Buyer paid for item by bank transfer, then opened a dispute

Postik

This happened to a friend of mine recently.  But I am kind of in disbelief that it can happen and wondered if anyone had encountered a similar thing.

My friend sold an item on Gumtree for £500.  He was very cautious not to accept Paypal or any other means of payment where the buyer could somehow take the money back.  He accepted payment via bank transfer (BACS).

In hindsight there were a number of suspicious things - the person paid him before even coming to see the item.  They came to his home on foot, and didn't ask to see the item working.

He found out today that this person has opened a dispute with their bank, and in turn his own bank have taken the funds from his account whilst they "investigate".  He has no idea whether they are claiming the item is faulty, or that they never received it.

My worry is that this person has probably tried this before, perhaps with smaller value items, and been successful.

It does beg the question of how safe it is to now accept payment via bank transfer.  Fortunately it is only £500, but what if it was a £15,000 car?

p00hsticks

Postik said:

It does beg the question of how safe it is to now accept payment via bank transfer.  Fortunately it is only £500, but what if it was a £15,000 car?

Hopefully it wasn't his main bank account, as the risk is not only of having the payment taken back out as has happened here, but also of having his account frozen completely if the person reports it as a fraudulent transaction. 

subjecttocontract

I wouldn't sell items of that value on Gumtree unless they were cash buyers. In fact I've sold probably thousands of items on Gumtree and every one of them has been cash.

Postik

subjecttocontract said:

I wouldn't sell items of that value on Gumtree unless they were cash buyers. In fact I've sold probably thousands of items on Gumtree and every one of them has been cash.

Same here.  He was worried with cash, it could be counterfit.  I would be less worried about that because notes are pretty easy to check.  But again if it was a much higher value item, it would be more time consuming to check every note and many buyers might refuse to carry, say £15k's worth of cash around.

p00hsticks said:

Hopefully it wasn't his main bank account, as the risk is not only of having the payment taken back out as has happened here, but also of having his account frozen completely if the person reports it as a fraudulent transaction. 

No, actually it was a savings account apparently.  Personally I thought you could only pay into a savings account from a nominated account.  But in any case, apparently there is some scam where you give out your bank details, and someone can take money from it by setting up a direct debit.  I'm not sure if they get hold of the money directly, or if they just pay for some of their own services via DD using your bank details.  In any case, he specifically used this account because it's not his main account, and it's not possible to setup a direct debit from it.

p00hsticks

Postik said:

No, actually it was a savings account apparently.  Personally I thought you could only pay into a savings account from a nominated account.  But in any case, apparently there is some scam where you give out your bank details, and someone can take money from it by setting up a direct debit.  I'm not sure if they get hold of the money directly, or if they just pay for some of their own services via DD using your bank details.  In any case, he specifically used this account because it's not his main account, and it's not possible to setup a direct debit from it.

Jeremy Clarkson famously got scammed like this after publishing his bank account details in a newspaper a few years back, but if you monitor your bank account as you always should do it's pretty straight forward to spot and rectify  
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Clarkson stung after bank prank

Band7

p00hsticks said:

Postik said:

No, actually it was a savings account apparently.  Personally I thought you could only pay into a savings account from a nominated account.  But in any case, apparently there is some scam where you give out your bank details, and someone can take money from it by setting up a direct debit.  I'm not sure if they get hold of the money directly, or if they just pay for some of their own services via DD using your bank details.  In any case, he specifically used this account because it's not his main account, and it's not possible to setup a direct debit from it.

Jeremy Clarkson famously got scammed like this after publishing his bank account details in a newspaper a few years back, but if you monitor your bank account as you always should do it's pretty straight forward to spot and rectify  
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Clarkson stung after bank prank

It's also only a temporary scam because you can get the money back instantly under the Direct Debit Guarantee. Not a scammer's paradise.

 

penners324

Wouldn't worry about DDs on an account. Very easy to cancel and you're covered by the DD guarantee 

Postik

Yes the DD would not trouble me.  But it seems like he took all precautions and still got burnt.  The question is, will the bank side with the scammer or will they eventually return the money?

sheramber

Not an unknown scam. Others have reported it on here.

All he can do is  give all his information to the bank who will decide who to believe.