Buyer paid with fraudulant card ... help please

yumzone

yes we did but it goes straight through to an 02 mailbox:mad:

shellsuit

yumzone wrote: »

yes we did but it goes straight through to an 02 mailbox:mad:

Did you give the Police the number? Maybe they could trace who and where she is

windswept

Have you tried to find this 'person'? you can try bt.com or 192.com just in case the scammer is stupid enough to use her real name and address.;)
What details do ebay give for her?
It can sometimes be as easy as typing her name/ address into google - you would be amazed what it can throw up.
I'm always amazed by the sheer number of people who do not realise that you should never accept paypal for collection items - I saved someone nearly £2000 on another (non ebay) forum, when they asked about a situation just like this.

Bromley86

soolin wrote: »

I'm sorry but I;m going to sound terse here but this has happened due to a fundemental misunderstanding about how paypal works. [snip]

Fair points. Since reading a few posts, I've been surprised just how easy it would have been to scam 90% of my sellers (non-trackable post).

Aside from leaving themselves open to the "I never picked it up" scam, do you know the specifics of the PayPal dodgy card element of the OP's problem? I had (naively) assumed that any deliberate card fraud would be PayPal's problem, as the seller never even sees the card number.

frivolous_fay

Bromley86 wrote: »

do you know the specifics of the PayPal dodgy card element of the OP's problem? I had (naively) assumed that any deliberate card fraud would be PayPal's problem, as the seller never even sees the card number.

Essentially, card fraud isn't very easy for paypal to pick up until it is reported - all the scammer has to do is supply an alternate delivery address, and if they are permitted to collect, they don't even need to bother doing that.

Read up on Seller Protection - if you qualify for that, paypal will fight your corner in the event of a chargeback. (As long as you can prove delivery) Essentially, if you qualify for seller protection, it means the delivery address has been verified by paypal to belong to the card owner.

You must protect yourself, because paypal can't possibly check every single transaction themselves.

soolin

I'm back and I'm a little calmer now after my rant. It is a serious question though 'how do we get to new or naive sellers so we can help them to protect themselves'?

It just makes me so cross that criminal scum prey on sellers like this, how on earth they live with themselves I don't know..I would personally hunt them down and bankrupt them...oh dear, maybe I am still cross maybe I'll leave this alone for a while.

OP, I would just say that there is virtually nothing you can do here unless you can find the person's address that actually collected the item and even then you will struggle as they can simply deny they ever collected it. I'm sorry I know you don't want to hear that but you actually have two separate problems and it is difficult to see where you can go on this one.

greeneye

Well Soo I've said this before and you didn't agree with me last time but I'll say it again anyway ;+)

Paypal should inform sellers what funding source they are recieving their payment from. I.e Credit card, debit card/bank balance or paypal balance.

And allow us to make decisions on wether to complete transacations i.e I'll ship to a non UK/US confirmed/unconfirmed address (so without seller protection) if you've paid via a paypal balance and maybe via debit card (if you have decent feedback) but no way jose if you've used a CC.

OK in ths instance might not have helped the OP whose unwittingly comitted some cardinal sins, but if it had said in big letters at the top of the payment email "THIS PAYMENT HAS BEEN FUNDED BY A CREDIT CARD" might just have made the OP stop and think.

Alfie_E

greeneye wrote: »

…but if it had said in big letters at the top of the payment email "THIS PAYMENT HAS BEEN FUNDED BY A CREDIT CARD" might just have made the OP stop and think.

There are two problems with this.

1. It can’t be done.
2. If it could be done, it still wouldn’t work.

For point 1, it would start to break one of the fundamental properties of PayPal – that the buyer’s and seller’s financial details are kept separate. Why stop at the payment type? Why not more information about the card? Any of this could fall foul of EU data protection legislation. And, remember, some countries actually enacted the legislation as the EU intended – you can’t see any of the eBay bid history of a German eBay user. I know you get to see whether an address is confirmed. However, you have to see an address to know where to send something and you can’t infer that the payment is coming from the same source as used to confirm the address.

For point 2, all the scammers have to do is use two PayPal accounts to get the money from the card into the PayPal system, by making up a fictional purchase. Then, they can pay for your item using their PayPal balance. Once PayPal realise what’s happened, they’ll still reverse the payment. Maybe it comes under the “otherwise invalidated” provision in their User Agreement.

yumzone

Hi guys thanks for all your replies ... Been in touch with the police again today and they have taken a proper statement etc. They feel optamistic that paypal will put my account back to what it was. They are now going to work directly with paypal and the issuing card company to get this sorted to somewhat.

These criminals have also targeted about 4 other sellers, got the goods and then claimed the money back - so i will give the police man all the info i have about that tommorrow.

I will keep you all posted.

soolin

The police have no real power to force paypal to sort this out. bank fraud is now clearly defined as being the problem of the banking ombudsman following a change in rules earlier this year.

This is a very good chance that anyone else who lost money will be covered by paypal protection if they shipped to a confirmed address and complied with the other paypal requirements, that is what paypal protection is for.