Possible Scam, from seller? refunded with separate payment?

[Buggyr333]

Hi, I recently purchased something through a seller in classifieds on a third party website (pinkbike.com), and I paid through paypal, when the item arrived it was a completely different, worthless item. I Immediately contacted the seller and he got back to me quickly, basically telling me there is no way the item sent was incorrect because of the verified weight from DHL doesnt match the item that arrived to me, and that he verified with "his employee" that his inventory correctly reflects the sale, and that they don't even have any of the item that was sent to me. I obviously pressed the issue, since I paid nearly 300$ for an item and what was delivered was a different item worth 20$ at best.

So after a few back and fourth messages, he "refunds" the money to me, basically saying he does not believe me, but will pay me back to protect his seller reputation. However the "refund" he sent me was not simply refunding the original payment, but sending me a completely new payment, as if he was now buying something from me.

My concern, is that this could be a possible long term scam, where he could dispute that payment at a later date, possibly after the window for me to dispute the original payment has closed. And since there is no record of me sending anything in response to the "payment" he gave me, paypal may reward him this money back to him.

However he did not provide any shipping address anyway, so I am unsure if he would even qualify for buyer protection in that event. Also he sells things on many websites, and has an impeccable record anywhere that has such ratings, so I want to trust that the refund is genuine. But I don't want to leave myself vulnerable.

Has anyone heard of a scam like this? Should I insist that he refunds the original payment and I refund his "refund" payment? or is that unnecessary since he provided no shipping address? 

[Anonymous_User]

Similar scams have happened - the deal is, the sender sends you money using the Send Money feature and chooses the Friends and Family option - the transaction simply looks like one person sending money to another - no details of a purchase or refund.   Then sometime later, the sender reports an unauthorized transaction - PayPal reviews the claim and in many cases sides with the sender - PayPal will automatically refund the money if they decide in the sender's favor and you're left with no money or any way to defend yourself.

[Buggyr333]

But what if he sent it as payment for goods/services? he did that, the paypal fee was even taken out of it (when i mentioned that he sent a second payment to make up the difference) And in the notes he did say that it is a refund for the item. I'm wondering if he will dispute it and claim the item was never sent back to him, of course because the Item is not here for him to send back. He has said he does not want me to send the item that i received back, because as i said, it's basically worthless.