdraw your bank and leave you well and truly in the muck.

soolin

vickynleon wrote: »

thanks for that i really dnt think we have much of a case because we have no proof well apart from cctv from my partners works hopefully where he collected the last 2. he was a weird character 2. he couldnt catch the number plate of the car because he wizzed off before we had chance and when he came to my partners work he came out of no where so my partner didnt see then either. my partner may be going looking for him tommorrow not to kick his head in ( although thats what he needs) but just to say we want it sorted now. either give us the cash or we want the laptops back. see where he gets with that. hes taking someone from work whos bigger than him and looks kinda scary haha so hopefully that will move him along and make him see that were not a joke and he cant take the p with us.

I feel your loss I really do and it is horrid to think that once they realised you were a new seller that they could come back and scam you again. I also think paypal need to seriously work on their customer service knowledge as although you asked the wrong question - actually no a buyer can't just take back their money, anyone at paypal with an ounce of sense would have answered the question you didn't ask 'can they claim back the money under any circumstances', and the answer tot hat is 'yes they cna if they open any sort of claim'.

I really don't think there is anythiing at all you can do here, the scam is such an obvious one that they must have been falling over themselves with glee.

Paypal will persue you for the money, regardless of people suggesting this is not likely it does happen and we have had threads on here. Even if they don't actually take you to court they will harrass you and persue you with rather underhand tactics, so you will need to go to the debt board here on MSE and make sure you know exactly where you stand with debt collectors. Make sure you are completely sure what they can and can't do legally, for instance, as has happened in the past - should they talk to your neighbours that is wrong and you should be proactive about reporting them.

You say you don't think you want to use ebay anymore, wella ctually you can't as th emoment you accept any paypal payment it goes towards your debt. You can't open a new account as that is prohibited and if you use any one elses that is likely to be suspended and they may even try recovering funds via that to clear your debt.

vickynleon

thanks vax sounds very true what you are saying. its going to be a horrible few days wait but hopefully things will be going right for me. i have cancelled the direct debit already but the guy i spoke to today at paypal is trying to take it further for me because i was wrongly advised and they know who it was and they have the calls recorded so hopefully if they listen back to the call and hear that i repeatedly asked her if it was ok and that he couldnt take the money back and she told me time and time again it was ok to go ahead because he couldnt take the money back only i could refund it. thanks for all your help much appreciated.

soolin

vickynleon wrote: »

thanks vax sounds very true what you are saying. its going to be a horrible few days wait but hopefully things will be going right for me. i have cancelled the direct debit already but the guy i spoke to today at paypal is trying to take it further for me because i was wrongly advised and they know who it was and they have the calls recorded so hopefully if they listen back to the call and hear that i repeatedly asked her if it was ok and that he couldnt take the money back and she told me time and time again it was ok to go ahead because he couldnt take the money back only i could refund it. thanks for all your help much appreciated.

Incidentally the actual payment your eceived from paypal says at the top left hand :

Reversals:
Please be aware that your payment can still be reversed, (e.g. if it is subject to a chargeback), even after you have posted the item to your buyer. Complying with PayPal's protection programs and following the trading guidelines, in our [URL="wlmailhtml:{CC04EAC3-7589-4DFC-B4BF-1FD1DF813154}mid://00000022/!x-usc:https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/?cmd=_security-center-outside"]Safety Advice Centre[/URL] helps to protect you from things like chargebacks.

Go and take a look, a dim paypal customer services operative may well have thought (although it seems a long shot) that you read the payment advice and accepted the bit about chargebacks and was genuinely just asking if buyer could just 'take their payment back'.

Its also going to be longer than just a few days if this goes to debt colelctors, they will persue you for years and pop up evry now and then to harrass you. Hence me suggetsing you seek advice about the limited power a debt collector has.

vickynleon

i no i was silly but i just thought that if i spoke to them that they would advise me and everyone else i spoke to has said that if i spoke to them they would of explained that we wouldnt be covered unless we posted. so i just assumed that by ringing them they would advise me correctly didnt realise that all this could happen. i have learned a very big lesson just a little to late and yes i do feel very very silly.