Hello Friends, We have been victimized by what appears to be a Dummy Package Scam involving 3 cell phones purchased on Ebay and paid for via PayPal. Neither Ebay nor PayPal gave more than a cursory review of our filings and rejected out of hand our claims including Appeals. Clearly their Protection Plans are at best flimsy and at worst a Hoax. Sadly, the phones were purchased from 3 different, first time Sellers who shipped them from the same Post Office via USPS on separate days spread over 2 weeks. We have detailed USPS Tracking Reports that clearly demonstrate false addresses for receipt. PayPal's response is that they have Strong documentation from the Sellers that Delivery occurred, and our only recourse is to contact the Seller. Good Luck with that. All emails to the Sellers either by Hotmail or Gmail were promptly bounced back as Undeliverable. The point is that Delivery may have occurred but not to our address - a subtle but critical detail that continues to be overlooked by both Ebay and PayPal. Sound Familiar? Sure looks to us like Mail Fraud. The next steps that we are considering are to 1) File Report with USPIS 2) File Report with local Police 3) Contact FBI Mail Fraud Division. Our questions are if anyone has had a similar, recent experience and was there a successful outcome? i.e. did you get your money back from either Ebay or PayPal? What additional steps should we consider? Looks like a long slog, but after all we are out nearly $1000. Additional info: We know that we made a huge mistake buying from these new sellers with no selling history. We were not paying enough attention. After buying and selling successfully on Ebay for over 5 years and only ever having extremely minor issues, we were lulled into a false sense of security. We thought Ebay and Paypal would have our back. I have to say that, previously, all of the sellers we dealt with were wonderful people. Compounding our problem, it was a stressful time for us. So we are really shocked by this. 1. Our address was absolutely correct when we placed the orders. We checked several times. 2. When the packages did not arrive on time, we checked the shipping and delivery notification emails. The initial USPS tracking report only showed the zipcode and not the street address. 2 of the 3 packages had the correct zip code, the 3rd did not. At this point we were thinking there had been a slight mix-up in transit, not Fraud. 3. We contacted USPS to provide us with the exact addresses to which the phones had been delivered. USPS did provide us with a more detailed Tracking Report. None of the packages were directed to the correct street address. We did not recognize any of the addresses to which our merchandize had been supposedly delivered. 4. As soon as we realized we might have a problem, we tried to contact all 3 sellers at their addresses on file at Ebay. We tried both Gmail and Hotmail several times on different computers, but all enquiries came back as "Undeliverable". At this point we knew we had a real problem on our hands. 5. Around this time, Ebay informed us the 30 days had run out on their Purchase Protection Plan and we needed to pursue the matter through Paypal. So we opened a Dispute with Paypal. We opened a Dispute, a Claim and an Appeal. All of which were denied with a statement that we needed to resolve the issue with the seller. Paypal claims to have STRONG proof of delivery of the items, but we have no idea of what that proof consists of because they promptly closed the Appeals without discussing the matter with us. To this day, we have not been able to contact the sellers. 6. Our Paypal account is connected to a bank, so we asked the bank for help and were refused. The bank said they would be bound by Paypal's decision. 7. USPS tells us they are attempting to provide a more formal notice to Paypal. Does anyone know if we have any recourse now that Paypal has denied? We are in the process of obtaining more detailed information from the USPS. We are also filing MAIL FRAUD complaints with USPIS, the Local Police and the FBI. Is there any to reopen with Paypal?
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