Got home yesterday and checked my emails and see what people needed or wanted, same old day, just more news. First email on my opened list was one from Paypal! Red flag went up real fast, thought to myself more spoof!
I go to my ebay account and sign into my Paypal account only to find that there had been some money with held out of my funds! I was mad as a hornet then. I went back to the email and read it. It seems someone who bought soemthing from me decided a month and a half later they wanted their money back for some reason. So I went to my paper files and pulled up the auction, that had the USPS tracking number and the name of the buyer, and went back to the email from Paypal. They wanted the persons full name, ebay item number, form of payment, and email address. So I gathered everything Paypal wanted and emailed it to them, pending some sort of investigation.
I dicided to go look at the persons feedback which was 299, he had 5 neg in the past week and others coming in, scolled down the page and found replys to other good feedback which read, “Don’t sell to, claims never got the items, and does charge back using Paypal!!!” There were allot of these they date clear back to December of 05. None of these were there when he purchased from me. So I emailed him and asked him what the he%% is going on. Beleive it or not the guy got back to me claiming he never got the item, after telling him that the USPS tracking number tells me different. I looked at some of his auction he won over a 30 day period, and he was purchasing $300 to $400 a day in HO items, must have a bottomless pit of money.
As I see it this is a buyer who is trying to pad his hobby on others money. I have contacted some of the other members who got burned, and they said he has been doing this for a week now, so Paypal has to follow through and look into it.
Do your self a favor guys, don’t waste your time calling Paypal on the phone, they are worse than trying to deal with your own creditcard
This is an interesting situation. This “buyer” is pretty crafty. He is basically ripping folks off in such amounts that no one person has the incentive to pursue the matter. The cost of pursuing legal action against him would be prohibitive. Of course he has made a mistake. He has done this in a forum that allows all of the victims to communicate with each other.
Being that you know the person’s address you should perhaps consider filing a complaint with the state Attorney General’s office nearest his address as well as the county district attorney. At the same time try to mobolize the others that he has done this to do the same. While a single complaint is not liekly to make an AG or DA pursue a matter, dozens of complaints might result in some action. In order to have more impact it might be useful to have single person collect all the info from all the folks and present them all at once.
It will take some effort on your part, and you may never see your money again, but you will have the satisfaction (along with everyone else that had taken part) of getting the bum taken care of.
Also, if you use a bank account for electronic fund transfer, set up a buffer account… That is, one that is used Only for e-business… Niether Paypal or any other online stuff Ever touch my real bank accounts. As soon as the paypal - bank transfer is complete, I withdraw the money.
Oh, Paypal says it take 2 to 3 business days to transfer money. I made a transfer Sunday nite, came Monday afternoon they took the money before they did the transfer. Go figure!
I only use money orders, fast, cheap, efficient, the seller has his money in 4-5 days can cash it at once, Apparently Americans must wait until a cheque is cleared through some clearing house in New York? what’s that all about?? Sellers seem to really like money orders from my experience.
I hear what you’re saying but I’ve heard that some people are making phony money orders and I sure wouldn’t be able to tell. Paypal does have protections builts in and I therefore take advantage of Paypal.
I like to use Pay pal for buying I have not really used it for selling the ppl that have bought stuff for me sent me cashier’s Checks. But when I send any one either money or and Item through the mail I use the return recipt things that the post office offers. If some one states that they didnt get the item then I have a little green card that said they did. This service only costs you an extra dollar, to me that is well paid for insurance.
Waiting for checks to clear is to insure that the check is good… That’s what That’s all about. Same should be true with money orders… Recently, the US postal service has begun computer checking money orders on presentation before cashing… Just to make sure it’s authentic. Banks, or at least most of them, treat all money orders as checks and some will place a 5 day hold on them for clearance…
One thing to note about paypal, thier protections are only good if you send to Confirmed Adresses only.
Postal delivery confirmation isn’t worth beans. It’s up to the carrier to scan the package when delivered but not all do it. Some will scan the package before they even load it into the truck for delievery… Ask me sometime how I know that. If you want to insure against the sort of situation in the original post, require Signature confirmation. That’s a card that the recipient MUST sign on receipt of the package. There can be No argument then as to if or not it was received. That, or use something that is truely trackable like UPS or Fedex ground. Especially on high ticket items.
In addition to collecting informationand turning it over to the DA, as DK suggests, I would also turn it over to the US postal inspector… This clown is using the US postal service to commi
whatever happened to the honest people in the world, or on ebay, or anywhere? i never had any trouble with ebay for years. now days i guess you can’t trust nobody.
I just got done reading emails from other members who this scammer is trying to put a stop to, they never got one word from him about a problem, he went strait to Paypal, and filed the chrage backs to over 75 purchases in the past month. We are pooling together to work against this guy, one of the members he bought something from is a lawyer, so its going to get ugly, he has taken the info and started some paper work up for all of us to see.
You are right though guys, what ever happen to people being honest and doing the right thing, guess those days are gone. From what I have heard, there has been a rash of this since the first of the year on ebay. And from what Paypal tells me it could be up to 75 days before any of us see our money back. They hold it, until they make the call on who wins and who loses. That takes about 10 days, where does the 75 days fall at is the next question? LOL! its a cruel world out there.
The only problem I’ve ever had with ebay so far was when I won a set of Santa Fe passenger cars from an old guy a couple of years ago that was new to ebay and didn’t understand how PayPal worked, and I had to get ebay to contact him to let him know that he had been paid and to send the cars to me…
As much buying and selling as I have done on Ebay, I’ve had very few problems. Most people dealing there are honest. The most recent one that I thought was a rip off was that I bid on a “Buy it Now” auction for two Walther’s Superliner Cars (HO) listed at about half retail price. He insisted on money order, but had good feedback, only one bad and the buyer didn’t read the payment terms (sent WU moneygram). I sent the money order Aug 8. Never received anything. He ignored my emails. Ebay finally removed him as a seller. Last Friday, I found a package on my porch, the two superliner cars. No explaination, but 5-1/2 months later, they came.
PayPal has its faults but its the best option on ebay. I have heard complaints about them being very slow in resolving any problems. I agree with rolleiman in that you shouldn’t use your primary bank accounts for PayPal. Setting up a PayPal only bank acct. or only using a credit card for PayPal is the best way to protect yourself in my opinion.
Money orders are the only other payment option that I take when i sell things on ebay but even then as someone else has said, they can be pretty easily forged and they too must clear the bank just like a personal check.
Just like anything else ebay has its upsides and its downsides but so far for me, the upsides have far outweighed the downside.
For the buyer,Paypal has a definite advantage over the money order…sellers swallows the costs while it’s the other way around with the MO.To me an MO is like cash and I make it a point that the seller receives every penny he’s entitled to.
Being canadian,I like using canadian postal money orders which I consider totally reliable,unless the canadian postal service went bankurpt,which is not likely.And yet,I’ve had a seller refuse this mode of payment saying that is bank charged him 5% to cash it.It did surprise me as these are cashed FOC anywhere in Canada but then I figured that U.S. financial institutions are not to give out free services but then,nor is Paypal that I know of.
When I suggested that the MO probably wasn’t worse than Paypal,he replied that Paypal paid him instantly so he wouldn’t have to wait for his money.Well…can’t argue this one.
I’ve paid american sellers about 25 times so far with cdn money orders and I’ve never had a complaint yet and won’t change as I don’t want a Paypal account.I certainly am sorry that some financial institutions charge fees to ca***hem (I admit it’s new to me),but they are safe for both parties.And in many cases (small buys),they cost me more than 5% and I don’t mind.
I’m am a buyer and have gotten some realy nice deal.If the seller doesn’t take USPS m/o then I don’t even mess with. the old saying IN GOD WE TRUST all others pay CASH. seller gets his money I get my item and every buddies happy. my two cents… [:D][:D][:D][:D]
There was a buyer who made a bid on one of my high dollar item and never paid. Apparently other sellers were getting hit at the same time and they communicated with me via email.
It took a month but that got settled very well. Good news was the item found a good home to someone else.
You will never see paypal on me or any business done with them. The closest to electronic transfers is a credit card and that one is totally tracked until the sale is completed.
As far as Ebay is concerned the prices are approaching those of regular LHS’s o I favor very unique and well built items that fit my railroad.
I dont care for the scammers either, I encourage you to band together and shut em down.