Was this an attempt to scam by seller?

MysteryMe · 20 March 2017 at 8:17PM

Just some advice please

I bought a coffee machine BIN from a seller and paid straight away through paypal funded by credit card

About an hour later I receive a message through ebay asking for payment. Looked in paypal and it was showing as pending seller accepting payment.

Get back to seller saying I've paid, you need to accept it.

Seller replies saying they have problem with paypal and ask me to send by bank transfer.

I say no way as no buyer protection but can wait a few days whilst they sort out issues with paypal.

Not long after they reply saying paypal sorted so can I log onto paypal. Do so, same pending status.

I say you need to accept the payment already sent.

Seller says canx this and send payment again

I say can you send an invoice/request for payment through ebay so I can pay linked to the purchase.

They then want to send a request for payment but through paypal which I refuse.

Seller then says they will cancel sale, which they have done and will list again.

I have now cancelled the pending payment I made originally.

It seems to me that the seller was trying to get me to pay without it being linked to an actual ebay sale either as a scam or trying to avoid fees in some way.

Is it worth reporting seller to ebay? They have two pos feedback as a seller. The transaction is no longer in My Ebay so I can't leave feedback.

I've not lost anything so happy to move on but if it is something that ebay need to know about I'm willing to report it. I've looked at the help options and all I end up with is an option to post a message of the community board.

TIA

sham63 · 20 March 2017 at 8:41PM

No, just sounds like a naive seller who doesn't understand how PayPal works. I've had similar in the past.

soolin · 20 March 2017 at 8:58PM

Apart from the bank transfer bit which would have worried me, the rest makes sense. If seller had the wrong PayPal addres then your payment would show as unclaimed and there would be absolutely no way seller could resend an invoice through PayPal with new details, it would just resend the original wrong details.

The usual advice to a seller in this situation would be to send a direct PayPal invoice for the goods, which would have been OK as long as the invoice showed clearly the goods being purchased and even an eBay item number to ensure there was no doubt of what you were paying for should there be a dispute.

Obviously though as you had paid and seller had made a mistake in email address you were not under any obligation to keep trying until seller finally got it sorted.

MysteryMe · 20 March 2017 at 9:21PM

That's interesting thank you. I thought the request for payment would have to come through ebay. I did not know that a paypal request would be acceptable for buyer protection as long as seller entered the purchase details on it.

challengedavid · 22 March 2017 at 10:16AM

could you have asked the seller to add the unclaimed payment email address to their paypal account, have done that myself when i mispelt my email

theonlywayisup · 22 March 2017 at 3:55PM

challengedavid wrote: »

could you have asked the seller to add the unclaimed payment email address to their paypal account, have done that myself when i mispelt my email

Only if the email is capable of being registered - by that I mean something like "ifilledthisinbymistake" couldn't be registered as an email as it is missing vital parts. So in this instance, the payment cannot be claimed by the seller.

Was this an attempt to scam by seller?

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free