Am I being scammed?

Brit_Chick

Last week I sold an item on ebay for a couple of hundred pounds. I haven't been able to dispatch it as I haven't received any payment - when I go to my ebay summary there is an egg timer type symbol next to the transaction and a note saying that 'payment was initiated on xyz and being processed by paypal'. I have checked my paypal account and there is no payment in there, nor any pending payments.

A couple of days ago the buyer contacted me asking for tracking details for the item. I explained that I have not yet dispatched as I am still waiting for payment which appears to still be pending. The buyer replied stating that he has made payment and mentioned the amount paid and quoted an email address that is not even mine - it is not the email address linked to my ebay account or my paypal account.

I responded stating that it looked like he has made payment to the wrong paypal I.D and that I have no connection to the email address to which he is saying payment has been made and advised him to sort it out with paypal himself. I'm confused as to how he managed to make payment to another paypal address as whenever I've paid for something bought on ebay I don't even have any options for deciding which paypal address to send payment to, it just goes through automatically to the paypal account linked to the ebay account.

Anyway, the buyer has now emailed me again (after I told him that I have no connections to the email account he says he has paid to) asking me for my actual email address. He doesn't ask why and something about the whole scenario just doesn't sit right with me.

Am I being paranoid or does this seem like I am about to get scammed to you?

The buyer said that he wanted the item by thursday (i.e tomorrow) as its a gift and that he would have to cancel the transaction if I didn't post the item today, which obviously I did not do as I will only post once money has been cleared into my paypal account. I'm tempted to just cancel the transaction tonight but am not sure whether this will lead ebay to side with the buyer over any dispute and somehow just refund money to him that he never paid me in the first place.

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you.

soolin

If he paid via ebay, which the egg timer suggests he did then the email address is almost certainly wrong.

Check that first, go into the listing now and work through as though you were going to relist it. Then when you 'edit' th elisting it will show the original paypal ID that you gave the buyer. If that is correct then buyer can only have made a payment without using ebay- which doesn't sound like a scam, but certainly a very odd thing to do.

However go and double check the paypal ID in your listing first.

rdwarr

Check the buyer's feedback / time on Ebay as well

bruticus

I don't know how it appears as a seller, but I paid for an item recently which showed up as an Egg Timer for about a week, I contacted the seller and they had the incorrect paypal email address set up on the listing. I cancelled the payment and set it to the correct one

soolin

rdwarr wrote: »

Check the buyer's feedback / time on Ebay as well

Probably not particularly relevant.

However reading between the lines I am not sure OP is being scammed, and if they are they are very laid back about it waiting days before doing anything and doing any checks about the missing payment.

As buyer requires the item by tomorrow OP would need to send it by about 5pm tonight (depending on the cut off for special at their PO) so is already out of time, scam or not.

Personally if I had a buyer harrassing me I would want it sorted ASAP so I could either get the dispute open and report it to ebay, or work out how to rectify the mistake if it had been my fault. If this does turn out to be a wrong email then OP is likely to end up with a failed sale , a neg, lots of FVFs to pay etc. If it is a scam then OP has wasted time waiting for the egg timer thing to go away and really needs to be more pro active to get this sorted and the item relisted ASAP.

soolin

bruticus wrote: »

I don't know how it appears as a seller, but I paid for an item recently which showed up as an Egg Timer for about a week, I contacted the seller and they had the incorrect paypal email address set up on the listing. I cancelled the payment and set it to the correct one

I think that is a highly probable scenario here which is why I suggested OP checked before doing anything else, always best to rule out the obvious before looking into a possible scam.

As the oP logged out quite quickly after my post I wonder if that was actually the outcome.