Possible eBay fraud alert - UPDATED: Olympus BH-2

dmillard · Post by **dmillard** » Sat Mar 05, 2011 7:57 pm

Harold Gough wrote:
SONYNUT wrote:the thing that pisses me off about ebay is when the take down auctions they don't send you a notice or anything......and if you paid you have no evidence of the action ever existing because they delete everything..
When Ebay have removed a listing where I was the leading bidder they have e-mailed me, telling me they had removed it and saying that I had no oblication to pay anything to the seller.

Harold

I've twice had the same experience as Harold on auctions on which I was the high bidder, but items that I have merely been watching have occasionally disappeared without a trace before the auction end.

David

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:42 am

PauloM wrote:Unfortunately, eBay let this one slip through.
Sold for $600.
I wish the best of luck to the winning bidder, he's going to need it.

Sold is not necessarily the same as paid for and I believe any payment via PayPal can be retrieved directly by the buyer.

Harold

Doc.Al · Post by **Doc.Al** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 2:24 am

Sold is not necessarily the same as paid for and I believe any payment via PayPal can be retrieved directly by the buyer.

This is true, but what is the betting that the "seller" requested payment by another means.

Just goes to show, if there is any doubt about the authenticity of an item pay by Paypal, which will protect you and also hopefully mean the seller can be traced.

Alex

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 6:04 am

Doc.Al wrote: Just goes to show, if there is any doubt about the authenticity of an item pay by Paypal, which will protect you and also hopefully mean the seller can be traced.

I use PayPal all the time and not only on Ebay. More and more online traders are set up for it.

Harold

PauloM · Post by **PauloM** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 8:56 am

Harold,

Like Alex said, there's a very high chance that the seller will offer a substantial discount for the use of an alternative payment method. The buyer may or may not fall for it.

Even if the buyer pays via Paypal, the Buyer protection plan is not foolproof and there's a strict set of rules that the buyer must follow in order to be granted protection. I'm pretty sure Paypal and/or Ebay will use every loophole legally available to them in order to avoid having to pay up.

As for using Paypal other than for Ebay purchases, be aware that AFAIK the protection plan will not cover them, so with or without Paypal you're on your own. Like in real life, it's your duty to carefully judge who you're sending your hard-earned cash to.

I may even venture to say that, between E.U. persons and outside of ebay, it might be actually safer for the buyer to make a bank transfer using the IBAN number; at least he will have a detailed record of whom he transferred the money to.

P

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 9:30 am

PauloM wrote:As for using Paypal other than for Ebay purchases, be aware that AFAIK the protection plan will not cover them, so with or without Paypal you're on your own. Like in real life, it's your duty to carefully judge who you're sending your hard-earned cash to.

Yes. For large items I use my credit card; debit card for travel bookings, where they charge for credit card transactions.

PauloM wrote:I may even venture to say that, between E.U. persons and outside of ebay, it might be actually safer for the buyer to make a bank transfer using the IBAN number; at least he will have a detailed record of whom he transferred the money to.

Yes, I did this last year for the second most expensive piece of photo gear I have bought in recent years. I took a judgement on the seller, based on a prolonged e-mail correspondence.

Harold