Recently a buyer asked to pay by bank transfer and then failed to pay me. About a month later I found (thanks to someone warning me to look), a random Direct Debit on my account. No money had been taken (and if it had been it would have been immediately returnable under the Direct Debit Guarantee) but it took me some time to sort the whole business out and I have had to close my account and open another so the account number is different.

The only totally safe way to accept bank transfer is into a savings account which does not have Direct Debit as a facility.

Yes, I know, someone who has a cheque of mine and knows my address has all the information required to do this, but the risk seems to be NPB online.

I still can't see how they hoped to get away with any money but the waste of time was considerable.

I bought an item on eBay worth $230 to a seller and I paid him through bank transfer coz he told me that he hasn't using Paypal anymore. 1 week later, I asked the seller if he got the money and he said no. 2 weeks later he still insist that he hasn't got the money. Then 1 month passed still nothing. I asked my bank to check what happened and they told me that the transfer was confirmed and went through to this seller's bank. I was new on eBay and I thought eBay would do something so I reported this problem to them. eBay asked me to send proofs and some papers to to them so I did. After a long wait thinking that they are sorting out the problem, I didn't get any results at all. Then I reverted to my bank again and then they've only advised me to write a letter to the seller's bank, cc'd the seller but then, still nothing happened. If this incident is 2 years ago already, is there anything else i can do? Oh what a stupid question