Ebay acution - scam or honest mistake?

squibs

I won a fairly high value item located in Ireland and paid for it yesterday. The owner was fairly forthcoming and had good rep - he even sent me two contact numbers on request, although the mobile goes straight to message and the landline rings out before giving an "unconfigured mailbox" type error.

So I pay up via paypal and then get a message from the guy (2 actually) saying that I should cancel the payment as the auction was linked to the wrong paypal account. He had transferred the domain and somebody else was in charge of the the email address linked to that paypal account. He also supplied a new paypal account and judging by the email address domain it's legitimate. He says he contacted ebay about the issue.

Now I'm concerned:
1. Is my cancelled payment irrevocably cancelled or could there be a scam here?
2. How can he now arrange that I pay into the correct paypal account and link it to the auction? If I just bung the money in an unlinked paypal account the transaction wont receive the (limited) protection from ebay/paypal, right?

What should I do?

jor el

It could be an honest mistake, but this is exactly the sort of thing a scammer would do. If you pay into the alternate account, you'll have no come back.

Also, I don't think you can cancel a payment, can you? All you can do is start a dispute and escellate to a claim. This could take 2 weeks to sort out. I don't think you'll get your money back straight away.

To protect yourself, report the payment through Paypal and start a claim to get your money back. Also, report the seller, and link the auction, to eBay. Send on all correspondence between him and you to eBay.

Anyone who has more than one Paypal account is more than likely up to no good. He could have just changed the email address on the existing account. No need to set up a new one. The seller should ring Paypal to change account settings if he no longer has access to the registered email address.

squibs

I did actually have the option to cancel the payment as it hadn't been accepted yet, and that's what I did. See below for the history in the paypal a/c with money and email address edited out

Original Transaction Date Type Status Details Amount
Nov. 28, 2007Payment To sss@sss.com Canceled
Related Transactions
Date Type Status Details Amount
Nov. 28, 2007Charge From Credit Card Completed
Nov. 30, 2007Cancelled Payment Completed
Nov. 30, 2007Credit to Credit Card Completed

So it looks like I've been refunded. Can anybody confirm?

majiktripp

Why don't you ring paypal direct, they'll have more answer's than we will.

squibs

Because I have more respect for the opinions and experiences of the consumers here. Calling paypal is on the list, but not at the top.

Now - has anybody had an experience like this, and do they know if the paypal history showing cancellation of the payment means that the payment has been irrevocably cancelled with funds returned to card and no u-turns a few days down the road?

jor el

That's a new one on me. I didn't know a seller had to accept a payment, I know that they can reject a payment, meaning it returns to you, but I didn't know the buyer could cancel a payment after it has been sent. I've never seen any cancel option on my account history before.

Looks like you have though.

If you're going ahead with the purchase, get the seller to re-list the item with a buy it now price and then send you a link to it. You can then buy through eBay with all the protection that goes with that. I wouldn't just send the money to a Paypal account that's not linked to the original auction, especially since it's a high value item.

squibs

He's phoned me and the story sounds credible. He's adjusted his ebay account to point at the right paypal account and the cancellation of the payment seems to have made the "pay now" button active again. I'll wait for the refund to show up on the CC and then pay again I guess.

nazoil

The original payment IS cancelled when you click cancel.

If you want the item, you can go to paypal, select send money and type in new email, select ebay item and fill out details of the ebay item number.

If you're having second thoughts, you now have a get out excuse

Is he asking for payment to be sent to the ebay registered email address. Get him to send you a message through the enay messaging service and see what's the reply address in your email client. Probably okay if he is.

Does his ebay registered address match the phone book entry for the landline number?