Bringing Paypal to Court or Trading standard?

Tonyfly

Hello all,

I sold my unwanted iPhone Xs MAX on ebay just before Christmas last year at a sum of £1180. Paypal charged me £42.48. A guy phoned up and wanted to meet up and inspect the phone in person saying its a valuable item so I agreed. He made payment through paypal just before he got my place so after I checked the payment has been cleared I gave the phone to him.

After about 20 days paypal took the money away from my paypal balance saying the buyer's account has been hacked so the payment was not authorized, and based on he picked the phone up instead of by delivery, I was not covered by seller protection.

Ebay says they have not received such a report, and offered to start a three way phone call with Paypal to verify that but Paypal did not bother.

I believe, as a payment company Paypal should have done miles better to protect buyers and sellers and not take itself out when problems rise up. Plenty of other orgnization ie HMRC and Autotrader send a text message to help verify the log in is genuine, and a buyer making a purchase of £1180 just simply click and go? My question is, will I stand a chance if I bring Paypal to small claims court asking to get my money back? Or shall I try Trading standard? Yes I understand they have terms and conditions when I sign up with them but that doesn't mean they should charge a lot of money when things goes right then let the seller take the fall when things goes wrong. It is just not fair.

Any advice would be appriciated.
Thanks
Tony

KeithP

You've been scammed.

Sorry to say that it was a foolish idea to allow goods to be collected and accept payment by Paypal.

You might want to get this thread moved to the Ebay Board for a more detailed explanation, but sadly, your money has gone.

You need to pass all the information you have over to Action Fraud.

waamo

This is a very old scam. If you want seller protection you need to abide by the t&c's for having it.

Legal action is likely to fail. Have you got a crime reference?

DCFC79

OP you have been done.

KatrinaWaves

You’ve got no chance. Seller protection is very good, but you didn’t do any of the things you need to do. Seller protection requires delivery confirmation. You just handed it over.

soolin

Tonyfly wrote: »

Hello all,

I sold my unwanted iPhone Xs MAX on ebay just before Christmas last year at a sum of £1180. Paypal charged me £42.48. A guy phoned up and wanted to meet up and inspect the phone in person saying its a valuable item so I agreed. He made payment through paypal just before he got my place so after I checked the payment has been cleared I gave the phone to him.

After about 20 days paypal took the money away from my paypal balance saying the buyer's account has been hacked so the payment was not authorized, and based on he picked the phone up instead of by delivery, I was not covered by seller protection.

Ebay says they have not received such a report, and offered to start a three way phone call with Paypal to verify that but Paypal did not bother.

I believe, as a payment company Paypal should have done miles better to protect buyers and sellers and not take itself out when problems rise up. Plenty of other orgnization ie HMRC and Autotrader send a text message to help verify the log in is genuine, and a buyer making a purchase of £1180 just simply click and go? My question is, will I stand a chance if I bring Paypal to small claims court asking to get my money back? Or shall I try Trading standard? Yes I understand they have terms and conditions when I sign up with them but that doesn't mean they should charge a lot of money when things goes right then let the seller take the fall when things goes wrong. It is just not fair.

Any advice would be appriciated.
Thanks
Tony

At the top of every payment received PayPal email and on every transaction in your PayPal account it says that for seller protection item must be sent tracked to the address given by PayPal . If you don't follow their conditions for seller protection you cannot invoke it later when things go wrong.

This is such a common scam, it is covered everywhere including on the sticky thread on the eBay sub board here on MSE (see my signature). It is rare for anyone to still fall for this and unfortunately it gives you very little in the way of redress when it goes wrong .

bris

So he wanted to inspect it before he bought it because it was such a valuable item, fair enough. But did alarm bells not start ringing when he paid for it before he even seen it?


Unfortunately Paypal payments never really clear, they just sit there waiting for scammers to claim them back for 180 days.

PDC

A lot of people do seem to be unaware of this issue despite all the coverage.

I'm not sure if it would've helped in this situation but it is a nuissance that you are still forced to accept PayPal as a payment option when you list a collection only item on eBay - eBay should really amend this in line with their own guidelines.