Hi all,

I was recently scammed for approx $2100 on a sale I made, and was not covered by Paypal seller protection. It's been a losing battle to get my money back from Paypal despite me being a loyal customer of theirs for 8 years.
 
I'm therefore looking at switching away from Paypal. Doing some research it seems Google Wallet is a decent alternative. Does anyone have much experience with Google Wallet?

Cheers.

Sorry to hear this S.!

I think bank transfer/wire is still the safest way?

Was it a sale here on HF?

Yea looks like defaulting to bank transfer is an option too. Think fees are like $30 (at least in Japan).

Yes it era here on HF. As such scammers list in my sig.

Guess Google Wallet still a little slow in adoption.

Were you able to get back your $, eventually?

You mentioned 'a losing battle' in your opening post, so did Paypal refund you the full amount?

Nope. Lost the $2100 & the AK240.

So sad..
 
Are you willing to share what happened exactly?

highwind2008 said:

  So sad..
 
Are you willing to share what happened exactly?

Click to expand...

In short :-
1) Day 1: Buyer bought my AK240
2) Day 2:  shipped when I received the money
3) Day 3: Paypal sends me a mail to say don't ship as there's something fishy about that payment  & Paypal held the payment (I can see it in my account but can't use it)
4) Day 4: I called Paypal to tell them I shipped and they asked for proof of shipment, but since Japan EMS is so efficient, both Paypal & I couldn't recall the product. Paypal told me that the buyer appeared to have obtained money from 3 sources to make the payment to me which was why it was suspicious. Paypal then told me that since I cooperated and appeared to be a legitimate seller (not to mention a flawless Paypal customer for 8 years until this hiccup), they would release the money to me if the tracking showed that it was successfully delivered.
5) Day 5: Package successfully delivered
6) Day 8: Paypal released the money
7) Day 11: Paypal held the payment account again. This time saying that it's the credit card owner that is doing a charge back
8) Day 11 -> Day <something>: Another Paypal representative says that chargeback is outside of Paypal control however I could negotiate on how much I could get back since I was a long standing Paypal customer. Of course I told them I wanted what I was supposed to receive.
9) Day <something else>: Paypal escalates to the local Japanese Paypal representative 'cos they couldn't manage me (I was quite stern). The Japanse Paypal rep says whatever Paypal reps whom I talked to before gave me the wrong information. I'm not entitled to get anything back as I had no seller protection.
10) Day <something else again>: Paypal released the money to my account and promptly took the whole payment back. Further they charged me a charge back fee  - in other words not only did I lose the money I sold the AK240 for, they further added a chargeback.
11) Day whatever: I told Paypal the chargeback fee is unacceptable. They eventually refunded me back the ChargeBack fee.
12) Day whatever: the credit card company won their case and the money was given back to them.
13) Regularly until today: Paypal says there is nothing else they can do for me. They apologise for their earlier reps giving me the wrong information but as I'm not entitled to Seller Protection, they will not cover me for my losses.
 
I'm trying to find a lawyer to fight for my case but sadly $2080 is not enough for any lawyer to even bother. I don't want to use PayPal anymore if I can help it. If there's an alternative I'll switch immediately. Over the past 8 years, I've probably had about $10,000-$15,000 go through my account through buying and selling. This may not seem much but bear in mind I'm a consumer/customer. I'm not running a business.

Any of you have any ideas to help, that'll be great.

anakchan said:

In short :-
1) Day 1: Buyer bought my AK240
2) Day 2:  shipped when I received the money
3) Day 3: Paypal sends me a mail to say don't ship as there's something fishy about that payment  & Paypal held the payment (I can see it in my account but can't use it)
4) Day 4: I called Paypal to tell them I shipped and they asked for proof of shipment, but since Japan EMS is so efficient, both Paypal & I couldn't recall the product. Paypal told me that the buyer appeared to have obtained money from 3 sources to make the payment to me which was why it was suspicious. Paypal then told me that since I cooperated and appeared to be a legitimate seller (not to mention a flawless Paypal customer for 8 years until this hiccup), they would release the money to me if the tracking showed that it was successfully delivered.
5) Day 5: Package successfully delivered
6) Day 8: Paypal released the money
7) Day 11: Paypal held the payment account again. This time saying that it's the credit card owner that is doing a charge back
8) Day 11 -> Day : Another Paypal representative says that chargeback is outside of Paypal control however I could negotiate on how much I could get back since I was a long standing Paypal customer. Of course I told them I wanted what I was supposed to receive.
9) Day : Paypal escalates to the local Japanese Paypal representative 'cos they couldn't manage me (I was quite stern). The Japanse Paypal rep says whatever Paypal reps whom I talked to before gave me the wrong information. I'm not entitled to get anything back as I had no seller protection.
10) Day : Paypal released the money to my account and promptly took the whole payment back. Further they charged me a charge back fee  - in other words not only did I lose the money I sold the AK240 for, they further added a chargeback.
11) Day whatever: I told Paypal the chargeback fee is unacceptable. They eventually refunded me back the ChargeBack fee.
12) Day whatever: the credit card company won their case and the money was given back to them.

13) Regularly until today: Paypal says there is nothing else they can do for me. They apologise for their earlier reps giving me the wrong information but as I'm not entitled to Seller Protection, they will not cover me for my losses.

I'm trying to find a lawyer to fight for my case but sadly $2080 is not enough for any lawyer to even bother. I don't want to use PayPal anymore if I can help it. If there's an alternative I'll switch immediately. Over the past 8 years, I've probably had about $10,000-$15,000 go through my account through buying and selling. This may not seem much but bear in mind I'm a consumer/customer. I'm not running a business.


Any of you have any ideas to help, that'll be great.

Click to expand...

That is just awful. They have some real scumbags out there today. Your going to have to pay someone as a fee anyway you plan to sell. The only other way is through eBay. At least that way you get seller protection. You'll pay fees but you won't get screwed. I would also suggest only selling to people with credible feedback. I usually check the buyer profile, feedback, etc. before completing a sale. You can never be to safe these days. Honesty seems to be a vanishing commodity.

raybone0566 said:

That is just awful. They have some real scumbags out there today. Your going to have to pay someone as a fee anyway you plan to sell. The only other way is through eBay. At least that way you get seller protection. You'll pay fees but you won't get screwed. I would also suggest only selling to people with credible feedback. I usually check the buyer profile, feedback, etc. before completing a sale. You can never be to safe these days. Honesty seems to be a vanishing commodity.

Click to expand...

Actually PayPal Japan charges a 4% fee to the seller every time (that's why it was $2080 as that $80 was for the fees) - I still didn't get seller protection. Yes it was my stupidity for jumping on this 'cos I had the AK240 on sale for some time with no biters. The scammer was one thing, but PayPal was another. Early on Day 4, I asked PayPal if we should reach out to  the police in China but they declined.

I'm getting the screws now from a member here. I sold him a like new pair of phones. he received them, then said he didn't like the way they sound and demanded his money back. I explained to him that I am not best buy or amazon and don't take returns.he then threatened to leave negative feedback if I didn't refund him. I reported him to the moderator who contacted him and he was rude to them. he was banned and his profile now has bad trader on top his avatar. then this evening I get the phones back in the mail.i contact pay-pal and they tell me if he used his credit card he can refuse payment and they would then come after pay-pal who would then of course get the money back from me.my seller rating is flawless, I don't mislead anyone, and looks like i'll be the one getting the screws on this deal. they have some real low-lifes out there.

raybone, cheers for sharing your experience. Actually I don't want this thread to turn into a "who cheated who" kinda topic. I'm kinda really curious to see what alternatives are there to PayPal as I really really want to switch away from them. Unfortunately direct bank/wire transfer is quite expensive so I'm wondering if others have done personal trades with services like Google Wallet, etc.Or does Amazon offer such kinds of services too to consumers?

anakchan said:

raybone, cheers for sharing your experience. Actually I don't want this thread to turn into a "who cheated who" kinda topic. I'm kinda really curious to see what alternatives are there to PayPal as I really really want to switch away from them. Unfortunately direct bank/wire transfer is quite expensive so I'm wondering if others have done personal trades with services like Google Wallet, etc.Or does Amazon offer such kinds of services too to consumers?

Click to expand...

You know I don't know if I'm going to continue to sell gear unless I have a document drawn up or something with terms of an agreement. I mean, pay-pal is useless unless you go through eBay. But still the buyer can easily return anything. What happened to you may not happen that way maybe. Your incident was a scam from get go. Good luck in the future.

I can strongly recommend Google Wallet. Although I haven't had any chargebacks, so I can't comment on how they handle those. I use Google Wallet a lot to transfer money internationally, which is free if I have a debit card in another country, or has a 2.9% fee if I don't (which is still lower than international wire transfer fees if the transfer amounts are lower than around $1000). Sometimes they do flag and suspend my account because of many countries involved in transfers, but when I call them it's going to take less than 30 minutes and I am back and running. When you call them, I recommend you to know your Google Wallet balance, email, and zip code, they often use those for verification purposes. Customer service has always been excellent and efficient – I don't see how it could be any worse in chargeback scenario either.
 
Also, when I do sales or transfers through Google Wallet, I'm never subject to any holds or other crap unlike on PayPal.
 
Another good service is Skrill, but I only use it over Google Wallet when I maxed out monthly limits of Google Wallet transactions. Fee structure in Skrill is similar, but they're slower at transferring money to my real bank account.
 
Edit: Also, if somebody is purchasing $2,000 item from you and they're serious enough, then creating a Google Wallet account is not that big deal. Google Wallet is always easier to create, maintain, and deal with than PayPal.
 
Venmo and Square Cash are good methods to do personal money transfers as well, but they're both smartphone operated and I'm not sure if you're into that. Using these I'd imagine risk of chargeback being extremely low though.

Why didn't you have Paypal Seller Protection? Isn't that automatic?

stereolab42 said:

Why didn't you have Paypal Seller Protection? Isn't that automatic?

Click to expand...

Probably because according to PayPal, in order to be eligible for seller protection, "your permanent address (listed in your PayPal account) must be in the United States."