Chargeback Scam?

[screamsos]

I recently sold a CPU on ebay and the person told me to ship it to an address in a note (which I did). A week after he received it he issued a chargeback saying it was an unauthorized transaction and now my account is in the negatives. Paypal said that it'd take 30 days to fully review it and IF they decide to fight for my case it'd take another 75 days. Does this mean that I won't get my CPU back or my money for a possible 105 days??? I don't understand how people can just get away with this. Isn't this pretty much stealing? I feel like this system could be abused and people could just try to issue a chargeback for every single item they buy and hope that paypal won't try to fight back. Is there anything that I could do or do I just wait? Has anyone had a situation like this before? Thanks

[Oregon11 · Accepted solution]

When you saw the note asking you to ship the item to a different address, you should have refunded the payment right then and there. 

When you shipped the item to a different address, you invalidated your PayPal seller protection for an unauthorized transaction. For you to receive protection from PayPal against an unauthorized payment claim, the item must be able to be tracked to the confirmed address zip code, and I'm almost sure the zip code for the address on the note was different than the confirmed address zip code on the account that you would have shipped to, if it hadn't been for the note.

A lot of times these notes are for items purchased with a stolen PayPal (but not all the time and I'm not saying that's whats going on here but this is why PayPal doesn't cover this situation) account or a stolen credit card and PayPal is used as the checkout option and the person who stole the account can't change the address in the account, so they try to get sellers to send the item to a different address by adding a note like the one you had on your sale.

This is an unfortunate situation for any seller to be in. From now on you know to refund these types of purchases right away. Here is a PayPal link with details on seller protection. 

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/security/seller-protection

[screamsos]

so is there nothing I could do about this at all but wait? I mean if it were really unauthorized do you think it's possible to file a small claims report to the police of the state that I sent the item to? Thank you for your time and information

[Oregon11]

If its an unauthorized transaction dispute then that means the owner of the account or card that was used to purchase what you sold, is saying that they didn't make that purchase (this all ties into the note with the different address). You would have to figure out what actions could be taken and with which person. 

Here is another PayPal link with more details.

https://www.paypal.com/us/brc/article/customer-disputes-claims-chargebacks-bank-reversals

You're very welcome.

[screamsos]

So, I contacted the ebay account that bought the item from me and he said someone got his paypal information and that he did not buy the item. Is it possible to log in to ebay with paypal though?

[Oregon11]

Its possible for a fraudster to gain access to someone's PayPal account.

Its also possible for a fraudster to gain access to someone's eBay account.

[ranzolyn]

I have been using PayPal since 2012, I am an academic writer. I have always been loyal to my clients, to my surprise, one of them scammed me with a chargeback. Waited for me to submit a presentation and a detailed word document about the presentation itself. It is so unfair that I sacrificed almost 48 hrs just to get the assignment done, I even submitted the assignments for PayPal's verification, but they just favoured their own. No problem!