Complicated transaction! £500 from Europe with Paypal

cougar_3

The key problem for me is how much protection I have. If I use a credit card (First Direct or Paypal) will I be protected?

How wasy would it be to get a chargeback (it seems easy enough for all the scammers!)

I'll be spending about £500.

bleugh

use your noggin!
buy off a good seller, one with a verified paypal account, and address,
make sure they've been on ebay some time and that the ebay address matches the paypal address

THEN you have a better than 50% chance things will be OK,
being fair to paypal tho, interanational transactions are always fairly risky regardless of payment method


also, have you considered import duty?, you'll be paying a further 22.5% total on top of the £500 you're paying (bloody customs), that'll take the amount you actually pay to well over £600

soolin

I agree with bleugh, check out the seller as far as you can. Is the feedback good, have they sold high cost items before? If they are suddenly selling something big and have only sold £1 widgets before then the account might be hijacked, so do a thorough check on them.

Make sure you know what you are buying and ask seller a question, anything will do, before bidding to make sure your mail to them doesn't bounce.

Paypal is safer than any other method, but it is still not 100% safe, to be as safe as you can make sure you fund your paypal with the credit card as you suggest.

And, as bleugh says, factor in all duty and customs fees.

Soo

MyUserNamesTaken

As far as tax and customs is concerned, I thought that as long as the tax was paid in an EU country, then you can't be taxed again. If the product you are buying is coming from with the EU, you shouldn't have to pay import duty on it, as tax should have been paid when it was bought in the EU (we supposedly live in a European free market).

This is why it's cheaper to buy your 3200 fags from anywhere in the EU. You've already paid the tax in the country where you bought the cigs, so no import tax can be charged here.

cougar_3

MyUserNamesTaken wrote:

You've already paid the tax in the country where you bought the cigs, so no import tax can be charged here.

Other people agree: ebay forum

The person I'd be buying from has a feedback of 29 and has mostly been selling sound cards, so they're relatively low value.

If worst came to worst, would I be able to claim the money back on the credit card or through paypal?

danmanchester

If his feedback is only 29 then I don't think he'll be showing as offering the £500 protection through Paypal as i think his feedback needs to be at least 50+ to qualify for this. So if anything did go wrong I'm guessing Paypal will say "not covered to full amount" or something along those lines, I would phone up the credit card company and double check up on purchase protection paying through a 3rd party like Paypal and see what they say as i thought they only offered full refund/chargeback protection through a merchant account..I could be wrong tho..but I'd personally be very hesitant at parting with that amount of cash if the buyer protection isn't available through Paypal.

cougar_3

Would it be worth paying for escrow? I've never used it before, but ebay recommend this site here for Europe: https://www.escrow-europa.com it would cost £10, but would it bring peace of mind?!