Is this a scam?

ShoulderChip

Hi, my friend is trying to sort out a house in Canada for the summer,
he has made over ten email conversations with the landlord yet has doubts that she may be trying to pull one over him.
She initially seemed more concerned with finding out how we were going to pay for the place then trying to sell it to us, as in he had to tell her how much of a deposit he was willing to pay before she would tell him it had four rooms.
Eventually it was decided that he would pay 600 euro of a deposit via paypal. but he received the below email today.
Is it always very dodgy to pay via western union transfer?
He believes the problem was that he has never used paypal before and it was his first transaction so that is why they it could have been cancelled.
( I changed names for obvious reasons)

Hi Liam,

I just received the following note from paypal;

We have conducted an investigation regarding a payment you received in
your PayPal account. This investigation determined that those funds
were fraudulent. Therefore we have completed a reversal of the payment and
removed the funds from the following transaction from your account.


Transaction Date: Jun. 1, 2007 20:55:19 BST
Transaction Amount: €600.00 EUR
Buyer's Email: xxxxx@tcd.ie

Kindly check into the above.

For me to hold the place kindly send the funds via Western Union which is worldwide.

with best regards
xxxxi

Cake Fiend

This screams DODGY to me. Tell your mate to get on to Paypal pronto.

spurious

You've no come back with Western Union. Get them to use Paypal, if the landlord won't agree to a PayPal transaction, which protects both parties, then there is something wrong.

When renting before (admittedly within the EU), I used a direct bank transfer with full address details and had regular correspondence with the landlord for the previous six months. There is always a large amount of trust in such transactions, for obvious reasons, but insisting on the conman's friend Western Union doesn't inspire trust in me.

I'd check with PayPal whether they sent such an email at all.

Karoma

Moved from AH.
It's a bit of a loose fit, but the folks here have more experience with this sort of thing. pa... your friend... can get more help here.

Cake Fiend

Here's another thing - if you were a legitimate trader, and a payment from someone was described by Paypal as 'fraudulent', would you then ask them to use a different payment system? Hell no, you'd tell them to bugger off and look for another customer. This has fishy (or should that be 'phishy'?) written all over it.

Oryx

Has your friend been able to check the payment WAS cancelled and did he get his money back?

And certainly dont pay anything with WU.

ShoulderChip

He hasn't checked as far as I know,

The thing is she seemed nice on the phone to him, is tehre any chance she is a bit naive or does it definitely look fishy?

spurious

If she is genuine, she will want to do things right, so when it's pointed out to her that WU is a bit suss, she should then look at PayPal or perhaps a direct transfer to a bank where she has proved to your friend who she is.

I can't see this as being the first time this would have happened for a bank.

zuutroy

Dodgy, the grammar in the 'paypal' email is very poor and un-businesslike which leads me to think 'avoid at all costs'.

di11on

zuutroy wrote:

Dodgy, the grammar in the 'paypal' email is very poor and un-businesslike which leads me to think 'avoid at all costs'.

Yeah, and there is no transaction ID mentioned!

Unfortunately, this one is looking like, smelling like and quackiing like a duck!

professore

spurious wrote:

You've no come back with Western Union. Get them to use Paypal, if the landlord won't agree to a PayPal transaction, which protects both parties, then there is something wrong.

When renting before (admittedly within the EU), I used a direct bank transfer with full address details and had regular correspondence with the landlord for the previous six months. There is always a large amount of trust in such transactions, for obvious reasons, but insisting on the conman's friend Western Union doesn't inspire trust in me.

I'd check with PayPal whether they sent such an email at all.

I wouldn't necessarily think they are trying to scam you - however beware.

PayPal doesn't protect both parties - I was on the recieving end of a fraudelent credit card transaction selling software over the web with paypal. However PayPal took 2 months to declare the transaction fraudelent - by which time I was at the loss of the money as they removed it from my PayPal balance. If they came back very quickly with the fraudelent delaration I would be inclined not to believe it. Get on to PayPal - if they confirm this then you should be able to get them to reverse the decision and all will be fine.

See www.paypalsucks.com.

Vikings

First of all check with your friend if the transaction was reversed or not, it is possible that it was especially if his first transaction was for €600 to a foreign account as it looks out of the blue and in many cases possibly fraudulent.

If the payment was reversed I would recommend that he does not try to do it again, paying for services through PayPal does not offer you protection. You are protected if you do not receive an item or on eBay transactions where you do not receive or receive an item that is not as described.

Goods and services are not covered by paypal buyer protection. The only comeback he would have is a credit card chargeback, in which case paying by paypal only complicates things more as the seller usually tries to dispute those!

It's a tough one to call, definitely do not use western union. Maybe advise him to look for a different place to stay, somewhere not so dodgy. Try http://www.vrbo.com/, that was recommended in the travel & holiday forum and looks good.