eBay scam

I'm fairly certain paypal cover losses for any fraud/scam related to ebay.

I'm sure you've already looked but see here for info.

https://www.paypal.com/us/eBay/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/protections-buyer-outside

Hope it gets sorted out for you, there's nothing worse than dealing with this nonsense.

That sucks dude.

I would love to help you, but I have no idea.

All I can say is good luck.

Ray, Paypal can be a nightmare to deal with. I have had horrible experiences with them, and so has my older son. I won't use Paypal for anything whatsoever anymore. I hope you get your money back.

My brother's a magnet for ebay/paypal scams - most of which are his own fault but there've been a few that he's shown me that I'm pretty sure I would have fallen for; cleverly mirrored paypal sites etc which fool you into thinking you're at the real paypal.

I'd like to think that some sort of integrated payment system built into ebay (like amazon has) instead of a third party one like paypal would make things more secure but given the open nature of ebay, there'd still be holes to exploit.

Let us know what happens anyway.

I haven't had any problems with eBay but I have with PayPal!! I closed my account and fortunately they made good on the issue but mine was a matter of someone hacking my account I guess. I was charged through PayPal for something that at the time, I didn't even know what it was. Thankfully it worked out but I am forever done with PayPal.

That's does suck. I've only bought a few things on eBay and have been lucky so far--the things I bought were as advertised. I'd be pissed too if I were in your shoes. It seems like either eBay or PayPal would help; they both advertise the safety of using their websites/services.

Good luck to you. Try not to get so angry that it makes you miserable for the next few days.

Ray, if you used a credit card with PayPal to make the purchase you can contact your credit card company if/when PayPal denies your claim.

I ordered a DVD from a "company" on ebay at the beginning of March. Paid for it immediately with BuyItNow. A week later I hadn't heard anything, so I e-mailed them. No response. Another week later I said I would leave negative feedback if I didn't hear anything. Made good on my threat. 2 days later they said they were waiting to get more of the DVD's.

They sold me something they didn't even have!! I was furious. I finally got it yesterday after nearly a month. It was brand new and just as the listing said but come on. A month for a yoga DVD. Ridiculous. It will be my last ebay transaction.

I (and my late wife) bought probably 1,000 things off eBay, and got ripped off once. In that case, our only recourse was to file a complaint with the post office for mail fraud -- if they ever catch the guy, he's commited a federal felony.

Since your guy is in China? Good luck. Best thing i can suggest is protest it on pay pal -- or, if paypal is linked to your bank account, dispute it with your bank, and do a stop on the ACH.

Ray, you might want to check out this FBI link, too, and file a complaint.

http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx

I had exactly the same thing happen ( with the Old Man's christmas present.)

Paypal had the money back to me within a fortnight of me claiming.

Sheesh.

I don't use PayPal much, but I did use it last night to buy an e-book because it was the only option I could use. Got an e-mail after that scared the pants off me. I went back to PP and double checked the transaction, and the numbers made sense there, so I heaved a big sigh. Otherwise I would have just heaved. I dunno wtf. It was an AW author, so I know who I would go crying to

So far I have never bought anything on eBay, though I do have an account. My computer was bought for me on eBay. It's not the kind of place I like to shop. I won't even look at any of the last-minute auction dealies; I would do as much checking as possible before buying anything there, and think about it a day or so. Besides, I can usually find as good a price on anything I really need somewhere that I can trust.

maestrowork said:

They should NEVER allow an unverified account, especially non-US, to do PayItNow. They should have some kind of intermediate steps to deter scamming. The transactions shouldn't go through just like that -- the money is gone, dude.

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Not saying I agree that this analogy is fair, but think about eBay as a giant online flea market. The place that leases space to sellers doesn't do any kind of background check to see if they are scammers or if they are selling illegal merchandise. They just take their payment for the space, and that's their only involvement. eBay is providing the virtual space.

Hopefully PayPal will be able to help, although I've heard some horror stories. I always pay on eBay with a credit card so I can do a dispute directly through my card issuer. If you used a card to find your PayPal account, that might be an option too.

maestrowork said:

I'm so pissed right now. I went to eBay for the first time in like a year looking for something, and I found a great deal. The seller has good ratings -- like 142 positive and no negative.

So I went for the BuyItNow option.

Then I paid for it with Paypal. But stupid me, I didn't double check the information before I completed the transaction.

A few hours later, I got an email from eBay saying that item was taken off eBay because it violated some of their policies. It's totally GONE from the eBay site (fortunately, I saved the receipt as a PDF file).

I went to Paypal and noticed the "seller" was some Chinese guy and the account is not verified and it's non-US. RED FLAG. It is not the same name as the seller on eBay.

Now what?

It seems like eBay is going to hands-off on this one. And my only other option seems to be disputing it with PayPal.

I'm so pissed off right now. I swear, I'm not going to shop at eBay again if this kind of crap happens. It seems like the system is so prone to fraud, and there's not much you can do about it.

Who can I talk to about this?

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It was probably the same guy who scammed a friend of mine trying to buy a collector's edition DVD through EBay. He sent out the DVD alright, but it wasn't in mint condition. It was so scratched up it wouldn't even play and he sold it as "unopened"

It's no big deal, Ray. You'll easily get your money back from PayPal. It will take probably a couple of weeks, but you are protected.

I have been buying on eBay for about six years. (I collect antique bookmarks; they are the only thing I buy on the site.) In addition, I hang out fairly regularly on the discussion boards, especially Bidders, Professional Buyers, Trust & Safety, and Sellers Central. I recommend this to anyone and everyone. You will learn so much from the experienced and generous people there.

Scammers have infiltrated eBay to an astonishing degree. It is up to you to protect yourself. And unfortunately cheap Chinese imports and fakes are all over the place. I never buy anything thing there except the collectible I know. You can get very nice things, and most sellers are good, but you do have to take responsibility for learning to use the site wisely.

As for PayPal, I use them and like it very much. I never worry because they are a back-up if anything goes wrong. That said, I have only had to use them three times over the course of six years. (The reason is I am a careful, educated buyer. I check sellers on Toolhaus and other tools.) I set up my PayPal account to be funded by a bank account instead of a credit card. It's less protection but then I know what I buy. I did not use my account at my credit union. Instead, I opened one of those no minimum balance free accounts at a local bank that has no connection to my credit union. I keep about $2-$5 in it until I win something, then transfer money in to pay for it. Nothing has ever gone wrong, but if it does my savings, checking and investments are all safe.

There are several things you can do to be a good buyer:

• Check your potential sellers out very carefully (using Toolhaus), not just numbers but actual comments going back several months or years.
  
• Use your Watch List, and search by Newly Listed. That gives you time to research your seller, other sellers with the same items and so on.
  
• Determine your maximum bid and bid it all at once near the end. This is called sniping. If you don't want to be there or can't, use a sniping service to avoid being shilled (by a bad seller) or nibbled (by a newbie who doesn't know the best way to bid).
  
• Realize that PowerSellers get to be that by selling; it's not an indication of trustworthiness.
  
• Most sellers have some negatives. It's a dangerous field out there for them. They are subject to scammers, extortionists, idiots, crazies, and just plain bad people. They are no longer allowed to leave negative feedback so many suffer unjustified hits to their feedback. Don't assume bad feedback is reflective of the seller. It might be, but judge it within context.
  
• Do hang out on those discussion boards I mentioned earlier. You'll pick up a lot of excellent information and learn to see things from both a buyer's and a seller's perspective. You can also ask questions.

Buying on eBay isn't as good as it used to be, but it still can be okay. It's not worth fretting over or getting angry. Learn how to use it. And when it doesn't work for you, leave it.

I've had great luck with Paypal resolving disputes easily and quickly. I use a credit card with its own protection for these transactions through Paypal, so that I can claim to the cc company (I have 2 months for mine) if Paypal doesn't refund. I've had other problems with Paypal, but not with disputes.

Good luck!

Did you try a lawsuit against E-bay?

I've bought many things on EBay and have had only one bad transaction. The lady claimed she sent the item I ordered I never recieved it. After feeling like I got the run around I filed a complaint against her and got my money back. BTW she claimed right to the end she sent the item but I never did get anything.

The only things I ever buy on eBay are old music magazines - not exactly a high-fraud area. I think once I didn't get something, and had to file an item not received. They refunded me.

Maybe I'm lucky, but I'm also overly paranoid and so have never been ripped off online. My original ID is from 1998 but I never bought anything until 2003. I also started selling shortly afterward, and spend a year or two learning the ins and outs while hanging out on the ebay discussion boards.

Long story short, ebay and paypal are two big interrelated cluster-you-know-whats.

Someone mentioned Amazon's integrated buying thing. eBay BOUGHT PayPal circa 2002, so they've had plenty of time to "fix" things if things were ever going to be fixed. Instead, both paypal and ebay have myriad rules for what you have to do to be protected as a buyer and seller (though I think it IS simpler as a buyer), and the rules are allways changing as they add more. People HAVE made careers of selling stuff on ebay, and then have heart attacks when ebay raises all the seller fees (the're based on percentages of listing and final sale prices).

I figure you might as well go to college and get an accounting degree and find a job as a CPA, it would be about the same amount of learning and work, and you wouldn't tie all your knowledge and career to one company.

maestrowork said:

Buyers beware. That's all I have to say. Everything looked so legit and then it turned out to be a scam. It's using the weakness in the eBay/Paypal system. At the end, the scammer wins and eBay/Paypal/buyer loses.

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Can you tell us more about the transaction? How much money was it for, and what kind of product? Did you check any other current or previous auctions by the seller?

One common red flag is the seller has a great rating, the current auctions are for moderately expensive items, but looking at the feedback, previous items sold were inexpensive things such as yarn, embroidery hoops and scrapbooking supplies, but now they're selling terabye-sized disk drives. Riiiiiiight. This is a classic sign of a stolen seller account.

I'm wondering what the seller did and how he did it. You can describe it on the ebay discussion boards, they can be helpful.
Go here:
http://forums.ebay.com/category/Ebay-Discussion-Boards/2001
especially under Paypal, Trust&Safety, and maybe (the one where I used to hang out) Seller Central (you don't really have to be a seller to post there). Just lurking for a while, you can learn about all sorts of scams, how they operate, and how to avoid them, as well as what all the arcane rules of ebay and paypal are.

Here's an interesting thread:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/topic/Trust-Safety-Safe/Paypal-Buyer-Quotprotectionquot/520109360

shokadh said:

It was probably the same guy who scammed a friend of mine trying to buy a collector's edition DVD through EBay. He sent out the DVD alright, but it wasn't in mint condition. It was so scratched up it wouldn't even play and he sold it as "unopened"

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I can see the responses on the ebay boards (I spent too much time there): "File a SNAD" (dispute for item "Significantly Not As Described"). There's lots of drama on the boards (the moderation is a cluster-thing too), but if you're discerning of the responses and can ignore trolls, you can get plenty of good advice there. I learned a lot just by lurking there.

Of course, all my knowledge is about three years old, and much of it has surely changed by now. Probably for the worse.

Best of luck, my friend.

I've no patience for scammers and I HATE how little the 'bay does about them.