OK so I recently won a Touch HD on ebay and I sent payment through and I'm sent an email with the following:
[FONT=arial]Quote from "Potential Scammer": Hi, There may be a problem. Basically The money you sent me came through, I needed to send that money to my supplier because I owe them money for the phones still. Basically Paypal have stopped the account for an unknown reason and wont tell me why. I need to go through some huge amount of paperwork to get the money released. Unfortunately because of this I am refusing to send the phone until Paypal release the money. For obvious reasons. I'm not trying to rip you off, Paypal are simply being wierd about the transaction. Its very hard to understand what they want, and without any sort of registered postage numbers its hard to prove and hence get them to unlock the account. I'll let you know how I go, i have send them a number of emails. hopefully it will only be a couple of days. If its any longer I will let you know. What I would suggest is that if it does take longer, you will need to log a dispute with paypal. They will refund your money and put my account in debit, then when they finally do release the money it will just dissapear into the money owing on my account. I'll let you know asap if you need to do this. Thanks[/FONT]
OK, the email says she has my money and can see it's there, and she also has the phones as she has to pay her supplier for them.
She says that paypal has frozen her account and implies its without any reason, yet she has paperwork to fill out (What? Does the paperwork say "We dont know why we froze your account please fill it out and send it back"?).
She mentions them being wierd about it and "not understanding what they want", yet goes on to mention she is finding it hard to prove something (god only knows what) without registered post numbers - implying she DOES know what they want, and in turn knows why the account was supposedly frozen.
She then mentions I should log a dispute if it takes too long and that paypal will refund me, and then when her account is unfrozen it will automatically go back into her account. I'm fairly sure refunds don't work like that and that once its unfrozen payment would have to be remade. It seems VERY unlikely that a refund would be reversed without any notification and just go to the sellers account, especially considering a refund implies I'm not paying anything and they aren't sending anything.
I'm guessing the "lodge a claim" was just to make me go "Oh well, if they are saying lodge a claim it won't be a scam, and if I do it will come out of my account once it clears anyway so I may as well just wait".
Anyone with any experience in paypal disputes or anyone with a general opinion want to contribute?
I'd lodge a dispute with PayPal immediately. As soon as this person withdraws your money from their PayPal account, despite a successfully lodged dispute on your behalf, I don't think you will see that money refunded to you until this person puts more money into their PayPal account.
This happened to me in 2006 - after I won the dispute, it took the seller around 4 months to actually deposit money into their PayPal account to bring their negative PayPal amount back to $0.00, at which point the money was returned to me.
I was extremely displeased with the PayPal system - I assumed that in those circumstances PayPal would refund my money and then chase the seller for their money... that's what makes sense, but it didn't happen like that.
The thing is, even if she is telling the truth, my money is in her account, as verified by her. Once it gets resolved she will obviously still have my money, so why can't she send me my phone? As it stands, HER account is frozen, and she loses nothing as she has both the phone AND my money.
Until it gets resolved I should be entitled to either my money back or the phone.
Edit: For perspective, imagine you walk into a store and buy the phone. You hand them the money and they then they call the following day and say "We had a banking problem so we cant give you the phone sitting on the desk here right behind me 3 steps away, even though you gave use the money yesterday, and the phone is right there".
option A: she is scamming you option B: she is stupid, and even though she has your money is scared that because she cant access it she wont send the phone, in the fear of losing both the phone AND your money.
Either way, this is what paypal is for, so i can see her getting away with much, its just a pain in the arse.
Yeah it certainly sounds dumb. Maybe just tell her that you want your phone, or you'll send the email to the police. She's put there in black and white that she's received your money and won't send the phone. There's none of the undefinable facts that usually keeps any law enforcement getting involved in an ebay dispute.
At least then you might get your phone instead of having to wait for a refund.
...but then again... that's pretty unlikely! Good luck bud.
I just got off the phone to paypal, they assured me that because I bought the item on Ebay I'm covered by buyer protection and in 2 days I can escalate my dispute to a claim, and after that they will refund the money within 10 days regardless of if the other person has the money in their account or not and if if they dont then they get shafted with a negative amount.
But either way it looks like I may at least get my money back within 2 weeks.
This situation could be quite legitimate. Buyers have been pulling scams using Paypal for quite sometime and this may be what the seller is concerned about Eg. The buyer would win the auction, pay by paypal, the funds would appear in the sellers account, the seller would dispatch the goods in good faith and then the buyer would retract their payment and keep the goods. To combat this many sellers including myself refuse to send goods until the money has cleared Paypal.
Having said that I would be very suspicious if I were you.
If that was the case, why did she not just say "I'm waiting for the money to clear paypal". Why create some elaborate back story about frozen accounts? It's not like I asked for any unusual information, I just made payment after I won, sent a message saying I'd made payment and to let me know the shipping numbers when my funds cleared and the item was posted.
She might have done it, due to her knowing that it's going to take a while to get it sorted out. Meanwhile you would be on the other end saying 'where the ****s my phone?' and negative rating her.
But generally I pay within 5 minutes of the auction ending and most sellers send off the item the same day. Others take 1 week before they send the item, even same day payment.
Had one guy who listed a item on ebay, won the bid. But that week he was getting a tooth removed. FFS, don't sell and item on ebay on the same week your getting your teeth re-aligned and your on drugs to combat the pain.
I wonder if the paypal protection comes into play. But dispute it anyways. In my oppinion a scamer in that situation would ask for more money to resolve it like what those Nigerian scams do.
Well I lodged a dispute with paypal, and escalated to a claim and she still has not returned any calls to Paypal despite there being attempts made on the claim status. She has until about 8:00pm tonight or something like that (Dont know the exact timezone change) to contact them before Paypal refund my money and start proceedings against her.
We have concluded our investigation into your case and have decided in your favour.
We were able to recover $770.01 AUD, and this amount has been credited to you. Please allow five business days for this adjustment to be posted.
If you are due any additional funds, we will make our best effort to recover the balance from the seller.
If the seller's account has insufficient funds to complete the refund owed to you, please be assured that we will take appropriate action against the seller's account, which may include limitation of the seller's account privileges.
If you are due any additional funds, we will make our best effort to recover the balance from the seller.
If the seller's account has insufficient funds to complete the refund owed to you, please be assured that we will take appropriate action against the seller's account, which may include limitation of the seller's account privileges
============
So doesn't that mean, "If the seller does not have the funds in his account we put a red flag on the account and you can only get what we recover?"
That is pretty scary, you make a purchase person moves the money into another account. Uses a stolen credit card and fake email address and gets away with the money.
Probably, though it does specifically say they recovered the $770 and the stipulation for the rest is "If any additional funds are due" so while scary and borderline lying on Paypals behalf for "safe transactions", I'm not too concerned this time around.
Edit: And for clarification, the person on the phone did tell me that if they have insufficient funds they will plunge their account into the negative and just chase them for the money.
Well it is safe to a degree. Any transaction someone makes in person or on the net could be fraudulent. There is just a small minority that will try get away with it. Hell small businesses do it all the time to the lab I work for... they ask for tests, we do them, they don't send the monies :O but we hold the test results... and legally they can't release there product until its safe :)