BigKahuna97

A simple phone call is typically all you need to do to open a dispute appeal and make sure you are clear in the fact they never returned the item as required by the dispute agreement.  Once PP finds there is no evidence of the return, you get the payment in full applied back to your balance. ... View more

In a polite way ask the buyer to return the coins if he or she wishes for a refund.  If he insist on keeping the coins and a refund then in a polite and calm manner inform the buyer if he persist with this type of fraud you will contact the usps postal inspector and file a complaint for interstate mail fraud (I am hoping you used the USPS to ship this item).     I would look up what fee's he would have legitimately paid ncg to have the coins appraised before you complain about losing shipping cost.  Appraisals are never cheap and typically shipping cost do not come near the value of the other.   Remember that all caps in any paypal claim can lead to them believing you are unprofessional to work with.  PayPal gives you the right to act as a business........and business should never act this way or take anything personal.  After 5pm what has happened that day is over and should be treated as such.   Hope this helps   BK   ... View more

Considering the situation you are in is a no win situation I would try something a little different.  Basically, we know the seller either intentionally or un-intentionally attempted to rip you off. You did the right thing by opening a PP dispute but now are left still losing money over someone else mistake.     Write the seller one last time to the email addresses you have for them.  Inform them that even though you have won the dispute that you will still be out the money and item.  Tell them that if they don't issue a refund within 24 hours that you will call your credit card company to file a chargeback.  Tell them if you have to eat shipping cost to return their item, they will be eating a chargeback fee of $30 and ask them to check PayPal's ToS if they would like.  Ask them why they would attempt to scam you and why they would want to be out $30 when you gave them every chance to do the right thing.  It may work, or it may not work but at this point you have nothing to lose.   May not be the best advice, but it could work in your favor.   BK ... View more

Part of any business is a sample order.  A sample order is where you spend $50 or less typically to insure the product you are buying in bulk is what you want.  Are you saying the sample beads they sent did not match the beads you purchased in bulk?  No business would ever blindly buy bulk of any item without first receiving a sample of the finished product.  If they swapped the sample and finished product you may want to find the owner of the company and show him the evidence you have. ... View more

It clearly states during this whole process PayPal will make two deposits to your credit card.  You need to confirm the amounts.  I am in dismay as to why this information is absent from your screen.  It should be listed clearly. ... View more

If you have filed a dispute with your credit card company you don't need to do anything at all.  If you continue to push paypal for reimbursement after you have filed a chargeback wtih your credit card I am pretty sure this can be viewed as fraud since you are then trying to receive a double refund.   ... View more

What did they say you when called them?  At least your not one of those people who only sends e-mails right? ... View more

The whole situation stinks like old diapers.  Your not alone in your frustration, many are also in the same boat.  In my opinion, the idea had good merit and good intentions.  The problem is sellers felt betrayed and eBay is in the condition it's in because of it.  Where I used to jump on eBay almost daily to find "the deal I was looking for" I now hardly use the site since there are few, if any, auctions listed and typically amazon merchants beat eBay pricing.  I miss the old eBay too, ... View more

Sure, a lawyer could help file suit against the buyer.  Police report will need to be filed first though so get that knocked out asap.   PayPal will probably not be much help in this matter since you broke the ToS by asking a buyer to the money as a gift to avoid fee's.  If you had not made this request, PP would have tried their best to cover you.  Part of the fee's are to pay employee's in the chargeback department.  Since gifts don't have chargebacks associated, the department will not look over the case.   I hope you are able to break even after the legal fee's and traveling to his or her hometown to be in court.  Good luck ... View more

Any chance you got any form of insurance on this package?  Did you receive any e-mails directly from the buyer (not on eBay)?   A co-worker I do yearly contract worth recently fell for a similar scam.  Paid via PP, the item shipped to Indonesia, item received, and dispute filed.  Standard scam setup except we had his name, IP, and other tools at our disposale.  We were able to find his local police station through google and have them correspond with us enough over what had happened that when we forwarded the e-mails back to the scammer (he/she).......it took only 48 hours to receive confirmation the dispute was closed.   I am not saying lie to the scammer but you may need to "silver tongue" correspondance.  Sadly, a seller gets angry and a scammer feels the scam was a victory.  A seller remains calm however and the scammer will get very uncomfortable.  I do hope you are able to recover some of your losses.   Take Care Buddy ... View more

Have you contact eBay (if the purchase was from eBay) or PayPal to make a comment about this buyer?    If all sellers reported strange buyer situations that were confirmed as happening more than once I am sure PayPal would be eager to review past transactions or take currently open disputes from a slightly different perspective.  Most of the time though if any complaint is made it will also contain name calling or heresay so it isn't taken as a seriously.   Take Care     ... View more

On-line selling has become a lucrative business for scammers, that is for sure.  One of the techniques I use is immediate communication after a sale.  At that point you are pretty sure the customer is at his PC or Phone since he just sent you a payment.  Even though PP has given you a thumbs up to ship, my advice would be to:   1. Send an e-mail outside of eBay to the buyer thanking he/she for the payment and asking them to confirm the mailing address.  If worded correctly you can easily say, "...I want to make sure you receive your order promptly so please confirm and I will mail it out as soon as possible."   2. When you receive a response from the buyer go into the header information of the e-mail find the originating IP.   3. Go to google and type in "IP Geolocation".  Run a quick Geo Location on IP address and if it is showing within 30 miles of the shipping address on PayPal payment I would say you are typically good to go.  It may show a different city than the shipping address but what you are looking for is distance between that result and your buyers address.     This is just one of my methods I use these days and have had excellent results.  This may not help your situation but it may help others.   Take Care     P.S. During any dispute with a merchant bank you need to be as polite, courteous, logical with events, and direct with your points as possible.  Now a days with our economy you would not believe how many disputes, chargebacks, and claims are being filed.  With that said.......banks do not only consider their clients best interest as much as they used to and now take longer to review cases giving both parties a fair considersation in my opinion.  So you do have a very likely chance of the reverse being reversed back to you. ... View more

Have you filed a dispute through PayPal for "Item Not Received"?  The advice above is truly the best advice anyone can give you at this time.  When a dispute is opened it will typically force contact between seller and buyer.  You need to file this within 45 days of your purchase with phones 101.  Since you know they have no stock on what you ordered I would not delay in filing.   Try to remain professional through the dispute and any wording in it.  I recently had a few disputes opened and my mail server, their mail server settings, and spam settings all blocked communication from one glitch or another.  In the end no one was wrong but it was my customers, one of the problems was my servers fault, and I accepted blame for the problems by more than quadrupling what the customers original order was.  Even though this may not be the case, from time to time mail servers goof up and good businesses look bad.     Hope you get it resolved buddy 😉 ... View more

My best advice would be to:   1. Contact PayPal via phone (no e-mails) and ask them for any information on how and why this occurred.  If the customer service rep has a thick accent and is located in another country just ask to be transferred to a  U.S. call center so you can fully understand what they have on file.   2. After getting the basics try to contact the buyer simply asking if they knew about a problem and what you can both do to resolve the matter.  Please remember to be polite and courteous even though you may want to express frustration and anger.       ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   PayPal may have reversed the payment but you need to also consider the buyers bank or CC reversed it instead.  Not trying to point blame anywhere at this point but a bank, credit card issuer (merchant bank), PP, or the buyer could be why this occurred.  Just trying to emphasize how a calm phone call and e-mail can work best in your favor.   Hope this helps and do keep us updated if you have more questions.  This is a member supported board for the most part so take that into account if you feel the advice is not on spot with what you were searching for.  I have been in your shoes many of times and would rather wait to hear more details before I can offer any good advice.   Take Care ... View more

I highly doubt it would help :(.  The problem is once an account is limited and the other user receives the "parting of ways" e-mail it is all downhill from there.  Only advice I can give if you are an honest buyer (which it sounds like you are) would be to pay them via a money order or alternative payment solution such as Alert Pay.  NOT promoting another payment processor on these boards, I am only recommending a way to pay them.     Take Care ... View more

I personally never understood why anyone would pay for a premium membership on a network which openly shares copyrighted software.  Because this is an intangible good / service you may not be covered under PP's ToS.  Try to deal directly with bearshare over any refund you feel due. ... View more

In your dispute did you phrase the seller as being a scam artist or such?  Such words can sometimes lead to a limited account access which can not be removed except by upper level PP employees.   ... View more

You need to understand that PP is not singleing you out and washing their hands of the situation.  The two problems here are the fact it was a service and it is hard to prove that the engineer never e-mailed something and it's hard to prove you never received the service.  The second problem is the timeline itself.  With PP you have 45 days to file a dispute which could have been outside the original contract.  The other side is if you paid by a card you could find out how hard it would be to file a chargeback through them.  Even at that point it is a guess if all charges are within the allowed dispute period as it's over 5 months from the date on one of them already.     My best advice for you is to research and find an escrow service which tailors to the website engineer industry and capable of deciding disputes before any money is released.  You may pay a little more for such a service but paying a $250 or less insurance policy (escrow service) on a transaction over 3K is an ok risk in my book.   You are right with the last post, this would turn into a civil matter and need to be filed in the home county of the defendant.  I would say your cheapest route would be a local lawyer who can work with affit-davits to assist the case.   Sorry to hear about your problem and do hope you are able to get it sorted.   BK ... View more

The only advice I can give you is to phone PP again and this time ask to be transferred to a U.S. based call center.  I am guessing the previous customer service reps all had a thick accent?   ... View more

Since you did not have an account and it sounds like you wanted to dispute the purchase and allow PP to help the only recourse typically offered is to phone PP and have them manually enter your dispute into their system.  Without having an account, I would guess the messages you received from PP were moreso meaning they can not assist via e-mail or electronic methods as they have no account to attach the comments and e-mails to.   ... View more

I can imagine it was a hassle.  I am glad it sounds like you finally hit the U.S. call center and had some real help.  You also seemed to have lucked up with Reebok.  Most big companies do not have too much sympathy for people who purchase counterfeits as thy preach buying from the authorized retailer chain.  Good Job! ... View more

This is a hard situation to be in.  Can I ask, when you phoned PP on those three occassions (or once if they passed your call around) did the agents you spoke with have accents?  If so, I would phone PP again except this time asked to be transferred to a U.S. call center where someone can more accurately identify your problem.  The problem with overseas call centers is a communication barrier.  I have seen too much bad advice come from that.   Hope this helps ... View more

Jon,   Since you used a guest account to make this purchase I would give PP a call and allow them to manually enter a dispute for you.  Once entered, you should be able to receive updates to the dispute via e-mail.  What will probably come next is PP will ask you to return the item to the seller (at your cost).  PP should then be able to recover your purchase including shipping and handling.   Hope this helps ... View more

Your best bet is to phone PP or Bill Me Later to ask why the balance is above what it should be.  This is a community board so most support comes from member-2-member.   ... View more

Something sounds terribly off from your post.  The seller has the right to use the refund button located on the dispute to issue a refund at anytime.  My gut feeling says this company is trying to pull one over on you since the dispute can't be re-opened.  I would simply remind the seller that the refund button is located in the PP dispute console and ask why they have not used the feature.   Hope this helps ... View more

PayPal is basically a merchant account VAR (value added reseller).  They allow you to accept money while adding the value of disputes and account verification to secure members.  Just like any other merchant account, when a credit card is used the card is run instantly.  If the card is active with the bank that issued it the charge will go through without a problem.  So basically you shouldn't worry about a card being in good standings from the issuer.  If the card was bad the issuer would already have frozen the account from future use.    The only problems that can occur is when some members pay with an e-check and 5 days later the e-check bounces.  I always wait until the e-check is 100% cleared priored to shipping anything.     Hope this helps   BK ... View more