Payment not showing

[Jamiebutler1694]

Hi everyone. I sold a phone via ebay about 3-4 days ago. I sent the buyer a payment request. After doing this I received an email from PayPal saying 'your funds are now available' but within this email it said I had to provide a tracking number from royal mail so I did, I sent the phone of to the buyer and sent the tracking number to both the buyer and to paypal. After doing this I then got another email from PayPal saying that the tracking number has been confirmed and that the funds will be available within 12 hours. It's now been about 2-3 days and still no sign of anything. The emails I got from paypal were from the email address <removed> which I believe is the legit PayPal email? But when expanding the email it shows that the email was pay-palverification or something like that. The email had all the correct paypal banners, copyright logos, date etc etc. Is this a legitimate paypal email or have I been scammed by someone pretending to be paypal?

[sharpiemarker]

@Jamiebutler1694 

Sorry, but you got scammed because someone sent you fake emails. Always, always, ALWAYS log on to check your PayPal account for a record of payment first, whether it is available right away or temporarily unavailable, you should see payment. If not, its "Houston, we got a problem". Don't just believe emails as they can be spoofed.

Here is an article about how held payments work:

https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/fundsavailability

Know that PayPal does not hide payments from you asking you to do such things as providing tracking info, to pay some third party with another payment processor, or buy a gift card first.

[Jamiebutler1694]

Thanks. Yeah I have just been in contact with paypal and they have confirmed I have been scammed. I'm reporting it through ebay and will also be reporting it to action fraud as well