ebay-kleinanzeigen-friends and family scam english version

[seefees]

Today I lost 250 € by trying to buy an iphone on ebay-kleinanzeigen. Since I am not an experienced online buyer I easily accepted seller's request to transfer the money through "friends and family" option. When it was already too late I received a warning message from ebay-kleinanzeigen doubting about seller's solvency. Even if the user has a two years old ebay-kleinanzeigen account by reporting the case ebay-kleinanzeigen unfortunately doesn't provide any kind of security-protection method for avoiding scammers. But they kindly advise people who lost their money to report the case to the police since this is the only way to keep hope alive. I know it was a big mistake to transfer money through "friends and family" option to a stranger and I took my lesson not to do it again. But I am still wondering if there is any chance for a refund or this is just an inexcusable mistake? I have spend my whole day searching to find a solution to my problem and I found out this is a very common way for online buyers to lose their money. So I am coming to the conclusion to ask PayPal. When so many people continuously losing money through friends and family transactions why this not something would have been concerned for security improvement? 

 German translation follows...

[MartinLangr4567]

The same for me here. I lost 590 euros 😞 . MY stupidity. I have never ever had a problem with online buying on Ebays etc. 
Do you have any solution of this ?

[seefees]

Unfortunately there is no way to have your money back when you pay through "friends and family". That's why from now on you must avoid paying someone you don't know via paypal "friends and family". 

[kernowlass]

@seefees 

@MartinLangr4567 

A friends / family (or gift payment) is intended as a transfer of funds from family or friends to one another. For this reason, there is no processing fee when payment is made with bank or PayPal balance.
However as it is a gift payment, there is also no Buyer protection as no goods or services should have been exchanged.

If he was not a close mate or family member you should never use that option as it enables the seller to evade paying his paypal fees and negates your buyer protection at the same time.

You would also not be able to open a dispute apart from one citing an unauthorised transaction but that would be automatically closed as you did authorise the initial payment.

Be careful as using that option for purchasing goods is against Paypal rules and can lead to account limitation.

If you funded your paypal payment via a credit card then contact your card issuer and see if they will help you but unfortunately they may decline as well as it was a gift payment.

[victimofbluenet]

hi all

i had the same case, 255 E and paypal offers no reimbursement because of family and friends.

but why do paypal not freeze the account of this most likely fraud,the account that i send money to, claimed a loss, even german police is now informed.

i was asked of the other person to leave the address and contact were the item shall sent to.

so the scamers have my address as well.

paypal can see the transaction and the additional infos i send by mistake...action or comment from paypal is none and the repeat of policy of family and friends.

my opinion is that paypal is acting like a darknet, offering scamers an easy option for fraud and as paypal is not acting,they are part of the system. why is a developer of a darknet page going into jail when his unknown users are doing and selling **bleep** and paypal developer not???is it maybe as paypal is using blue background color and not black? shall we call paypal the bluenet?

why has paypal only these two-choice-botton-option...how many of us are sending or receiving money from family and friends before paypal? most often from our Grannies on Christmas and birthday, right?how many times does a member of paypal has birthday in one year?!one time out of 365 days.is this necessary for a 50% button/choice of such a big company? just imagine your car has two gears;one forward one back....this is very strange....or for a bluenet system something good.

I had same problem with my first order on Alibaba this summer 2021....blinking pages with lot of orange and unknown symbols...ordered a pc stuff of 600 €,not familiar with their buyrs protection or any other hints and hunts the internet is giving to you.

After payment the chat with the seller was getting suspecious and funny on many points.

told seller that this is my first order on alibaba and would be bad karma for both of us if this will not work out. i wish i would use a blog, i would copy these whole chats.

lets skip the story, emailed to alibaba one time and asked to look into the chat of us, my advantage:  1.no customer protection, 2.totally unfamiliar and 3.never read the terms and conds of alibaba, 4.affraid of bad karma for me ,alibaba and the bad soul of the seller,and even as a 5. shareholder of alibaba with so much expactations into this company and last and least 6. I am a customer.(btw, i have shares of paypal as well and the paypal service was aware of it and probably the other 5 )

now guess, i received the money back immediatly, well i think they took some 10 € service costs,

Who ever reads this before maybe paypal deletes the post becaus of my bad grammar,I deeply hope,that Alibaba will get these invested 600 € they reimbursed to me withount any wining of the service center  and will get all of our karma back in place, even the seller in china should keep living a better way of live just because of this post.

now paypal is a harder task as you can count the words and time i am spending here now.

i hope i will find some positive thoughts from you.

i will keep on, maybe i will invest another 255 € for a developer to start sneeking thru the net and get the term bluenet into peoples minds. and maybe change the button of family and friends into a term like ,this button is a donation button with no chance of reimbursment and the other one you will pay a high service fee to paypal.

sorry for my bad english and greetings fom germany.

cheerio.

[DONEuser]

While I agree, that there's some responsibility on the part of the "buyer/sender of the funds" (and sadly, Paypal doesn't give a rats **bleep** that you lost your hard earned money.... but apparently have no issue allowing folks to scam you out of it), the fact that Paypal won't do ANYTHING to help.  I have a single user (same person, same email) who has scammed at least 5 people on various "sales" all with the same sob story about not wanting fees or waiting periods or whatever.... and the only thing we as customers get from Paypal is essentially "well you shouldn't have done it."

I am personally done with Paypal.  I'm closing my account and if that means I can't purchase something from someone/someplace, well I guess that's just my loss.  But I refuse to use a product that even when shown overwhelming proof that a scam has taken place, will always side with the scammer, never the people that lost their $$$ but also the item/product they intended to purchase to begin with.

To the original poster, I am sorry this happened to you.  Unfortunately it has happened to me as well.  The worst part is to have absolutely no recourse and as I said, Paypal couldn't care less.  For future reference, here are some very common and consistent things to look out for:

1) Items that seem odd, or price too good to be true.  This is not as much of a problem on sites like Ebay, but places like Facebook marketplace, you need to be very careful.  If the buyer or seller has a profile with virtually NO content or information on it, plus a recent creation date.... probably best to just move on

2) strange requests to wait a certain period of time due to financial problems.  Then when money is sent to you, it's rush rush rush for you send the item you sold.  You provide tracking, then suddenly a dispute hits and you lose both ways.

3) mis-matches.... you'll be talking with a "Steve [Removed]" and suddenly you get a paypal payment from "Carl [Removed]" with a completely different email address

The problem is, the scammers continue to find loopholes in **bleep** systems (like Paypal) and exploit them for a long time.  Then when they eventually get fixed, they find another and the process repeats.  Meanwhile decent people are victimized (and again, there's responsibility there too, but education is the first step), and Paypal doesn't even have an option to have someone look into what happened, no matter how many times the same account is accused of stealing.... you're just **bleep** and that's really **bleep**.  But you DO have one option.  Close your account.  When Paypal can't make money because enough people are fed up, they'll change.  Hopefully it'll be too late.

[kernowlass]

@DONEuser 

Its pretty easy.

Were they a member of your family?   No.

Were they a close mate you were sending a gift of money to?  No.

So why would you use that option?

And of course paypal will do nothing, legally they can't, you sent a 'gift' of money to another person and had 0 buyer protection.

If you had done it using a bank account, debit card OR credit card then its no different, even credit cards only cover you for sales and not for sending 'gifts' of money.