Vent I Scammed and feeling deflated.

[pictishwitch]

About 2 weeks ago I had a buyer contact me saying he recently moved and supplied the new address, he mentioned he was having trouble changing his address within ebay ( who doesn't have trouble with ebay) anyway  He had paid for the item instantly and messaged straight away he was very nice and quite excited by the item I had no reason not to believe him or suspect anything and when he had received his item left glowing feedback.

Fast forward 2 weeks I get an email from paypal that he had opened a case using unauthorised payment. I contact him via ebay suggesting it may have been a mistake  and could he amend it asap he replied Of course it must be because of the address mix up

I waited a few days with nothing happening I contact him again this time no response from him, so I answer the paypal case with the information above including tracking etc and within seconds no real time to review really paypal closes the case in his favour and refunds him the money.

I contacted paypal and their response is I didn't send it to the paypal address for him and to be more careful in future.

Thanks for listening to my vent

[thecatspjs]

I would also report them to eBay for having false or missing contact information

"Falsifying or omitting contact information such as a member’s name, address, and/or telephone number when registering on eBay is not permitted. It is also not permitted to use fax or disconnected numbers as a telephone number.

If you believe an eBay member is using false contact information, please report it using the Customer Support link at the bottom of this page."

The report link is below:

http://contact.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ContactUs&wftype=2005&rcode=IV%25P10054&subject=False or...

At a minimum it may serve to put a flag on their account (though one can only live in hope)

[thecatspjs]

I will add to that the eBay policy also notes that Paypal have a similar policy.

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/identity-false.html

"PayPal users - you should also be aware that PayPal may apply similar sanctions for false or missing contact information".

I would make a phone call to Paypal to report the member for misrepresenting their address in this transanction on Paypal. . May make no difference, but also may place a flag on the users account. who knows.....

[clarry100]

I tried to argue exactly that point at the time with the paypal CSR too DG. Who, incidentally, was in USA.

But according to him, because we had used regular mail without tracking that precluded him from finding 100% in our favour. He wanted to based on the evidence in front of him but said due to paypal process he could not.

So the next best thing he could offer was NO FAULT, which still left a bad taste in my mouth as the scamming buyer got their item and a refund as well.

But it seems they had some kind of history on their account I was not privvy to (all he would say was he could see some history) so this one would have been recorded on their account too.

I have since checked their ebay account and it is still active, so nothing has happened there. But of course they are on all our special lists.

The buyer also left us a bunch of NEGs at the time that ebay would not remove because the case was not found 100% in our favour. NO FAULT was not good enough for them to remove the NEGs despite speaking with a supervisor (twice).

Even tho once again the paypal CSR said that in his opinion the NEGs should be removed by ebay as he thought that we had done nothing wrong (apart from mailing without tracking).

This was the very same CSR, by the way, who explained to me that taking a photograph of the cancelled stamps/address over the counter at the PO would have sufficed in this case. With such a photo he would have awarded to us 100%.

Anyway this one is off the rearward radar now for us as we are on a 3-month evaluation period.

[phorum_junkie*]

As experienced a seller as you are how could you possibly not know that you only have seller protection if you send to the address on the Paypal transaction page? The buyer would not have to change any of their ebay info other than clicking on the link in checkout and entering the address they wanted the item posted to, that would then be the only address which Paypal would have. If they had asked me to send to a different address I would have informed them that I would have to refund them and they would have to go through checkout again.