Problem with seller. Should I be suspicious?

Melgirl

Hi

I wonder if anyone could offer some advice?

I won a blackberry on ebay on Saturday evening. The BB was listed as an auction listing with a starting bid of 99p.

I won the BB for £72 + £7 postage and paid immediately via paypal.

I recieved a message via ebay from the seller at 11.30pm (Monday night) that they wanted to cancel the sale and refund the money. There was no explanation as to why.

I asked why and the seller confirmed that they had sold the BB outside ebay and that they wanted me to let them know my bank details so they could refund the money.

I said that I wanted the phone, but if it was not available, then I would like the refund to be made the same way that I paid, via Paypal.

The seller then replied that they couldn't access their paypal account and they needed the long number from the front of my debit card to be able to do a refund. I repeated that the refund should be via the same method the payment was made by.

The seller then decided that they could pay me by their newer paypal account and could I send them my email address. I saw a report earlier that 20k+ paypal passwords have been publisged on twitter by anonymous, so I am not happy to just give out my email address either.

My question is, how do I go about reporting this to ebay and/or paypal?

I have recieved 8 emails from this seller since 11.30pm last night and I just think it is all a bit suspicious, or am I just reading too much into the situation?

Many thanks for any advice that anyone can offer x

kurgon

Either suspicious or very unusual. I wouldn't give any details. Raise a claim in paypal - it ammy take a little longer but should be a lot safer.

theonlywayisup

Log into PayPal and dispute the transaction. Escalate it as soon as you can and await your refund, don't let the case divert you back to eBay, keep it in PayPal for speed.

Don't correspond with the seller, don't give any other details out.

Crowqueen

Sounds like a scam. As the others have said, raise a dispute.

There's not an awful lot someone can do with your bank account details but I'd be concerned you wouldn't get the money.

Likewise sending someone your Paypal email address is OK (and people will have a job sifting through those 20K passwords to get anything useful out of it so I would submit in their raw form they are not a great deal of use to anyone). It's shared with the seller in some form when you pay them; I've got hold of someone's email in the past to make a payment via Paypal and that's all I could ever do with it. Passwords are obviously a different story but they are not asking for that. However, again, I'd query why they need it as it should be on the original transaction, all they need to do is refund, and they can't actively close an account while there are live transactions.

No_Eye_Deer

As above, they already have your Paypal email address on the confirmation of payment email, so no harm in giving them that.
If you are worried about your Paypal password, then just change your password.

I will take a guess, they have withdrawn the money, got a better offer, sold the phone and now don't have enough in the original account to refund.
Instead of coming clean, they have made up some bull about it and have to refund via bank (or a friends paypal account) now.

melliott1963

Melgirl wrote: »

The seller then replied that they couldn't access their paypal account and they needed the long number from the front of my debit card to be able to do a refund. I repeated that the refund should be via the same method the payment was made by.

I'd worry about this. In order to do a Bank Transfer, all they need is your sort code and account number, not the long number on your debit card!

As others have said, just raise a dispute with Paypal and you'll get your money back eventually.

Melgirl

Thank you everyone for the advice. I raised a dispute on paypal first thing this morning and by 2.00pm the seller had refunded through paypal. The payment has been put on hold by Paypal though whilst they look into the case.

No idea how long that takes, but I will leave the seller appropriate feedback as soon as I have my money back in my account.

Thanks again everyone

Mel x