Scam or Theft - Got a bottle of water instead of my items - PayPal denied my claim

[EeePee]

Hi all,

Been a verified PayPal user for over 10 years. I do thousands of dollars of transactions a year, and never had an issue until now. I recently purchased some expensive computer parts on Facebook Marketplace. I checked the seller's Facebook history, and noted the account has been active for over 10 years. I confirmed that the PayPal email address sent to me for payment was verified. It appeared to be, as the seller's full name came up on PayPal when the email address was entered. I felt confident to trust this transaction, so I went ahead and purchased the items. I did so using Pay for Goods, to ensure I had PayPal's Buyer Protection coverage.

A few days later, the package arrived. Instead of the items I purchased, I got a bottle of water about the same weight as what the items I purchased might have weighed. I immediately contacted the seller over Facebook chat. The seller was cordial, apologized, and claims to have not known anything about it. We both opened USPS claims, and both were approved, but for only $50 each, because the seller did NOT buy additional insurance to cover the value of the items purchased.

Since the USPS refund did not cover the entire purchase price, I notified the seller that I was going to open a PayPal dispute in the hope that PayPal would carefully evaluate what happened. Up to this point, I gave the seller the benefit of the doubt that the issue was with the USPS and that I didn't believe I wasn't being scammed, and respectively, I assured the seller I was being honest as well. The seller agreed to cooperate with the PayPal dispute.

The seller promptly provided PayPal the tracking number for the package, and within a day, PayPal summarily denied my claim, stating that the claim was denied because the merchandise was received (presumably because the tracking information shows that the package was delivered.)

Unfortunately, my merchandise was NOT received. I paid hundreds of dollars and received a bottle of water.

There are a few things that don't make sense about this, but at the same time there are some things that seem legitimate, making it very difficult to prove "whodunnit." First of all, the seller oddly did not put his/her name on the return address label, instead where the sender's name would be the seller wrote out the items that I ordered. In fact, the seller apologized and jokingly said maybe listing the items on the label wasn't a good idea. Gee, you think listing the contents of expensive computer parts on the outside of a package was a good idea, what with all the package thefts happening around the holidays?  And further, the seller provided a return address that, when checked on Google and Bing Map and county tax records, shows a private piece of undeveloped land with no house and no building of any kind. There is an adjacent business that owns the land, and the seller claims the address is a workplace address, and was listed rather than home address in case anything is sent during business hours.

The seller also did not write my full first and last name on the package label, scribbling only my first name and the rest of my address. The seller did provide a photo of the USPS receipt, and the tracking number and weight match the label on the box. In addition, the shipping label generated by the USPS does not have my name, only my address. The box has several layers of tape, making it difficult to see if it was tampered with in transit.

The seller has been very cordial and responsive, which leads me to believe this was a postal theft, but the strange way the label was written, plus the questionable return address, gives me pause to think this might be a scam anyway. 

As I mentioned, I do thousands of dollars of business on PayPal a year without issue, and this is the first major issue I've had. What recourse do I have at this point? I still can't prove I was scammed by the seller, but shouldn't PayPal at least consider that the seller should have been responsible for including sufficient insurance, considering I did pay extra for postage? I mean, the seller got not only my money, but an extra $50 from the post office. I honestly don't want to get law enforcement or my attorney involved, as it will end up becoming a nightmare and costing me a lot more than I paid for the items, but at the same time the sum was significant enough that I want to recover my loss.

Any help or advice would be appreciated!