Hi everyone
I felt that i should post about a recent experience i have had whilst selling an item with the "protected help" of paypal.
I am sure that many will have had a similar experience; I just wanted to vent a little, and hopefully pick up any advice along the way. (Although i have learned my lesson so to speak)
My son received a gift card for his 21st birthday for £220.00 (Ernest Jones). he kept hold of it for a few years as they never had anything that he wanted to buy. Having recently lost his job he decided to sell it. so we obtained a balance and receipt, he placed an ad on Gumtree at a £50.00 discount and very soon received an enquiry. The person said that they would like to buy the card, and would he accept a PayPal payment. Truly stupid of both of us but we really thought this was a safe way to obtain payment.
Payment was made and my son texted the card details to the buyer. That evening the payment was reversed by PayPal, as it turns out that the buyer had fraudulently used a third party PayPal account.
I spoke to paypal and discovered that we had absolutely no rights. (More on this in a bit).
Reported to the police, who passed me on to Fraud Action, Fraud Action said the police would have not passed me on to them if they were interested in investigating the case, so no interest there either.
spoke to Ernest Jones, who had no interest, the "buyer" ordered stuff online last night, but they really didn’t care that the card was basically stolen.
We have the texts, we have the telephone number of the scammer (who incidentally has advertised on Gumtree last month asking for cards to buy) and who is now waiting to either receive his stolen goods or pick them up from an Ernest jones store and no one is interested in the slightest!!
Upon researching further i now see that you are only protected by PayPal if you are the buyer, or if you sell goods and track them with a courier through to delivery and a signature. this means even if we had sold the card on EBay there would not have been any protection unless we had physically posted and tracked the card, which granted would have been easy enough although if we had been selling a sofa or other large item what then. EBay forces you to offer PayPal payment option but does not provide seller protection if item is personally collected.
I now intend to write to as many publications as possible in order to highlight this, as there must be so many people who like us thought that PayPal was a legitimate and trustworthy way to receive and send money. It most certainly is not; in fact to me it seems to be a scammers dream come true.
Thanks for reading
