Facebook marketplace paypal issue - scam ?

am.jovial

Recently, one of the facebook users agreed to buy an item on Facebook Marketplace for about 200£. Since he was not local it needed to be posted and I did not want to pack and post it. Also, there was someone else wanting to pick it up the following week and there were few more enquiries. But, this guy said he needs it badly and he was messaging me a lot requesting to post it and finally I agreed reluctantly. All these while he was polite and good mannered !!

Since he said he needs it urgently as he was moving, he booked for express courier collection that cost him about another 50£ (he was expecting it to be 5£ to 10£). He tried bank transfer but said it was not happening due to some card / bank issue and then transferred using PayPal. 

After seeing the PayPal transfer which was in pending status, I handed over the parcel to the collection agent. Once it reached him, he said "...not happy with the item and it is not at all as per the expectation, it is not usable, I would dispute with paypal blah blah....".  He asked me to refund the money and and asked me to pay the return courier charge to ship it back to me. This time he was rude, impatient  and so on !!

Though I did not agree with the issues,  since I was sure this item will be bought by someone one else soon, I agreed and refunded the PayPal 200£  and additionally, transferred 10£ for postage.

After this this person is not at all responding. He even seems to have blocked my number on whatsapp and also on facebook etc.

Now, my item of 200£  plus the 10£ I had transferred  (total £210)  is with him and he is not responding. I have his phone number, bank account number, facebook etc. 

 Please could someone guide me here what should I do here? 

km1500

nothing you can do - you have been scammed.

Buster_Danog

Contact Paypal. I have heard of a scam where the buyer collects the item then claims non-delivery to the buyer's address. However, if he booked a courier company and there is some tracking number it is worth contacting Paypal to see if that counts as receipt of the item by the buyer.

soolin

km1500 said:

nothing you can do - you have been scammed.

OP I agree, this seems such an obvious scam and it also seems from reading your post the
at some level you knew it was a scam and still went ahead. PayPal has rules, to stay safe you must follow those rules and allowing someone to send a courier means you gave up seller protection as you could not prove delivery to the address given by PayPal. 

I assume you haven’t used PayPal before, if you weren’t sure how it worked then why didn’t you ask before going ahead. i am particularly worried by the fact the original payment was pending, did it definitely clear and did you refund using the refund button on that original payment? My concern is that you refunded without an original cleared payment so may well end up not receiving the original payment yet refunding the full amount from your bank. On top of that remember you don’t get your PayPal fees back either. 

Also why on earth did you refund without getting the item back? If you had insisted on getting item back and buyer tried a SNAD claim then you wouldn’t have needed to refund until you got it back. Then to send extra money for the return, I’m sorry but this buyer had you hook line and sinker. I would be extremely careful that your details don’t get passed on and someone tries a cheeky further scam offering you some help getting it back for a small fee. 

Now that you have refunded I can’t see any possible claim or argument with PayPal. If you have a full confirmed geographic address for the buyer you could try small claims, but you would need to be certain that the address was correct and even then you aren’t guaranteed they would pay you back. 

TripleH

Sadly even if someone claims they need something urgently, funds need to be cleared in the account before dispatch. You should dictate the terms you use and stick to them. People claim urgency to try to force your hand as a good person doing a favour. Sadly the favour is to a nasty $h!tty $cumbag

I had a buyer on ebay ask I send a collection only item by courier and that they'd pay me on delivery. They were shirty when I refused to send it but the item was low value and I suspected I'd never get the courier fees off of them.

am.jovial

Thanks for the answers. Though I had used paypal before, I never had issues and I was not aware of these and just trusted hoping there won't be issues. I have his details like paypal id, facebook id, phone numbers, whatsapp conversations, bank account numbers etc. 
Can I not complain to police ? How do I do it ? Currently, I am abroad and may not be able to return to UK for few months.

Langerhan

am.jovial said:

Thanks for the answers. Though I had used paypal before, I never had issues and I was not aware of these and just trusted hoping there won't be issues. I have his details like paypal id, facebook id, phone numbers, whatsapp conversations, bank account numbers etc. 
Can I not complain to police ? How do I do it ? Currently, I am abroad and may not be able to return to UK for few months.

Technically yes, you can report this to Action Fraud: https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/reporting-fraud-and-cyber-crime 

However, it's very unlikely that the police will do anything, I'm afraid. As soolin said, you could try the small claims court if you wanted, but I'm not sure if that's doable from outside the UK.

forgotmyname

Bank account numbers maybe another victim who thinks someone accidently sent them money and they did the same as you. So they maybe
out of pocket and chasing them also. The money pending to your account maybe another person being scammed assuming its a real
email and not a fake one.

Stupid email apps giving you the senders ID which you can change to anything and not the genuine email address.   Amazon®  sent me an email
yesterday telling me I had won a car.  Not sure what I will do an a Ford F150 all electric vehicle, dont think it has enough charge to drive it back
to the UK.  Not very smart though when they think my email address is my name, not a name at all.  But many do not check the senders details.

Although one scammers email did have me chuckling the other week, pretending@  scammer with a sense of humour?

fimacdoodle

This is common. (They keep it secret as its bad for ebay and online selling business)

My son was had over like this and PayPal looks after the buyer, not the seller. Paypal cocked up and refunded the buyer, as well as refunding the money they had paid my son, as well as them not returning the goods on some spurious claim, even though we later won the case. They (paypal) then fobbed us off for months until my son got fed up chasing it. 
It was a good life experience for him !

Action fraud is a joke. Its just a recording service with little action referred to actual police forces.

soolin

fimacdoodle said:

This is common. (They keep it secret as its bad for ebay and online selling business)

My son was had over like this and PayPal looks after the buyer, not the seller. Paypal cocked up and refunded the buyer, as well as refunding the money they had paid my son, as well as them not returning the goods on some spurious claim, even though we later won the case. They (paypal) then fobbed us off for months until my son got fed up chasing it. 
It was a good life experience for him !

Action fraud is a joke. Its just a recording service with little action referred to actual police forces.

PayPal does not force a seller to refund before they have their item back, there is no hidden agenda here nor any other conspiracy, OP has never responded to the question of whether the payment cleared or not but if they refunded the original payment then it must have done. My fear from the OP was that payment had not cleared and seller sent an entirely new payment , but as mentioned, this was never confirmed by OP.

Paypal is safe if you use it properly, unfortunately even though OP says they are regular users they seem to have ignored all the basic seller checks and requirements. Obvious scammers are easily defeated , but sellers must ensure they know how to use an online payment safely. 

JetpackVelociraptor

Fimacdoodle - this isn't the same situation as the one you're describing, and not very common either. OP has been scammed because they very unfortunately bypassed every safety and security check PayPal have to offer. Given that your son managed to win his case with PayPal I'm guessing he didn't do that!

1. You should never allow buyers to arrange their own courier collection if they've paid you by PayPal and it's not through eBay. PayPal seller protection only covers transactions where you, the seller, post the item using a tracked service to the address the buyer has given on their PayPal payment. Without that you've no proof the buyer actually owns that PayPal account.

2. There is no good excuse for a buyer not being able to pay by bank transfer after having agreed to do so. This is always a warning that you are about to be scammed.

3. Consider whether it's even slightly reasonable for someone to have an urgent need for the item you're selling, and whether it's something somebody in their situation would even buy. Scammers routinely create an artificial sense of urgency to put pressure onto the seller. I have a list of red flag situations that we use to decide whether something is a scam, and "urgent!" is right at the top of it.

4. Pending payments in PayPal are a little odd, usually worth talking to PayPal about it to check it's actually going through. I hope it was the PayPal account you were logged into and looking at and not an email. Emails can be faked.

5. You should never refund the buyer until you receive the item back. If you refund before you get the return, even quite ordinary normal people may wonder if they can just keep the item and the money. But this guy was always going to scam you.

Right now, it looks like you're out £210, but do check your paypal account to make sure the money you refunded from was already there. If you paid the scammer out of your PayPal account a different way, and their original payment is reversed (for example if your scammer used a stolen credit card to fund the account) you could find yourself issuing two refunds and being out twice as much. For now your only remaining options are legal, so do try to see if you can find the guys' delivery address and look up any other details you can get. Do you have the name or number of the courier he used for example? If you can get his physical address you can send a letter before action. Report it to action fraud so you get a crime reference number, then try PayPal again to see if they'll help or offer any kind of goodwill gesture.

Be very wary of anything else you sell online for the next few months. Scammers will share details of people they have scammed so that they (or their friends/associates) can hit them again. Also if anyone contacts you about this issue and requests any kind of payment from you to help resolve it, that's a common follow-up scam.