I used to love eBay. What better way to get rid of old tat and get some small change for a cafe mocha or two? And Paypal gave me a sense of security in a way that only a hot water bottle could…
That was until I got burnt. A couple of years ago, I sold a T-mobile Ameo phone – very expensive phone that looked like a tiny laptop. Fot the first time I tried out selling it to international buyers, and the final winner was a guy in Mumbai, India.
He paid for the phone through Paypal, and within hours was sending emails to see when I had sent it…I thought he was just a bit nervous because he’d just bought a phone for ?381! I called and reassured him when I’d sent the phone.
A couple of weeks later (by which time he’d received the phone), he claimed that someone had used his card fraudulently, and his card company HSBC basically believed him. Paypal paid him back his money, then demanded that I pay for it – it’s in the User Agreement that I agreed to, apparently.
You can imagine how livid I was – I had spoken to the guy! The first thing I did was call him, but when he heard my voice, he hung up and switched his phone off. After? few days, I had no choice but to give up – I had been well and truly scammed!
When I tried to reason with Paypal, their take on it was along the lines of: “we can see that this was a fraudulent buyer, and we know how you feel, but his card company has charged us, so you have to pay for it”.Crazy!
I refused to pay twice for this theft – not only had I ‘lost’the phone, but I was being made to pay for the value the phone had sold at.
I set up another Paypal business account for other purposes about six months down the line and just put the experience to the back of my mind.
Then a couple of days ago, I get an email saying that my accout has been limited (like suspended) – why? Because Paypal has linked the two accounts and want me to pay it – but this time because the dollar is stronger against the pound, it’s about ?95 on top of the original ?381 owed…are you being serious??
