Advice, please! Am I protected? Apartment rental deposit...

[neurolepsia]

If anyone can give me a word of advice, I would really appreciate it.

PayPal has come through before for me with problems regarding costumers buying goods from me as well as problems with sellers, where accounts have been frozen and the money has been returned.

A friend and I are looking to rent an apartment... from cityflats.org, which has a "paypal verified" image on the homepage.

The contact offers an email without her own name (just NYCflats), the one she uses for paypal.

She's asked to send a $500 deposit to that account,

and says that she will forward the payment to her friend, who is renting one of the apartments advertised there

(there are two on the site: one is hers, the one we're interested in belongs to her friend).

She has not given me the apartment owner's email or name yet

(she replied yesterday and said she'd have the info soon, not sure if she's expecting the money first). 

I'm wondering if this is safe, or if it sounds fraudulent to anyone. 

It is highly informal... but I thought if the payment was made through paypal, some protection might be offered in case this is a scam.

Am I correct? Supposing this woman sends the $500 to another account and there is some kind of problem, would I be able to get the money back through paypal?

I hate not being able to trust people, but it's the smarter thing to do.

Thanks in advance. 

[skier · Accepted solution]

You basically have little or no information going on here, personally, I would not do a deal like this.  You need to know who you are renting from and do some checking on this individual.   Run the name through Google, see what comes up.   Other wise, you simply sending money to an email address and I doubt you have any recourse should this turn into a bad deal.

Here's some additional scam tips:

One of the most common red flags is that the buyer wants to sent you the money via your PayPal email address. Normally as the seller, you send the buyer an email invoice or the purchase is processed through your web page or site. Also, if plan to be a seller, you should have either a Premier or Business Account. You will run into limitations trying to use a Personal Account.


Next common red flag, the buyer wants the item delivered to another country and recommends a specific shipping service for you to use

Another red flag, buyer offers to pay more than you're asking or is requesting shipment ASAP to an unconfirmed address or another state or country.

Beware when the seller wants you to send him the money for a purchase but you are asked to send the money as a "Gift".
This means that the seller is trying to avoid paying the transaction fees and also makes it hard for you to prove you actually purchased an item.

You can protect yourself in several ways:
Do not sell to non-US PayPal Accounts.
Require a "Confirmed Address" meaning that the shipping and billing address must be the same.
Opt to not accept eChecks.

These are all options you can enable from within your PayPal Account Profile.

Regards,

skier