Ebay is full of fraudsters now :(

First experience of this was as a seller about a month ago. Sold a Nokia
8310 and accepted PayPal payment only to find out a week later that the
funds were fraudulent.

Second experience as a buyer, today. Bought a Nokia 7250i. Everything
seemed absolutely fine until this e-mail arrived from Ebay:

---
We are writing to inform you that we recently ended all listings for
seller dfgdfg99 on eBay. The seller’s privileges to trade on eBay have
been temporarily suspended while we investigate this matter further.
(The current account status can be viewed next to the user ID of the
seller on the eBay site.).

Our records indicate that you were a participating bidder or buyer in
this seller’s listing. You will need to use your own personal judgment
in deciding whether to complete this transaction.

As described in our User Agreement, eBay is only a venue, and we cannot
guarantee that sellers will complete transactions nor can we guarantee
the delivery or quality of bought items. As a basic principle, a buyer
should know with whom he or she is dealing before sending a payment to a
seller.

Depending on the circumstances, you might decide to delay payment to a
seller until completely confident that the transaction will be completed
safely. If you decide to delay payment but already paid by personal
cheque, you may wish to contact your bank to discuss whether it would be
possible to stop payment on the cheque. If you paid with a credit card,
you may wish to contact your credit card company’s security department to
discuss this payment – many companies provide protection in certain
circumstances. If you paid by money order, you may want to contact that
money order company for information on how to stop payment.

Please note that the ending of the listings for this seller is a
precautionary measure. The grounds for this suspension may be the result
of a mistake or misunderstanding.

Customer Support (Trust and Safety Department)
---

Now what does that mean? Why have they suspended his account? All his
previous buyers seemed happy with their purchases.

Trouble is I've already sent the PayPal payment to him, which has
completed. Whats my next step if the guy doesn't show/come through with
the goods? Contact my credit card company?

Cheers,

--
www.ukbitcharg.co.uk - The UK's no.1 stop for Micro R/C!

#ugvg on irc.uk-net.org (6667 or 6668) - the U.G.V.G IRC channel

> Please note that the ending of the listings for this seller is a
> precautionary measure. The grounds for this suspension may be the result
> of a mistake or misunderstanding.
>
> Customer Support (Trust and Safety Department)
> ---
>
> Now what does that mean? Why have they suspended his account? All his
> previous buyers seemed happy with their purchases.
>
> Trouble is I've already sent the PayPal payment to him, which has
> completed. Whats my next step if the guy doesn't show/come through with
> the goods? Contact my credit card company?
>
> Cheers,

As the amount is within the limits, your cc company should be able to charge
back for this. The seller's been upfront with his contact and bank account
details - if you can plough through all the detail in the description page. (Now
there's a guy that could use a HTML template!)

Could be a temporary glitch, could be his a/c has been hijacked.

You could write to him by snail mail, or ask your bank to check out his bank to
see if he's pucker.

Trevor

On 23 Jul 2003 18:10:22 GMT, Chris Flowers <admin@ukbitcharg.co.uk>
wrote:


>
>Now what does that mean? Why have they suspended his account? All his
>previous buyers seemed happy with their purchases.
>
>Trouble is I've already sent the PayPal payment to him, which has
>completed. Whats my next step if the guy doesn't show/come through with
>the goods? Contact my credit card company?
>
>Cheers,

you may contact credit card company if item does not arrive. try
emailing him and asking for a POLITE update.

doesn't paypal have a seller protection policy or something? i got
bitten by that once when item was sent to USA but buyer claimed that
he had not receievd it so buyer complained to paypal and had their
money back. of course i didn't know about this for 24 hours and as
soon as buiyer wrote to me letting me know that they had not received
item i sent replacement without checking my paypal emails. s basically
lost out on two sets of goods and money. buyer refused to return email
after that and i had already left good feedback on him.

so basically, there are fraudsters everywhere. you will get bitten all
the time but the trick is to put it down to experince and carry on.