Advice Please

[steve-m-p]

My daughter has agreed the sale of her car and money has been paid into her account.  The car needs to be shipped to Republic of Ireland and the buyer says that the money to pay for that is in the account.  The overall amount seems OK.  My daughter has received an email that appears to be from PayPal saying that she cannot access her money until she has paid the courier.

She is required to pay the courier by Western Union Money Transfer.at a Post Office.  When she has done this she is to send the receipt details to Payment Review Department at address      payment   at epaypal.au.ms and the money will they be released by PayPal.  I am concerned that this may be a scam.  Once the money has been paid to the third party, I am concerned that the money that is in her PayPal account will not be paid to her and she will have lost the money paid by Transfer.

Can anyone assure me please that once the money is in her PayPal account that it cannot be withdrawn?

Any quick advice really appreciated.

Thanks

[kernowlass · Accepted solution]

THIS IS A SCAM.

Be VERY careful selling cars/large items if the buyer is keen to use paypal and states they are working abroad or sending to a friend etc and need a shipping agent to pick it up..

You then get a FAKE paypal email saying you have been paid extra so you can pay the shipping agent for them via western union and the payment is released to you after you have done that.

Paypal would never tell you to use a rival service.

It is a scam to get that western union payment, they don't want your car and the shipping agent is just a scam to get that payment.

They are nearly always in Nigeria and can't even own a paypal account.

Also there is no seller protection on paypal for motor vehicles so cash on collection of car is the only payment you should be asking for. 

[snowshoe]

Didn't mean to pile on here, I'm just a slow typer.

Sorry to say, most likely you're in big scam.  Basically, you have no Seller Protection with this type of deal and it's possible you may loose the funds.  The scammers know all the tricks and understand how PayPal works.  The buyer will file a dispute against you and will probably get their funds back.

[Pauldeadmon]

Hi, that lady wasn't by any chance called Linda Cater? Cut a long story short she messages my husband wanting to buy our car but was off shore and could not get money to her courier company to transport the car to Ireland. So sent us emails saying to pay it for her with an emailing backing up the fact she had transferred funds. I did however see this was not a genuine PayPal email and phoned them to check it out. Was all a scam, luckily we realised this before it was to late. Hope it all work out for you in end.

[Johny_mih]

The same situation here. Luckily I phoned PayPal to check if the transaction is valid and it was not.

The "lady" used the name Linda. The PayPal e-mail address that she uses to send the fake payment confirmations from looked legitimate at a first glance. It is interesting that initially I received a text massage from Irish telephone number asking me to contact her.

It is a very good idea to verify your transactions in PayPal and if in doubt with their customer service before sending anything to the buyer.

I'm happy that I spoke to PayPal's customer service to verify if this was a valid transaction, it saved me 250 sterling.