Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Could this be reported as theft or fraud? If you have not been paid and she has the item (with tracking # proof) then maybe contact authorites and report a stolen laptop.....not sure how that works though. But I'd do it if I were in your position.
 
Eluon said:
i sold my old iBook G4 laptop to a guy here on macrumors. the guy sent the money to my paypal account, then 2 weeks later (after i had deposited it into my checking account) removed the money. he kept giving me B.S. reasons and paypal wouldn't help me. It took me about 6 months to get the last dime from him - after he made payments that were rather infrequent. the whole time paypal giving me garbage about my account being negative.

no more selling via paypal. they're trash.

There`s a difference between using paypal for ebay transactions and using it for non ebay transaction. PayPal with ebay is definitely a lot more secure than the other.

But the best way to use ebay will be cash on delivery when you are buying and Pick up n Pay when selling. This way there is no chance of a fraud. The only downside may be that your potential market reduces to your own city only. But it`s better than taking a chance and then suffering like the OP and a lot of other people have in past.
I had a similar incident while selling my iBook G4 on eBay. I had made it absolutely clear that I wont accept anything but Pick n Pay. Some as#hol# bought it within 2 hours after it went on sale. And then asked me for my Bamk account no sa that he can send me money and i can ship it to his friend in NIGERIA:eek: . I mailed Paypal and told them bout the situation. The deal was cancelled within 24 hours and also the selling fees, which was 1st credited to my accoint, got debited again.

So that increased my faith in paypal a lot. Especially the speed they adddressed my problem and solved it was really something I didnt ever imagine.

So I really believe the OP will not loose money at all. It might take some time and effort though. just make sure you inform PayPal bout each and every detail ASAP.
 
Calvinatir said:
It was sent Insured with a tracking Number and she received the item.
I just got off the phone with paypal and it seems that she circumvented paypal (probably because she thought she tried to file an argument with paypal). She called up American Express and called the charge fraudulent or something to that effect. So the lady from paypal said that they are fighting on the seller's (my) behalf. It could take up to 75 days but she said that money was just a hold and wouldn't go to collections. This really just sounds like steeling though, she has the money and the PB now. UGH

I would call AmEx. Explain what happened. If she has not paid her AMEX bill you are screwed. If she has, then they might work with you. When my PayPal payment came in on the logic baord ,I took it out of paypal and into my bank account right away, so that they could not "freeze" my account. If she has not paid her AMEX bill, then you have to work with Amex to get the powerbook back. Important that you get it back in good condition, too. Demand this and also you need to talk to the girl.

Your mistake was talking about the MacBook release. So what? YOu made her not want it, you pushed her into buyer's remorse, while there are pefectly great reasons why she would want a 12" PB.

Be smart about human nature here, but you need to get her to send the PB back to you , insured and at her expense. She is commiting theft until she returns it to you. SHE HAS NOT PAID FOR WHAT SHE HAS RECEIVED!!!!

PS Where in VV are u?
 
mward333 said:
Another scam. Yuck. I'm sorry it happened to you.

It happened to me once. I'll never use eBay, paypal, Fedex, etc., again (my story was posted on MR two years ago). When it comes down to it, all of these services can easily fail the honest internet seller or buyer. This is a huge generalization, but there are zillions of stories about such scams.... we see this stuff on MR all the time.

As a side note: I learned my lesson when it happened to me, and I only use craigslist now, just doing local selling/buying, and I've never been cheated. In fact, I've had lots of success. I always have buyers meet me at my office (I teach at the university), and we have an easy transaction in a public place. I mean, I'm not running a business here! Just an occasional sale every few months, but craigslist is so easy.


You shouldn't use PayPal if you can't follow their policy instructions. Unfortunately people get 'scammed' simply because of this. I thought the same, when I faced my first chargeback and I panicked and I was like "Screw ebay! screw paypal.. bas#rds..etc etc" but they refunded my money, since I had shipped according to their seller protection policies.
 
California said:
I would call AmEx. Explain what happened. If she has not paid her AMEX bill you are screwed. If she has, then they might work with you. When my PayPal payment came in on the logic baord ,I took it out of paypal and into my bank account right away, so that they could not "freeze" my account. If she has not paid her AMEX bill, then you have to work with Amex to get the powerbook back. Important that you get it back in good condition, too. Demand this and also you need to talk to the girl.

Your mistake was talking about the MacBook release. So what? YOu made her not want it, you pushed her into buyer's remorse, while there are pefectly great reasons why she would want a 12" PB.

Be smart about human nature here, but you need to get her to send the PB back to you , insured and at her expense. She is commiting theft until she returns it to you. SHE HAS NOT PAID FOR WHAT SHE HAS RECEIVED!!!!

PS Where in VV are u?

Calling AMEX is a waste of time.. for them, the seller IS the fradulent person. They will only correspond with the chargeback team from PayPal.. and not anyone else (of course, the card holder.. but thats it)
 
vikas soni said:
I mailed Paypal and told them bout the situation. The deal was cancelled within 24 hours and also the selling fees, which was 1st credited to my accoint, got debited again.

So that increased my faith in paypal a lot. Especially the speed they adddressed my problem and solved it was really something I didnt ever imagine.

This doesn't sound like Paypal territory at all to me as it is the job of Ebay to cancel auctions on their site and not Paypal. Paypal cannot refund you any selling fees either as that is Ebay's domain.

OP by now the buyer will have got her money back as she got her credit card company to do a chargeback to Paypal. I think that as this was unauthorised by Paypal and you have done everything right in turn Paypal is more than likely to put this buyers credit into negative balance to the tune of however much your laptop sold for.

If this happened to me i would have gone to the Police station already and i would have filed a report of theft against this person.

I hope that things get sorted for you with a positive outcome soon.
 
Even though I consider myself tech savvy and progressive thinker, I don't think I can use eBay or its equivalent service to sell or buy goods from strangers. I am comfortable doing business with established online merchants such as Amazon and others; but, I cannot go through the thoughts of going through those BS and non-sensical excuses you can get from the other party through the transactions. This type of example reinforces my distrust and skepticism of those methods of selling/buying.

When I need to deal with an individual buyer, I can only go through cash payment at the time of sale.
 
I often sell things on eBay but seldom buy things from eBay. Since I started using PayPal, it was standard practice to automatically withdraw any funds that were placed there so they would be "safe" in my bank account. The only problem is that PayPal has access to that bank too.

I had just finished parting off and selling a computer on eBay. As usual, I withdrew everything to my bank account as soon as it hit PayPal. Everything shipped and I went about my business. A week later, I got an email from PayPal that one of the buyers had requested a refund. I went to look on PayPal and my balance was 0 still but in the mean time, my bank balance had dropped by the amount in question. PayPal had withdrew funds from my bank account to insure that I had the funds available to meet the refund.

I really get nervous doing large transactions on eBay/PayPal but it beats the alternatives.
 
I honestly think you will win this. Provide the investigator from American Express everything you have in documentation. With what you have it should show that their cardholder is the one scamming.
 
Calvinatir said:
i receive an email from Paypal saying that the bidder filed a "Chargeback" on the payment and now I have a $-12xx amount on my paypal account! :eek: :eek: I just now filed my formal writing with paypal and it's in the dispute overview phase. It was also confirmed as delivered and has >$1000 insurance and was shipped in the original box inside of another box so there is no chance at damage. I'm just really peeved that this chick is doing this to me. I can no longer use my paypal and who knows if I'll have to fork out the $1200 bucks before this is resolved...UGH


you should win the chargeback if you shipped to a confirmed address. Make sure you put in the tracking number.
 
it is still in the investigation process, which they say could take up to 30 days or something. They e-mailed me once asking for the tracking number, which I provided to them. But now there is a change in the story. The lady rejected the UPS package. Tracking number: 1ze03a470358463183

But i stated in the email to paypal that in my auction there were NO RETURNS. So she has to pay the shipping back to her house. What a disaster, hopefully it ends well.

Thanks for the concern
 
Well, my advice would be first to wait for the paypal investigation to resolve itself. However, if in the end, she is keeping a computer she didn't pay for, I would STRONGLY suggest speaking to a lawyer. Sure, that isn't cheap, but in my opinion, anything over $1000 or so is worth your while. If she ultimately sends the computer back, fine - but otherwise, she needs to pay something.

For future reference, the minute a buyer of anything balks, I'd call UPS, cancel the delivery and have it returned to you, refund the money, and end the sale. As far as I am aware, you always have the right not to do business with someone. If there is balking going on early in the transaction, usually nothing good will come of it. Easier just to start over, eat the shipping cost, and find someone else.

Anyway, hope this all works out okay for you!
 
It sucks that a few unscrupulous people can ruin the whole system for everyone else. As someone mentioned, sellers should do their best to follow the protection policy to avoid being stuck in the event a buyer is either "remorseful" or is attempting to defraud you.

One thing I seem to get a lot of these days is unsolicited offers to buy my auction items outside of eBay. These are almost always scams so I would recommend never trusting someone who makes an offer. Also, if you have an unhappy buyer, it's always best to give them a refund and get your item back than to try to force the deal to go through.

I went through a big headache last year with one of these Nigerian bank scams. Our not-for-profit group runs a meeting every year, and people attending the event from overseas often want to wire transfer their fees to us. Well, someone used our bank and routing numbers to get fake checks printed with our names on them, then proceeded to buy a bunch of items both on eBay and outside. Fortunately, we didn't lose any money but I think quite a few unsuspecting folks did get scammed. The worst part was we only found out when someone selling a Harley got suspicious and tried to contact our organization. The bank never caught on.
 
Paypal seems to be a very evil organization at least from my viewpoint. It has shoddy business details in how it manages money from account to account. I really dont like having a company like Paypal hooked up to my bank account and have that happened. Whenever I sell on eBay i usually ask for check/money order and wait for that to clear and enter my bank account successfully. All of this paypal business seems fishy. I dont understand the legality of it, but it seems fishy that if you sell something to someone and then refund it, how could you lose money? Also, personally you should have said no to the refund. By just talking about card inbalances...well....then she shouldn't have bid so high on the computer. it is not your responsibility to manage other people's card inbalanaced. The credit card companies will take care of her. You should have also immediately canceled the delivery of the package....but hopefull all will be ok for you in the end.
 
The last time I used ebay the opposite thing happened to me. I bought something, didn't recieve it, then was attacked by the seller and told to piss off by paypal.
I tried to buy a t shirt. I paypal'd my money to the (power) seller, someone who actually has a brick and mortar store but uses ebay as a supplemental outlet. They recieved my money, then mailed my purchase to the wrong address (I don't know who they mailed it to). Then, when I asked about the whereabouts of the shirt, the seller contacted paypal and claimed that they never recieved payment for the item and tried to get paypal to take more money forcibly out of my account. I then informed paypal that I did pay for the item (THROUGH paypal, that was easy enough to prove), but never received it. The seller was then able to "prove" that they had sent me the item by giving paypal a tracking number saying that the item had been delivered (to some random person on the other side of the continent). I was out $25, never got a shirt. Never used ebay for anything again.
 
So let me get this straight. You have the computer back in your hands, yes?

Unfortunately, I think PayPal will end up giving the lady her money (minus shipping hopefully). PayPal doesn't care about who is right or wrong. Rather, they just figure out who has the item and gives the money to the other person.
 
ok I will add my experiences in here. I do have paypal because I sell a lot of stuff online and a lot of people want to put it on their credit card and I do not have a merchant account. Anyways I had sold a person a carpet several months ago. They had someone scam their credit card. They reported it as fraudalent to their credit card company. The credit card company did a blanket chargeback on everything spent on the card. I.E. my payment by this person through paypal. Of course my account went negative by that amount. I followed paypals resolution process. I emailed the tracking number number for the item to paypal and copied the screen of proof of arrival to paypal as well. After several emails between paypal and I . Paypal released the amount hold and everything is fine now. They did not take my money and they did rule in my favor because I showed them I had done everything correctly.
The original poster has nothing to fear , if he follows their chargeback process complaint guidelines he will prove his case because he has proof the item was recieved.
90% or more of the problems people have with paypal is they do not follow guidelines. I am not saying its perfect but neither are banks or credit card companies.
 
regre7 said:
I just closed my PayPal account and gave them a piece of my mind.


When you closed it was it hard like that guy trying to cancel AOL . Now that is funny.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.