Am I the only one with this much bad luck lately !!??

A buyer uses buy it now yesterday morning and pays instantly through paypal on an auction of mine. Today I get a paypal email saying the following ....

"PayPal received a notification from a user regarding unauthorized access to his PayPal account. As a result, one of the payments credited to your PayPal account has been placed in a temporary hold while we investigate the claim."

I email the buyer and nicely ask whats goin on and if he simply wanted a refund? Thinking to myself I just don't believe his account had been frauded?

The seller then emails me to say,
"I am sorry to tell you this, but my account for the past day has been used in fraud. I have contacted ebay and paypal regarding this matter, sorry for the inconvience"
BULL! I don't believe it at all!! He goes on to say that the fraud person wanted it sent somewhere else and I SHOULD HAVE PICKED UP ON THAT!? (aka, unconfirmed address). This is a complete lie considering his address listed with both ebay and paypal is the same exact address I was given to send his item..

I am sick of buyers bidding, then for whatever reason changing their minds!! Nothing is more frustrating! Then to just lie about it is more of a slap in the face!

I have 2 other buyers on that same auction with scams as well,
(both now non registered users)
one being the Nigerian ppl (or whoever) with that whole bid then send the fake paypal confirm email message!
Another with 0 fb who bid then got thrown off within minutes! Ya , he'll pay me.

3, $14 fvf's I now have to chase!!

YA GOTTA LOVE FEEBAY !

Let me guess... The Nigerian buyer was buying a laptop? For your FVF you can file a NPB alert and get your FVF back (in "my ebay" on the left-hand column).

Hey, I am really sorry to hear about your issue with PreyPal. They are really uncool about these types of things. Seizing your money after you shipped a product. That is so wrong. But that is one of the down sides of having a merchant account (yes using PreyPal is like having a merchant account).

I have had many transactions go into A) dispute B) temporarily withholding by paypal. I actually have one dispute open now. She says she never got the package. And it's sitting at her post office (with del con). She doesnt return phone calls and my email bounces back every time. Then she files on claim on me? Anyway, that is no big deal. You know why I am not worried about it? There is one simple way to AVOID ALL OF THIS!

ARE YOU READY FOR IT?

Here it is (two parts):

DO NOT SHIP ANY ITEM TO ANYONE UNLESS IT IS A CONFIRMED ADDRESS. Make it your policy and stick to it. Make sure all your shipments are eligible for "paypal seller protection." The second part to this, and it is a MUST, you MUST HAVE PROOF OF DELIVERY to the buyers CONFIRMED ADDRESS (UPS offers for free, USPS is .45 or .55 depending). I ship all my stuff thru Paypal's shipping feature and its free (the little link that says "ship" in your transaction details). That way paypal will always have the proof they need right on their system.

Unfortunately not many international addresses can be confirmed. Canada can be and so can UK (but most aren't). Australian is not able to confirm. So it is up to you if you want to risk it with non-confirmed international buyers. Most of my business is USA, UK, Canada and Australia. I chance it with Australia.

You can also go into your paypal account and select different payment options... I choose not to accept echecks, bank account transfers when a c.card is on file and block all payments from NON CONFIRMED ADDRESSES.

Some buyers will try to get you to ship to a different address than what is on the account (they add it to the note section). When this happens I email the buyer and let them know my policy and mention that Paypal has suggested this policy for me... "bla bla bal ... it is for my protection as well as yours... bla bla bla" Most buyers are cool with it. And if they aren't... well... chances are? Then I tell them to confirm the address they want it shipped to and resubmit payment (I refund original payment), or I will ship to the address on file.

Knock on wood, I have won every dispute/withholding to date. I got lucky a few times before I learned about the paypal policies.

Sorry for the short book here \

Good luck to you. Let us know how it turns out.

Thanks for the tips...

I have another $400 on hold right now.

Buyer paid last week, I Sent the items then emailed and told her items were shipped.
She THEN went and reversed the charges the next day. Now ignoring my emails, I called her on the phone and she sez " no ablaas englaas"

I got an email this morning on part of that order to confirm she had received it.
I did provide paypal with the tracking numbers from ups so I would think that money will be getting back to me soon? I sure hope so...

They usually take about 30 days to finish their investigations.

there is another option for you....GET RID OF THEM and then you will not have to deal with their stupid rules that only protect the Buyer and leave sellers open to rip-off artists. we had the same thing happen to us twice a couple of years ago so we closed our Paypal account and purchased a merchant account from our bank. we have only had one chargeback in over 2 years from the bank and once the issue was settled with the buyer the bank gave us our money back including the chargeback fees.
If you don't want to purchase a Bank Merchant Account, then just accept Money Orders and Personal Checks. No one is forcing you to accept credit cards as a form of Payment. You would also be getting rid of the fees that Paypal charges.

The biggest scam that paypal is having now is people are getting emails and they look like there comming from paypal saying they need to verify there account. You get the log on page and then when you enter your email and password you get an error. However the scammers now have your username and password so then they start using your account. That is happening allot right now. I get at least two a week asking me to log in and update my information. I emailed the email I received from them to paypal and they confirmed it was not comming from them. So I am sure allot fall for it because its the best scam I have seen so far.

eBay OWNS Paypal so how can you make a statement like "eBay is big enough to have these idiots doesn't mean that it's eBay's fault" ? They own both eBay and Paypal so all of this crap including all the spoof emails is eBay's Fault. I don't any of this type of crap from any of the other auction sites or payment services I use so I have to believe the entire issue is an eBay/Paypal one. Why do they insist on making silly site changes like the "safe payments policy" for example and not recode the entire site so that scammers can not copy and paste eBay's code and images into emails or note pad like Google does. Try coping and pasting a Google image or code into Notepad or an email and you will see that it will not show up properly. eBay needs to seriously work on this instead of forcing sellers down the Paypal path. They don't give a crap about sellers all they want is all of thier money. Both site's policies totally favor the Buyer who pays no fees instead of the Sellers that are paying them for their services. What an ass-backward way of doing things !

Well I certainly am not one for supporting ebay however in this case I think it is the scammers fault. As you know BidPay closed down and I heard that part of the reason was all the fraud problems they were having. Lets face it the internet is not the safest place and no matter what they do the scammers keep comming up with new scams. As far as the PayPal favoring buyers thats the way it always has been since I can remember. For instance if you have a credit merchant account your the one paying the merchant fee's not the buyer. So when you think about it its not ass-backwards.