I was buying something from a guy on Reddit and checked the personal vouchers and reviews and they seemed okay. We discussed payment through discord and what exactly I would be getting. Everything seemed okay, but when I sent the payment he didn't receive all the money due to a fee and the money was also being held until a certain date. He told me that I should have sent it to him through family and friends because there was no wait time and there was a smaller fee. I've never sent payment through family and friends before and it seemed similar to the other method, but I should have paid attention to the page before I sent it. That's probably red flag number one, but the biggest red flag that my stupid self ignored was that he told me I sent the wrong amount again. I checked the Reddit post that advertised his product and saw that I had sent the correct amount. He told me that was an old price and the new price was ten dollars more. Like an idiot, I thought that since he had quite a few endorsements this was probably just a rare occurrence, and sent him the extra ten dollars, ignoring the blaring red flag. I waited for him to give me an update on when I would receive my purchase, and he went offline. I started getting worried as the time went by but then he came back on and said that the product I was buying wasn't working and that he had purchased a more expensive product to give me instead. Which was great, until he told me that he wanted me to cover the twenty dollar difference. At this point, all the red flags were directly in front of my face and I couldn't keep pretending they weren't there. Without asking me, he had taken the money I sent for a very specific product, and he used it to buy something similar at nearly double the price. I told him that I didn't want it since it was out of my price range and I had already agreed to ten dollars more. I asked for a refund but he says that it would be impossible since he used my money to buy the more expensive product. Things were starting to get ridiculous and I asked him why he used my money, without asking me, to buy a product, that I never asked for, at a price that was more than I gave him. He kept ignoring my questions and told me that it would be easier for me just to send him the difference and then I would get the more expensive product and we could pretend this never happened. I told him that I couldn't trust him anymore and that I expected a refund. He got angry and asked me how I expected him to refund my money since he already spent it. I told him to get my money back from whoever he gave it to, and then give it back to me. He kept asking me to just pay the difference and I told him I would file a dispute with Paypal if he didn't give me my money back in two days. Well, turns out that was a dead end since I was too lazy to read that Family and Friends payments aren't covered by buy protection. I called my bank trying to dispute it but they said that they would have to contact Paypal and if they already told me no, then they would be denied as well. So now here I am, last-ditch effort to see if there's anyone who has successfully challenged a similar situation and won, or really any advice at all. All I have are the chat transcripts if that can be of any use to show that he lied, manipulated me and is in the practice of committing fraud.
