Item not received from khristopher daugherty INC; apparent scam; PayPal will not refund

[bama6]

I ordered a Christmas tree on December 15, 2020, through a Facebook ad. The seller's name was khristopher daugherty INC.

I never received the item. I submitted a claim using the reason I didn't receive an item I purchased. 

I did not attempt to contact the seller directly because my transaction read, "If there's a problem, make sure to contact the seller through PayPal by June 13, 2021. You may be eligible for purchase protection".  Paypal responded that the seller had provided a shipping and delivery confirmation and closed my claim. 

I escalated stating that I had proof from my video camera that the item was not delivered as reported on the delivery confirmation.  I began to suspect that this was a case of fraud but upon resubmitting the claim, I found that the only option that mentioned fraud was under the category of  Unauthorized Transaction.  Paypal investigated and replied, "We've completed our review of your unauthorized activity case, and we’ve determined there was no unauthorized use".

I did further research with UPS and found that the tracking number that the seller had given belonged to a package that was addressed to a different recipient and did it come from the seller in question; it had been shipped by Amazon.  This confirmed in my mind that I had been scammed, so I filed an appeal explaining that I never received the package, and submitted the documentation that I received from UPS showing the name of the person that the package had been delivered to and that it had been shipped from Amazon, not the seller on my transaction.  Paypal replied, "We have reviewed this transaction(s) and are denying your case(s). This decision was made because this transaction was not unauthorized".  How can I get them to understand "Yes, I authorized the purchase but never received what I ordered"? PayPal should have a complaint option of 'ITEM NOT RECEIVED/SUSPECTED SCAM'.

In summary, a scammer somehow accessed a UPS tracking number for someone else's package and reported it to PayPal. Even after I submitted proof from UPS, PayPal refused to refund my money so the scammer wins! I read similar cases in which the response was that the payment was probably identified as being made to a person. This was not my situation. There was no personal option since I supposedly ordered from a business.

[obym]

1. I ordered something relatively valuable (a puzzle table on February 16 for ‪$42.98, the amount sent to Mariytba-at-outlook.com), having seen its commercial on Instagram. Here’s the website where I ordered it from: intellectes.store (In a month or so, it went down, but now it’s functioning again – beware!)
2. Of course, nothing happened, and on March 24, I started asking the “seller” where my item was. I think his task was to lull me into a false sense of security, so that at some point, I’d no longer be eligible for the buyer protection, so he tried to soothe me saying how bad logistics were these days and asked me to allow for some more time for the item to arrive.
3. In the meantime, the “seller” sent me something small and insignificant (a key holder), which safely arrived with a lot of other stuff I really did order from Ali Express. Suspicion: the “seller” may have got access to the China Post database and saw that I had ordered numerous items. The most recent approach of Ali Express/China Post is to accumulate items bought by one addressee and then send them all together in one big package, although I ordered them separately, on different dates, and from different sellers. Such a “seller” also hopes a buyer won’t keep the packaging, so when the claim is in progress, if it is, this buyer wouldn’t have evidence that an item with such and such tracking number has not been delivered. So I got this key holder along with many other things on the same day in one big sack and kept waiting for the puzzle table.
4. Naturally, no puzzle table arrived, so I asked the “seller” where it was, and, upon this inquiry, he told me the item had arrived!!! Luckily, I was able to contact the local shipper who confirmed that there was a package with “table” in its description, but it was very small and couldn’t be a table, so I got my money back from PayPal after I had filed a claim.

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Similar scam:

1. I ordered a Germany-map beer cap holder from a website named Fleetwind (fleetwind.net) for $ 53.57. This time, it was a bit trickier, because it was supposed to be a present for my friend living in another country (naturally, Germany).
2. The money was transferred not to Fleetwind but to Danceage Network Limited (well, it may happen, so it didn’t raise any suspicions). However, on the Activities page in my PayPal account, this “seller” entered the China Post tracking number (and this I didn’t see on time). This time, I immediately started getting “updates” on the “progress” of the “shipment” that “went” from the US (not from China) to Germany. The updates were sent from shipping at 24hservice.vip, tracking number was completely different (19 digits), and the “progress” could have been seen here: tracking-hub.com.
3. The updates were sent once in a while and were also meant to lull me. They showed some nice shipping progress in various sorting centers across the US, whereupon the “shipment” “arrived” in Germany. When it stayed in the “Shipping Partner Facility” in Munich for too long, I started asking questions and kept getting reassuring answers that my “shipment” was with the local shipper and that it was about to arrive real soon. The con men, however, weren’t able to give me the shipping company’s name.
4. It is then that I saw that the original payment receiver (Danceage Network Limited) had entered the China Post tracking number (probably, some time ago) and filed a claim with PayPal.
5. And here’s the tricky thing: according to that number, the item WAS indeed received in Germany (but not by my friend, as he hadn’t ordered anything recently). Some item sent from China with the China Post tracking number entered in my PayPal account really was received by someone in Germany on that very date that MY “shipment” “arrived” in the “Shipping Partner Facility” in Munich.
6. Conclusion: the con men are likely to have gained access to the China Post database and can see who receives what in the country of destination and then update these tracking numbers in the Activities page of the of the scammed buyer’s PayPal account.
7. Naturally, a claim was filed with PayPal, and they asked the “seller” to provide proof of the item reception. Here’s a nice one: the stupid/sloppy con men entered a different item than the one they had originally entered.

At the time of writing, the claim is still being reviewed.