Sorry about the longish post but just wanted to see if anyone had experienced problems with eBay and PayPal like the following:

My girlfriend's niece recently decided to sell an item on eBay. It was no small item either, it was a mountain bike possibly worth £500-£700. In the end it went for £400 and she was reasonably happy with that as she needed the money. She got in phone contact with the buyer to sort out a home pickup, etc. He paid via PayPal and phoned her to see if she'd been notified about the payment. She checked she had and he said he was going to send a courier to pick up the bike which he did immediately and the courier duly turned up an hour or two later.

Soon after that, she got a notification that the buyer had withdrawn the payment from PayPal so she then was in the situation of having no payment and no bike. Getting in touch with eBay and PayPal proved useless (surprise surprise). They didn't care at all and were not bothered about the money, the loss of the bike or the criminal act of theft. This lady is no pushover; she is a business woman who deals with high level international clients on a daily basis and said she'd never come across such deliberate buck-passing and fudging.

Here's another shocker: the police weren't interested either. They class it as internet fraud and somehow this gives them a loophole to avoid doing anything. This lady has the guy's phone number and address, etc, but no-one seems able to do anything. To add a little icing on the cake, the b@stards at eBay have got a debt collection agency to pursue her over their unpaid fees!

I don't bother with Ebay or PayPal at all anymore (and never will again) but I wondered if any of you out there had been in a similar situation and whether you got it successfully resolved. What are the chances of recovering the money? I presume the bike has probably been sold on to some other low-life but would it work to send bailiffs in or anything like that? This thief is down in Devon and as we're in the South East it's not like we can go around there and demand the money back.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

I've never heard of being able to withdraw Paypal payments. However, that aside I would advise you should always arrange the courier yourself - that way you have a tracking number and the courier company's contract is with you.

My course of action would be as follows:

1) Open an unpaid item dispute on eBay, at the very least the bloke will get an unpaid item strike and your friend will get her eBay fees refunded.
2) Don't let the Police fob you off about "breach of contract". This is fraud and fraud is a criminal offence. If they're still not interested then I'd approach your newly elected PCC and complain about the shoddy service.
3) Write a letter to the bloke and ask that he make payment within 28 days. If no payment is forthcoming, file a small claims case in the County Court. It's small change to start proceedings and a CCJ is a step towards recovering the money or your bike. You can even claim costs (though the Judge doesn't have to award them). If the bloke still won't pay in the face of a CCJ, for a further small fee the court can enforce the order on your friend's behalf - they can even recuperate the cash through his PAYE income via an Attachment of Earnings Order. HMRC will then collect the money owed on your friend's behalf.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I've passed on the info and we'll see how things progress.

Where abouts in Devon are they?

Does this help...?
http://reviews.ebay.co.uk/Why-has-my-pa ... 0000112025

Seems where your friend went wrong was to allow the buyer arrange their own courier, if she'd arranged her own and supplied a tracking number to PayPal (there's a form field for this when you mark the item as sent), then she might have been covered by PayPal.

I still didn't know a payment can be withdrawn by the buyer unless they'd opened a case against the seller. I thought the only exception to this was if the buyer sends the payment as a gift. Did it all go through as part of the ebay item, or was the PayPal payment a separate matter?

I'll try and find out. Problem is the courier company are refusing to give out this thief's details so it may well be possible the address she has isn't 'real' anyway.



From what I can gather, there is a 24 hour period where someone who's paid by PayPal can retract their payment. As it's not actually me who's been directly involved in this all info is second hand. Of course as you mention, she should have waited until she was sure she had the funds in her account before sorting out a courier herself. Unfortunately she has fallen victim to someone who sounded very decent and plausible on the phone. Looking at it myself there are several times when alarm bells would have started ringing.

Yeah, hindsight is a wonderful thing though.
Hope she gets her money back - £400 is a lot to lose, especially at this time of the year.

theres a special thing you can do on ebay to do a user lookup for their full info but it just means ebay gives them your full info too to be fair did this with a few dodgy ebayers and their names and phone numbers have been completly differant

The German c't (Computer Technik) magazine has something similar to PC Pro's "Shark Fishing" column (Vorsicht Kunde) and I would guess, from the 26 issues every year about 10 of them involve eBay sellers or buyers being ripped off and PayPal and eBay doing nothing to solve the problem.

One of the reasons I've never used eBay and don't have a PayPal account.

Has she tried citizen's advice? They might be able to help too.

I have been lucky I have a 100% rating but then I am almost solely a buyer. I have been lucky in that I have had few problems. I bought some USB lightning cables and thought I had a problem but it was the port that they were plugged into that was the cause, but the seller did respond and give me some pointers to resolve the problem. I think when it comes to dodgy buyers or sellers you are on your own much of the time.

You've put Back to the Future in my head with your 'lightning cables'

I suspect I bought something similar (stripped USB fairy lights) for a set of 'cloaked' Predator figures...

No these were the USB-Lightning cables for the latest generation of iOS devices. The latest iOS update solved the slow sync problem.

Ah , I had Xmas in my thoughts

I was chuckling thinking it must be a typo too!

Stupid name for a connector. Everyone knows connectors are known by a 3 letter abbreviation or their IEEE designation