Help! Paypal fraud chargeback. What can I do?

Southsider

Hello all, I'm hoping that maybe some of you can help me.

On 2/23/04 I sold a card to a buyer in Italy. He paid me with a CC through Paypal. He's now disputing the charge as fraudulent. I have no recourse because the buyer was in Italy = non-verified address and I didn't get any tracking information. I'm pretty much SOL, aren't I?

This is absolutely ridiculous and I'm closing my Paypal account after this. Expensive lesson learned, I guess.

Jmnesq

Someone from Taiwon got me a long time ago. You need not cancel Paypal -- just change your settings and note in your auctions that you only accept Paypal confirmed addresses. That's worked for me, as people will send me MOs through bidpay.com.

If you really want to protect yourself, and I'm not sure of the legality of same, so take it with a grain of salt, but...

Contact your bank. Immediately de-authorize Paypal to touch your funds from that bank account. TO be safe, withdraw ALL funds and move them to a separate bank account.

Otherwise, you are correct in your assumption about being SOL.

Southsider

Yeah, that's what I figured.
The money is already gone, I had a Paypal balance and they just took the money and put the burden of proof on me. Great.

Anyone know how to leave a follow up to the feedback I left on eBay alerting people to this fraudulent buyer?

packCollector

why are all the crooks from Italy?

iupkid

Can you give us a link to the Ebay auction so we can add the J-off to our blocked bidder list?

Jeff had a good point. I don't think you need to close out your paypal account, just update the settings to not accept non-confirmed addresses.


Steve

Southsider

It was for a Magic CCG card, auction 3177685351, buyer mito86. Auction

Thanks for the tips on the Paypal settings. I just changed mine to only accept US accounts with verified addresses.

I guess in the future I'm going to have to charge more for shipping to include proof of delivery with every auction. Which kind USPS delivery confirmation is acceptable for Paypal?

poeandbb

I always state right in my auction that if you pay by Paypal, you need to add .55 for delivery confirmation. Never had a problem. Knock, knock. Like the others stated, don't accept Paypal from non-trackable addresses.

iamthegreatcornholio

If you want to read some more horror stories paypal sucks
Brian

Snowball

<< <i>I always state right in my auction that if you pay by Paypal, you need to add .55 for delivery confirmation. Never had a problem. Knock, knock. Like the others stated, don't accept Paypal from non-trackable addresses. >>



Some buyers ignore those message "0.55 for del. confirm for paypal". I setup mine not to accept from unconfirmed address (besides they can have that unconfirmed address confirmed by paypal by submitting some info) and from outside the US.

Yes that's true follow their guidelines. I asked paypal about this. Customer service said for items below $250 ($249.99 and below)MUST HAVE a delivery confirmation (regular tracking --> 0.55 cents on usps) and for items $250 and over MUST HAVE a signature confirmation (tracking w/signature REQUIRED -->$1.80 usps).

This is what I don't like with Paypal --> accepting payments outside the US is NOT covered by sellers protection policy. Also if you accept payment outside the US, Paypal will charge you PayPal fee + 1% crossborder fee.

I'm just curious what if you're a seller outside the US. Are you covered by any sellers protection.



Jmnesq,

Can PayPal take money from your bank account?

Aknot

Can you change his feedback to a negative?

Snowball

<< <i>Can you change his feedback to a negative? >>



I don't it can be changed once feedback's left.

SouthSider, you should make a follow-up to your FB stating buyer reversed the payment and warn sellers. I'm not sure if you can report the buyer to ebay. Buyer won another auction. He probably reversed the charge of the other items, too. He max out his limit of 2 claims for the year. If he went straight to CC (bypass Paypal) I think paypal will freeze his account.

njdolphins

You might be able to change feedback if you wish to use the Square Trade mediation that EBay offers. This will cost you money of course to have an arbitrator but if memory serves correctly, should the other party not respond within two weeks there would be no cost since the arbitrators services weren't needed. I know you can use this service to remove a neg so you might be able to use it to change a pos to a neg

Tabe

<< <i>I always state right in my auction that if you pay by Paypal, you need to add .55 for delivery confirmation. Never had a problem. Knock, knock. Like the others stated, don't accept Paypal from non-trackable addresses. >>


Consider yourself lucky then - charging extra for Paypal like that is a violation of Ebay rules (and, in some states, illegal).

Tabe
www.tabe.nu

RobBobGolf

Southsider

Holy Smokes dude! $155 for an Antiquities card! I am going to fetch my old binder and pull all my rares out. I played Magic from 94-02 and have lots of the early stuff from around 4th edition on. What else is hot? I have a lot of foils also.

RobBob

Snowball

<< <i>

<< <i>I always state right in my auction that if you pay by Paypal, you need to add .55 for delivery confirmation. Never had a problem. Knock, knock. Like the others stated, don't accept Paypal from non-trackable addresses. >>


Consider yourself lucky then - charging extra for Paypal like that is a violation of Ebay rules (and, in some states, illegal).

Tabe
www.tabe.nu >>




I don't think it's a violation. Can be part of s/h. Same as for insurance. That is not a surcharge fee. Paypal never told me that I can't do it when I asked them. They told me to put/add in description so buyer knows.

NickM

Snowball is right. You are not charging an extra fee for the buyer to use PayPal; you are requiring a buyer using PayPal to purchase a service at actual cost (delivery confirmation) as part of the shipping payment.

Nick

Southsider

<< <i>Southsider

Holy Smokes dude! $155 for an Antiquities card! I am going to fetch my old binder and pull all my rares out. I played Magic from 94-02 and have lots of the early stuff from around 4th edition on. What else is hot? I have a lot of foils also.

RobBob >>



I played in college, from 94-98. I recently decided it was time to clean out the closet and I slowly sold off everything. I found that 3rd-4th edition rares sold pretty well and of course the P9 cards and dual lands brought in the most. The only downside I noticed was that Magic cards attract a younger and less trustworthy segment of ebay bidders as compared with selling sportscards. I averaged 2-3 NPB per 30 auctions and this scammer from Italy.

Also, the market in Europe for these cards is crazy, I increased my final selling prices by selling overseas. That was tempered by getting ripped off by this buyer, so I guess it evened out in the end.

MrRookie

add this to your sig line if you've wrongfully lost money because of paypal (not including their stupid fees)

Basilone

I sold off my Power 9 MTG cards to a bunch of Europeans at Pro Tour Dallas...made some good $$$.

Southsider

UPDATE

I finally heard back from the Italian scammer. It seems he was having "problems" and was in the hospital, which caused him to have issues with his credit card.
He did offer to send me back the card, so I'll see if I get it. I'm not too hopeful, as the "hospital" excuse is right up there with "My wife left me" and "My grandfather passed away" in the running for most used excuses in the history of eBay scammers.

Southsider

UPDATE

Well, not only have I not received anything from the Italian scammer, but Paypal just charged me an additional $10 settlement chargeback fee on top of taking the money I was paid!

I've filed a complaint with the IFCC and my local police department. Paypal will only release the information on the scammer via a subpeona from my local PD. I've also contacted the secretary general in the city where this scumbag lives requesting any information they can provide. Who knows?

This sucks. Paypal sucks. Italian scammers suck.

Southsider

I don't know if anyone really cares, but anyway....

I finally received the card back from Italy! I have to say I am in shock that I got it back. I had reservations when the buyer claimed that he/she mailed it back to me on April 1st. Hmm. But, sure enough, I picked it up at the PO this morning.

What a long, frustrating process this has been, but at least it has a happy ending. I've learned a lesson here, not to sell overseas, and to CMA w/ Paypal. It seems Paypal only really cares about the $$$ (big surprise, I know) and I have serious legal questions about their policy of accepting fraudulent credit cards then passing that liability onto the seller. Not only do they pass that liability onto the seller, but they shield the person committing fraud by refusing to disclose their information.

Thank you for listening.

envoy98

I feel you southsider. I had a guy do that to me on a 1960 Yaz PSA 7. Claimed he never got it so I had the post office track it via the insurance. Sure enough, it was scanned. Unfortunately for me, paypal wouldn't accept that, they wanted delv conf. So knowing full well the guy had ripped me off and paypal wouldn't do anything, I just let him sit for about 6 months, paypal had frozen my account because they tried to pull the $120 back out of my account and I didn't have any $ in there. They can't go back on your checking account, if they could they certainly would have done it to me. The funny thing was is that I passed on the info to paypal about the insurance tag being "delivery scanned" and the guy saying this was the 3rd time in a week he didn't get something from a seller. His actual quote was "it's not as unusual as you might think, I've had 3 things in the last week show up missing and this is the 5th time in less than a month, someone at my local PO is making out like a bandit." Paypal's response? If he does it alot we will investigate... Of course I left pos feedback as soon as I was paid... What a screw job that was.

I now do not sell to anyone over seas, and I have it set that I have to manually accept payments from unconfirmed addresses. If they used a cc and an unconfirmed I send it back to them. I also take cc payments and immediately do a withdrawal to my checking. That way if I get really screwed I can just never use paypal again and at least I don't lose all my $$$. Paypal will freeze your account within 7 days of a complaint being filed if you don't respond and they will do a default judgement in favor of the complaintant. What a beutiful system they have huh?

F'ing paypal. Unfortunately they are the best thing going right now, really nice how ebay owns them too, they get paid twice on every transaction, even if it goes bad. In fact, they make more $$ if it goes bad so why should they care? lets see they get $3 for a cc charge, but if it goes bad, they get $10 from you for a chargeback fee. lovely.

The other cool thing is too that if you are the buyer and get screwed, you have to file a complaint with paypal within 30 days, but with ebay you cant file til after 30 days, so save all the links to the auctions you win, you might need them.

Southsider

envoy98, I hear you. Paypal is the devil. When I called customer service to explain that there was no way I could satisfy their requirements because I shipped to Italy, the lady didn't care. I even told her I had an email from the buyer saying that he/she had my item. Isn't that proof? Nope, not for Paypal. Then when I requested the information on the buyer in order to pass it onto the authorities, she told me I'd need a subpeona from my local police. What BS.

I'm just glad that this is over and I learned a lesson at a minimal cost.

The buyer included a letter written in Italian explaining/apologizing, but I'm unable to make out exactly what happened. I'm going to try to run it through an online translator to see if I can get the jist of it.

envoy98

I am extremely surprised you got the card back. But hey, it could have been a lot worse. You could have been out the card, the money and another $10 besides. I think they do that just to rub a little salt in the wound. Sadistic sob's

DeutscherGeist

Southsider,

I care about your case and was curious to see how it would turn out. So, you got the card back and it sounds like it was undamaged on top of all that. Ok, you are out $10 plus a lot of aggravation.

I'm glad something good came out of it.

magellan

Glad to see you got your card back Southsider. Paypal is the devil incarnate , unfortunately they're the best thing we have for quick payment.