Fiends and family payment

[wherespaultoday]

Hi, i'm hoping for some reassurance from the community.  I'm selling some expensive bike parts (£350 in total) and the buyer has negotiated me down a little.  As part of this he said he'd use a friends and family payment to reduce my fees.  I've spoken with him on the phone an he sounds genuine but he's made the transfer from someone elses account (he says it's his mums) and asked it to be delivered to his fiance at her hair salon.  He made the payment 24 hours ago and it appeared in my account almost straight away.  I wouldn't normaly be concerned except neither the payment accound and delivery address is his. 

Should I be concerned?  I'll be sending the parts signed for but is there anyway this could be a scam?  Or are friends and family payments irreversible?  I've emailed the woman who owns the account to check it's his mums account and she's aware of it but have not had a response yet.

Many thanks

[kernowlass]

@wherespaultoday

Have you actually read seller protection at all before you starting selling??

1. You are accepting a friends / family payment for a goods sale which is totally against paypal rules and may lead to your paypal account being suspended.

2. You are accepting a friends / family payment which totally negates your paypal seller protection, your buyer can do a chargeback via his credit card and paypal will just hand the money back and you won't have any seller protection.

3. You are accepting a payment from another persons paypal account so you won't be sending to the paypal registered address of the buyer.

Personally you might just as well refund his payment AND send him the goods at the same time to save waiting for the chargeback.

[paelavong]

Hi,

Nope don't send the bike.

Just to add on to this. You will be very unhappy if you experience chargeback in this situattion as there is a certain amount of fees which will be deducted on top of the transaction itself.

Even if the person says that the user/account holder of the card authorised the payment you never know they might still report it as unauthorised card use or chargeback. But again we don't know for sure if they are genuine or not. It's just better to refund the payment right now to prevent any horrible experience.

Regards,

Paelavong

[wherespaultoday]

Thanks for the advice guys.  I have to admit that while i've been a paypal user for many years i've very rarely used it as a seller but have heard stories of people being scammed both as buyers and sellers.  I think i'm going to refund the guy and will definitely do transactions like using the seller function in future, both for my protection and not to get on the wrong side of paypal! 

Having spoken with the guy a few times on the phone I still feel like the guys genuine despite using a different account and shipping address.  Any tips on making sure I protect myself if I do sell to him.  How good is paypal seller protection?

[kernowlass]

@wherespaultoday

You really need to read up on it yourself so you can risk assess your transactions as seller protection is never a 100% coverall.

Personally if he is trying to get you to send to another address alarm bells would be ringing.

Personally i would list 'collect only' and cash on collection. (if the items are heavy to send).