Hello, I ran into a strange situation on ebay recently. My payment for an item posted, and the seller marked the item as shipped (without providing a tracking number). He then sent me a tracking number through Paypal to my email: the tracking number didn't work. Now that delivery is past due, he claimed that he never got a payment. Ignorant of how to handle this, I advised him to contact Paypal about it, thinking perhaps he mistyped his email address and the payment was unclaimed or went to another user. Now things get a bit stranger: I get a refund, through Paypal, from the person by the same name who originally sent me the tracking number. I started reading online, and it seems like to get that refund, I should have been the one to contact Paypal, and then I could make that payment again to the right address. However, the seller now claims he no longer has a Paypal account and asks me to pay him via Facebook messenger or something called a cash app. I never used either and don't know how secure they are.
Obviously I'm not paying him anything until I get and inspect the item thoroughly. But it seems like he has a paypal account since he is the one who initiated the refund. He also knew right away that Paypal refunded me, which seems to indicate again that he has access to that account. I'm at a bit of a loss as to what the proper thing to do here is. Is he trying to con me somehow? If the item arrives and is in order, I definitely don't want to withhold payment. Thanks for reading.
