Just got totall scammed! by a member here (1 Viewer)

[Anthony Moore]

So I was selling my 24" Dell monitor in this thread:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...d.php?t=261240

After some emails, I sold it to RHETT_Y from this forum, who immediately sent me the money via paypal. I waited 3 days for the money to actually leave my paypal account and go into my checking account before I shipped it.

I shipped it on Monday and sent him the tracking # right afterwards. Tuesday morning I get an email from paypal saying that he has REVERSED the payment somehow. The day after i shipped it! I didnt know you could do this after I already withdrew the cash. Apparently you can. My paypal balance is $100's of dollars in the negative. I called paypal and they wouldnt say exactly what the porblem was, but said it was either a stolen credit card, or he closed his bank account in between the time they "confirmed" the money was in there at the initial transaction time, and the actual time they tried to take the money out on Tuesday (4-5 days later!). This is poor logistics by paypal if you ask me as well. How can they let me withdraw the money before they even make sure they can get it?

Anyways, its not paypals fault..its this guy. I already shipped the item. I called UPS and they are intercepting the package and getting it back to me. But I lost the $81 dollars it cost to send the damn thing.

Ive emailed Rhett_Y multiple times and got no response. Ive been buying and selling things online for 10 years now, and never had a problem. I guess I got a little overconfident and didnt take all the precautions I should have. Even though i did wait until I had the money in my actual checking account (ill never understand that part).

So now im stuck with a $380 negative balance on my paypal account which I will have to rectify after trying to sell the monitor again...but ill be out the shipping costs unless I can sell the monitor for $80 more..which wont happen.

Its too bad. Dont trust this guy.

 

[Roy C.]

This happens much more often than you'd think... It happened to me after selling something to a guy who then went on to put a chargeback against me 4 months after the transaction was completed! I have records of shipping, weight, delivery confirmation, etc, and none of that mattered to PayPal. They are committing fraud of the "legal" kind because if someone pays with a credit card, 10 times out of 10, they will "give" the money back to the CC company even before investigating. In my case, the dude kept almost $1,000 worth of car parts, and my account is in the hole that much, even though he broke every rule in the book when it comes to time frames, time allotted for refusals, etc, etc... Never mind the fact that I paid fees on over $20,000 in business (sold/bought) using PP!

I'm looking for legal counsel to address this but I'm not too hopeful. PayPal just does not give a hoot about you or your money when it comes down to it... There are a few websites that address these issues and more.

This is my experience only and might not be shared by others. As I like to say, Your Mileage May Vary (YMMV)...

Good luck getting something done.

Roy C.

 

[Ron Boster]

Anthony (and Roy)

Sorry to hear about the bad transaction(s). I looked at the linked ad and see the dishonest member has been around for 6 years and posted over 900 times. That is amazing...I would thought someone wouldn't risk their membership for a bad transaction. Could there possibily be someone hijacking his accounts? The only reason I bring it up is that happened in the last 8 mons or so from someone who tried it here and AVS. A completely account in good standing started to conduct what I would assume was a scam. I think it was uncovered before anyone got taken...but it is a possibility (I guess).

Ron

PS: Looks like he was on-line here yesterday...so he's hanging around to some degree.

 

[Gary Murrell]

get his address and show up at his door, that will teach him

-Gary

 

[Ron Boster]

Here's some info from his thread that he posted to sell an item earlier this week:

Will delivery or can pick up if local (lakewood Ca. area)

Will only take paypal, certified check.

ebay name: rhett7660 have excellent record of selling.

 

[Ron Boster]

Here's his feedback page on ebay...looks like he's gotten recent positive feedback, which seems odd

link broken.....but if you use the ebay member look up with his ebay name it shows feedback...also state matches state listed in his ad (which may mean nothing)

 

[Anthony Moore]

yah, i dont really know what to do besides give him a bad rap so no one will conduct business with him again. Ive email him a couple times and didnt hear back.

i will be calling the cops tomorrow in his hometown. its not gonna hurt me any, even if they cant do anything. but im hoping they will show up at his house or something. part of me wanted the let the package be delivered and let the cops bust him or something.

Paypal is connected to ebay so i wonder if i asked them to shutdown his ebay account if they would do so...hmm.. im really not gonna let this rest. i will do all i can (w/o speding a bunch of money) to make sure he doesnt get away with this scot free.

 

[Anthony Moore]

dont think so since i cant get ahold of him through email. unless someone hijacked his email account too. or maybe someone just hijacked his HTF account? I dunno.

 

[jrgreene1968]

what a bummer...i hope you can get your money back. I got burnt on here last year on a receiver...ended up losing 300.00, the forums banned the member, atleast that would keep him from scamming another member. as far as paypal...good luck!! I contacted them when i got burnt and about all they said was sorry. It will sure put a bad taste in your mouth as far as buying off the forums. Good luck, and keep us posted

JR

 

[f1nuts]

you might wanna read this before using paypal, i wish i had .....WWW.PAYPALSUCKS.COM...........

 

[Alf S]

Again yet ANOTHER reason not to sell on website forums...you have ZERO PROTECTION!

Either sell items to a friend/co-worker or whatever and get the cash up front or sell via Ebay where you have a better chance of being protected.

 

[Anthony Moore]

i tend to agree. but even if you sell on ebay there are SO many ways to still get scammed. i asked paypal if i would be reimbursed if i would have sold the item on ebay. they said no. you MUST send it "signature required" in order to be insured, which i didnt know. So lesson #1: if youre gonna use paypal, read the TOS agreement and make sure you do EVERYTHING to protect yourself.

i am usually a paranoid person when it comes to these sort of things. thats why i waited to ship until after i actually withdrew the money into my checking account, which was 4 days after the initial transaction. i would have thought that 1. paypal wouldnt let you withdraw unless they were sure they were getting the money from the buys bank/credit card, and 2. it wouldnt take 4 days to make sure the funds were actually there after making the transaction "confirmed" on my paypal account page.

Im pretty pissed with paypal on the fact that i have a negative balance. they shouldnt have let me withdraw the funds if they were sure. i thought i was being safe by waiting. but i guess youre never safe.

i have taken my checking account OFF of my paypal account. no way im giving them access to anything like that. who knows, they could reverse all my transactions ive had in the past and take from my bank acct. to make up for it! im not putting anything past them now.

 

[Todd Hochard]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but do you not have $380 in your checking account, AND a monitor on its way back to you?

 

[todbnla]

The world is a hosed up place, but not everyone is a crook, their are a LOT of good people that will go out of their way to help you. For instance; I frequent a lot of other forums across the net, I collect oakley products (not just sunglasses) and they recently opened a store in Berlin, Germany. They were selling 100 pair of a special release oakley product found no where else on earth other than at the berlin store in conjunction with their opening in Germany. An 18yr old german college student whom I have never met face to face and only know thru the internet went to the store in germany and picked me up a pair and shipped them to me at no extra cost other than what the actual cost was which I happly paid thru paypal. So, I was flattered to say the least.
I also do a lot of eBay (mainly buying, 700+ transactions) and trading on this forum, best tip I can give anyone is to be careful and know who and what your dealing with, research, research and more research. If and when you think something is fishey, contact PAYPAL ASAP!

 

[Anthony Moore]

in the end, youre correct. but its not like i get to keep the 380, i have -$380 in my paypal account.

so yah, i didnt lose anything really, except time and energy. and the fact that i bought a new tv with the money i made from selling the old monitor. but it could have been a lot worse if i didnt use UPS (if i had used USPS it would have been impossible), or didnt check my email conistantly to know to get it sent back.

 

[Andy_A]

fyi you can probably get $400 for that monitor on Craigslist, ebay, or even here...

 

[Rajj Nair]

Sorry to hear about your experience, Anthony.
I have had a few transactions here, and all of them have been very positive.
Paypal has its faults, but I have had requests to use USPS Money Orders to pay for stuff (mostly from people who have not transacted with me before). Plus I dont think you can do this "revert charges" with USPS.
Another paypal tip is to have it connected to a checking account with just enough money in it to cover your transaction, that way should something really crazy happen it wont have access to more than whats exactly there.

Anyways, in the meantime keep up the chase, good luck...

 

[alan halvorson]

Paypal can't legally initiate a EFT transaction on its own. They'd be in big damn trouble if they did.

$81 for shipping a monitor? Granted it's heavy but not that heavy, is it?

 

[Anthony Moore]

Well it was a 24" flat panel. And it had to be wrapped really well with a lot of padding, so the box had to be pretty big. AND i shipped it from FL to CA. AND i put $400 in insurance on it. So it all added up.

 

[Roy C.]

Correct! This is why the account will stay in the negative indefinitely until funds are replenished. They can not legally "ask" for money from any account unless initiated by a buyer or a seller. Mine is -$940, and the buyer has a great looking OEM NAV system in his BMW for free. Ain't PayPal great?? Sorry, but this is a sore subject for me, can't y'all tell?????????

RC