RE: All the fakes - that's why you pay with your credit card. When your package arrives and you see its a fake, you are in serious trouble with PayPal doing anything about it. That's when you do a chargeback and say the package was empty. Your credit card company with side with you and you'll bust the scammers.
well said GP i totally agree its safe & easy.. when you get the goods in as described condition the payment is released to the seller i buy some gear overseas on a trade site & i wont deal with companies without ESCROW
This may indeed work to keep from having your money refunded back to the buyer, but you will be sacrificing your credit rating....paypal will debit your paypal account and put it into the negative for $1000.00 - if you you do not bring your balance back to zero, they will then send it to a collection agency where it will end up on your credit report. One sure proof way of protecting yourself, especially if you are a small seller, selling only one coin or ounce at a time is to "self insure" by adding a small handling charge of a dollar or two to each transaction....this way if one is "lost in the mail" you have it covered by your previous sales.
Simple don't use feebay and gay pal. I really hate feebay now, fees are ridiculously high and risk of getting scammed. It's going to get worse when people are desperate. Slam
Yes eBay & Paypal really do make it easy to screw sellers over. I have noticed a gradual shift in that direction since eBay has gone more to an "Amazon" like 'marketplace' rather than a safe place to auction off your junk. It recently took me 5 attempts to sell a mobile phone on eBay. One attempt involved sending it registered post to Brisbane only to have it rejected and returned to sender, then a credit card chargeback. That stunt cost me $20 of postage + $15 chargeback fee + $3 listing fee (not refundable) + $12 final value fee that I couldn't get refunded because the whole process took so long that it was beyond the time eBay allows you to claim for a non-paying bidder. I haven't sold any metals on eBay but if I was I would only accept bank deposit.
Yeah to not get a listing fee back when you dont sell is a bit rich, I think they call it "insertion fee". Not as bad as ebay.com which charges I think 12% commission on items sold under $100.00 Ebay is really set up now to the advantage of the buyer. I've bought stuff off there before and not paid for it, big deal, what are they going to do? Nothing. When selling I'd say 1 in 10 items that I have "sold" never get paid for. But the real concern is the chargeback on credit cards because that allows a buyer to essentially get their item completely free which could be worth thousands.
From an older post I wrote months back, but still relevant........ Yes there is alot of ebay scams going on. One I was personally involved in about a year ago. I sold an expensive item on ebay. I had a suspicious feeling about this one. The winner was located in Indonesia. So I double checked everything. Sent emails comfiming their address. Confirming the postage amount. I even sent the item via the most expensive online tracking service from the Post office. The guy paid it all. I even transferred the money paid with paypal out of my paypal account into my bank account. Then a month later. I get a paypal chargeback. This is when without any warning. Paypal takes money out of your BANK ACCOUNT! I didnt even know they could do that. And you cant do anything to stop them. Even the bank cant do anything. The reason being it was paid for using a stolen credit card. I rang the banks telling them that I didnt authorise it. The banks couldnt do a thing. spoke to the managers there at ANZ bank. They couldnt do a thing either. I spoke to ebay and they wouldnt do a thing. Same with paypal. It's funny how paypal and ebay separate themselves when there is a problem. Basically I had lost a $900 item by sending it out to them and lost the money for it another $900. A total of $1800. I hadn't given up yet. Rang up the Bank fraud departments. They couldn't do a thing either as they said its paypals fault not theirs. I couldn't ring the police. The police couldn't cross borders unless its over $5000. One last chance. After scanning the internet on what to do. One suggestions was to contact the Financial Ombudsman. There are the people who investigate if financial institutions are following the rules properly. Its a free service thank god. Anyways I was assigned a case. And to cut the story short. It took 3 months of battling and they finally made paypal pay up my $900. As I had proof that I sent the item. Paypal didn't even admit it was their fault. They wrote me a letter stating that it was a once off gesture. (more like they were forced to pay up by the Financial Ombudsman) No what had happened was that the ebay account was registered to a girl in the UK. Some Indonesian scammer must of broke into her ebay and paypal account changed the address to an Indonesian address and just went shopping on ebay. Financial Ombudsman Service Australia. http://www.fos.org.au/centric/home_page.jsp
That's why my ebay sellers account is linked not to my personal bank account but a UBank savings account that has no monthly fees and no money in it. Once I get money from PayPal I transfer from my PayPal account into my UBank account. Then from my UBank account (now zero balance) to my normal savings account. If PayPal go hunting they will find my linked bank account empty. Got to keep one step ahead of these thieves.
I'm not sure how it works in Australia....but here in Canada....some of the damn banks give complimentary overdraft protection....so keeping a zero balance in a bank account does not guarantee no funds will be available...the better your credit rating, the better the chance that bank will allow the payment to go through.
In that month's time after the sale. I had taken the money OUT of my paypal account. And put it into my ANZ BANK ACCOUNT, and then already SPENT it! So there wasn't money in my ANZ Bank account. So when you look at your ANZ account it says it is a NEGATIVE balance. And guess what! Do you think the bank likes it when you have a $900 negative balance in your bank account!! NO way!!.....Welll actually they do! This is when they start making money off you by charging all their FEES associated with having a negative account balance! hahaha. Don't think you can just leave a negative account balance in the bank without copping a ton of fees, account suspension and eventually a bad credit rating. I rang the bank straight away explaining my situation. Had to talk to the bank managers, and given a case number to explain what was going on to reverse all these fees.
Does anyone know if you can have a PayPal account not linked to a bank account? From memory I think you can. That way your "primary" PayPal account you receive the money into doesn't have a linked bank account. You then transfer the money out of that PayPal account into your "secondary" PayPal account which is linked to a bank account. That should avoid CC chargebacks I would imagine, however you will be hit twice with PayPal fees.
I had a similar problem with Tulving. They omitted a monster box of ASE in with another order. Tulving tells me to file a police report and slams the phone down. His shipping clerk finally discovered by the weight of the shipment that the coins had not been sent. No apology from that ass Tulving. His other people are nice, but he is a jerk.
If you are in the same country as the seller, slap a Magistrate's Court civil claim on them then add another thousand or two onto your claim for "costs" and serve them with it - see how quick they move then. Been there done that with a motor mechanic and a few other before, gets the job done.
I have been a member of ebay for over 8 years... mostly as a buyer. the last thing I sold on ebay back in early 2010 was a gold coin for my brother-in-law. I was quite shocked on how high the fees are... by the time I got the money from paypal it was almost 20% in fees. Over the last year I have had 12 transactions where I did not get the item and I got ALL of my money back. I am talking about a total of $14,900.00 USD total, there was one that I purchased outside of ebay and I just filed the claim with paypal and still got my money back. For me as a buyer, ebay does seam to favor on the buyers side more now than they did before. I guess the higher fees make up for the all of the claims...? Last year they even sent me a special phone number to contact support because I spend more than $5000 per month. I know back several years ago I lost many $ on ebay because of items not getting to me... even when I filed a claim. I think most of my losses were because of the USPS, the only ones I didn't get were the ones that were not insured... and they always were coins. I did find out later that there was an employee of the USPS was charged with theft of mail. At one point back in 2007 I was getting 10 to 15 packages everyday from the USPS. It seams that about 1% of the packages would get lost. My business plan was that by NOT buying insurance (unless seller provided), I would only loose about 1 % of the time, I think this is a reasonably risk to take. I still made 18 to 25% profit on my purchases of silver when I sold them to the smelter. ALL purchased from Ebay!
It works like that in Australia too. It is because you have 'confirmed' your bank account with Paypal - now you have a direct debit agreement in place between Paypal and the bank which means when Paypal direct debits from your account, the bank must honor that. The bank then charges you an honor fee of around $30 and your bank acct will be negative - which will attract crazy fees and interest. The only way around this is NOT to have a CONFIRMED bank account with Paypal. You can still WITHDRAW from Paypal into an UNCONFIRMED account but you can't PAY out of it. Even if you already have a confirmed account you can go into your profile and REMOVE the bank account then add it again but this time do not confirm. Every time you log into Paypal they will try to get you to "click here to confirm your bank account" so just ignore that. You can still pay by credit card and you won't get it defaulting to bank every time you pay too.
Well to shaft PayPal good and proper after they they limited my PayPal account (step before they no doubt raid my personal bank account), I went and closed my personal bank account today then promptly reopened an account with new numbers etc. That's pretty much the end of that little saga.
Until collections comes a calling to keep it going on just a wee bit longer...I don't know that you can get away from paypal if you owe them...hell, I wasn't even able to close my good standing paypal account...something to the effect of..."processing error please try again later"...I tried in two different years.
Good luck. If PayPal reckon I owe something let them haul me through the Magistrate's Court where I'll be happy to self represent as to why they are crooks. They try to scare the little guy because they are a "corporation". Also people fear a negative credit report. But here in Australia, Veda is pretty much the main credit reporting company. Under law you can demand your own credit report to see if there's any complaints. If there are, you can write to Veda and explain why they should be removed. You also hint that if they dont confirm in writing the complaint has been removed from the file you will take your complaint to the Privacy Commissioner, Ombudsman, Financial Ombudsman etc etc. From Veda's viewpoint, as a profit making company, better to just delete some negative feedback that have yet another complaint go off to a Government Authority.