How do I know if a transaction is legit?

[justraycee]

Hi there, so i’m new to paypal and i was wanting to sell a phone i had. i was messaged by a potential buyer who sent me $300 for the phone via paypal but, i received an email saying they had to send another $600 so that i was able to receive the initial $300 and i was to refund the $600 back as i needed to be upgraded to a “business account” because my limit was too small. they’d sent $900 in total and i was unable to continue with the transaction as i didn’t have $600 in my account at the time to refund them. is this normal? are we required to send money from our own personal accounts before even receiving money from their end? the confirmation emails i received went directly to junk which also made me question this as every other email i’ve received from paypal went to my usual inbox. please help!

[kernowlass]

@justraycee 

You never pay any upfront fee as a seller.

Ignore scammers that send fake Paypal emails telling you that you need to pay an upfront fee to verify/upgrade/or any other reason to 'accept' a payment.

You would certainly never have to send funds via another payment processor/bitcoins/ or tokens/vouchers of any sort.

Any fee is auto deducted by Paypal at the same instant the remainder of the payment is credited to your Paypal account balance.

No funds in your balance = you have not yet been paid, even pending/held payments will still show in your Paypal account activity.

[justraycee]

Thank you for replying!

I had my suspicions but because I have no idea how pay pal worked I wanted to wait for a reply.

I messaged the 'buyer' back and let them know why I thought it was fraudulent and I was met with an instant block.

So glad I caught it before I sent the funds through!