Bitcoin Forum

So a little over a month ago I was selling bitcoins on ebay and having a positive experience. Well that ended quickly as for reasons most of you already know about dealing with paypal and ebay. Well I have sold about 20-30 bitcoins on ebay  only till i started dealing with 5 bitcoins or more is when paypal stopped me. Pretty much saying to themselves wow this guy is making good money lets freeze it. So finally my time came and someone bought 3 bitcoins for $300 each (when bitcoins were over 200) and this women paid me and I paid her. We both left positive feedback and paypal froze the funds claiming fraud. The women had over 100 feedback and was a regular ebayer the last time she purchased something was less then a week before. I emailed her asking what was going on and if she could email paypal for me. She posted her blockchain address in paypal and I sent them screenshots of my blockchain transaction log and her leaving me positive feedback. Today paypal sent me an email saying they sent her the funds back. Well.....now what to do? I found her on facebook by matching the name and address. I'm thinking about sending all her friends and family about the scam she pulled on me with screenshoots. Does anyone have any better ideas for me?

If only someone could have warned you this might happen

This has happened so many times, I'm really shocked it's still happening. You shouldn't be using Paypal for Bitcoins - ever.

Paypal is not to be used for digital goods -- their de jure rules, our de facto rules. She may not have even claimed fraud, but Paypal may have reversed the transaction because you broke their rules (probably eBay's, too) and don't consider the transaction valid.

What was in the email Paypal sent you?

We've concluded our investigation into the transaction detailed below.

We've returned the funds to the PayPal account holder, and your account
will be debited for the amount of this transaction.

-----------------------------------
Helping ensure safe transactions
-----------------------------------

Most of the payments you receive will be from, honest buyers. PayPal wants
to help ensure that your transactions are as safe as possible.

You can often reduce your risk by paying close attention to payment details
and unusual requests.

* Watch for address inconsistencies:
It's fairly common for a buyer's shipping address to be different from the
billing address. In some cases, though, it could indicate fraud. For
instance, a high-priced item that has a billing address in one country and
a shipping address in another may be suspicious.

* Beware of unusual requests that could indicate suspicious activity, such
as:
- Buyers who want rush shipment at any cost
- Buyers who send partial payments from different PayPal accounts
- Do not make payment in full

Go to the PayPal Security Center for more information.

-----------------------------------
Transaction Details
-----------------------------------


Buyer's name: Nancy
Buyer's email:
Transaction ID: 6K514636AU187815V

Transaction date: Apr 13, 2013
Transaction amount: $900.00 USD
Your transaction ID: 0YR94201AB405643K
Case number: PP-002-300-495-696


Thanks,

PayPal

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you
will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account
and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

What did they send before that? Generally, they'll have someone personally oversee cases and give you updates.

Dear Michael,

You have received a payment that we believe may not have been authorized by
the PayPal account holder.  Here are the details of the transaction we are
investigating:

-----------------------------------
Transaction Details
-----------------------------------


Buyer's name: Nancy
Buyer's email:
Transaction ID: 6K514636AU187815V

Transaction date: Apr 13, 2013
Transaction amount: $900.00 USD
Your transaction ID: 0YR94201AB405643K
Case number: PP-002-300-495-696

We recommend that you don’t ship the item until our investigation is
complete.  If you’ve already shipped the item, please log in to your PayPal
account and go to the Resolution Center to provide the shipping details.

In order to continue our investigation, we need some additional information
from you.

Here’s how to provide us the information we need:

1.  Log in to your PayPal account.
2.  Click “Resolution Center” near the top of the page.
3.  Click "Resolve" in the Action column to view the information we need.
4.  You can either fax or upload your documents to us.

You can fax your documents to us at: 402-537-5760

Please include a fax cover sheet that includes the email address registered
on your PayPal account and your case ID number.

Here’s how to upload your documents:

1.  Log in to your PayPal account.
2.  Click “Resolution Center” near the top of the page.
3.  Find your case under "Resolution Center cases," then click "Resolve"
next to the request for documentation. 
4.  Click “Upload Files.”
5.  Click “Browse” to find the file you want to send, and then click
“Open.”
6.  Enter a title for the file.
7.  Select the type of evidence, and then click “Attach This File.”
8.  Attach any other files, and then click “Send Files to PayPal.”

Please provide this information within 7 days.

This payment will remain on hold and unavailable to you until we complete
our investigation. We will email you when we complete our investigation.

Sincerely,
PayPal

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Help Center:
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/helpweb?cmd=_help
Security Center:
https://www.paypal.com/us/security

This email was sent by an automated system, so if you reply, nobody will
see it. To get in touch with us, log in to your account and click "Contact
Us" at the bottom of any page.

Copyright © 2013 PayPal, Inc. All rights reserved. PayPal is located at
2211 N. First St., San Jose, CA 95131.

PayPal Email ID  PP943

feedback was positive on ebay....paypal and ebay are huge scammers

What BTC needs is pioneers that are willing to take risks and establish more markets for BTC, not negativity

I have had two BTC transactions with Paypal reversed by the buyers CC.  I  then submitted my evidence and Paypal  has sided with me and is disputing the reversal with the CC companies, time will tell if I receive my money.

But the more that this happens the more that Paypal and other online merchants are going to realize that BTC is here to stay and they need to make adjustments.

how am i dumb?

I just sent her one more email before I'm ready to message (not harass anyone) all her friends/family I just want to explain my story to them I hope it really comes back and bites her in the ass

Heres the last email I'm sending:
Hello,
Paypal has refunded you the $1200 for the bitcoins that I sent you will you please refund me. It really sucks being scammed. Please be a good person and send back my money or bitcoins. Good karma will come and vice-revisa. Please don't let this scam happen. It is really bad feeling to be scammed and I wish it upon no one.
Thank you,
-Michael

Selling BTC on Ebay, totally against Ebay rules AND paypal policies is pretty dumb.

+1 they could join up with crypto-currencies and make much more money instead they are trying to drive them away. Wonder who will win this fight? Maybe this time ebay/paypal got me but I'm sure as hell I won't be doing that again maybe even little to no business with either one of them anymore. In my eyes they completely scammed me.

Sellers cannot leave negative feedback even on the most scummy thieving users - they disabled that because bad feedback on criminals makes for a "negative user experience". eBay universally screws the seller, since the seller will always be easier to get money from (even by sending to debt collection if you withdrew the money) than the criminal using a hacked account, and then they take away the feedback ability that would make eBay look like a scammer's paradise for doing this.

eBay used to be just about collecting exorbitant fees on money and merchandise they never touched (and just let people leave honest feedback), Then they got into the PayPal business (so they could move money around in their system with 3% friction until it is all theirs), but then they realized that they couldn't let themselves eat the cost of fraud.

I cant wait for the day that all their scams catch up to them it is soon to come with all these crypto-currencies in the workings. I still feel bitcoins is in its baby stage. One day everyone in the world will be using some form of crypto-currency.

Latelly is alot of stealing bitcoins on ebay. Because buyers knows when they report a compromised account paypal will always no mather what give money back to buyer. No mather what evidence you provide to paypal that selling was regular and honest.
So I lost about 2BTC with that kind of cheating buyers and you can't do anything.
Banks don't wan't a currency which they can not controll so they will do anything to discredit BTC.
I will not use ebay anymore for selling BTCs even because they tax me for BTC and I don't know one country on the world which have tax for BTC.
And they tax BTC and tkeas fees for listing and also paypal takes 3,4% for money transfering to paypal account and some percent takes when you get money on your credit card. So at the end you find out that they take 20-30% of your money.

Just to let you know I am Suing Paypal for the same thing, but I have proof that paypal is fraud. I had a friend paypal me for $110 stating its is for bitcoins. Even though my friend DID NOT make a claim, paypal reversed the money back to him...Paypal made there own judgement. I have lost $9000 over paypal where they deducted the funds out of my bank account AFTER 10 deposited into my account saying they suspected I was a scam when I had the account with them over 7 years AND a powerseller on ebay. They reversed not only the charges they thought was a fraud but reversed the bank deposits that was credit to my account OVER 10 days old. Left my account negative cause I wrote checks and wire more money to buy more BTC to sell. According to Paypal TOS you can only sue them individually now and not a class action suit. If you like to sue them and had significant loss, you can contact a local attorney to help you. It will cost $500 or so but you will get it back.

I just notice the date I the same time frame when Paypal F me over

The buyers still owe you the money, you should sue *them* not PayPal. Much as I dislike PayPal (many of you probably know my PayPal horror story) they are perfectly within their rights to disintermediate themselves from a transaction they don't wish to be a part of.

Paypal has no right to withdraw out of the bank account after the deposit is made, especially after 10 days. Anyways, I was awarded damages and collection cost. In my situation, there was no charge backs. Paypal withdrew money out of my account to hold funds and not because of charge backs.

Yes they do, you signed their TOS.

Yes, they do. I even explained why in the post you are responding to.

Whether or not there was a charge back has nothing to do with anything.

Fundamentally, Paypal is a reversible payment service. They deliver funds from one person to another, so long as the sender actually wants to send those funds. If the buyer doesn't want to pay the seller or the sale violates Paypal's terms, Paypal reserves the right to disintermediate themselves, leaving the buyer and seller to resolve their dispute.

In your case, Paypal decided to disintermediate themselves. This just means they refused to handle the payment. The buyer still owes you the money and can still pay you if they want to. It's not Paypal's job to make someone pay you if they don't want to pay you. And it should be 100% clear to everyone that Paypal does not ever confirm a payment is irreversibly made.

As has been explained on this forum and many others, this makes Paypal unsuitable for selling Bitcoins to people you don't trust because the Bitcoin payment is irreversible and the Paypal payment isn't. You chose to rely on the honesty of the buyer. If the buyer is dishonest, then you're screwed, and that's not Paypal's fault. If the buyer is honest, they should have paid you once they got their money back from Paypal.

I Think you missed what I was saying. IN MY SITUATION....

1. The buyer did not do a charge back. <= buyer did not charge back nor did received funds back. Paypal held funds from me and reversed the BANK deposit that was completed quoting possible fraud.
2. I was AWARDED damages in District Court. = I sued I won

A District Judge made a decision thus your argument is invalid.
Also the rules of no e-currency and paypal was changed recently in 2013.

No, I got you.

Right. PayPal decided to disintermediate itself, that is, it removed itself from the payment between you and the buyer. I'm assuming PayPal returned the funds to the buyer, and the buyer should have paid them to you. PayPal makes it very clear that their deposits are reversible and will be reversed if payments violate their ToS or if the buyer no longer wishes to make the payment.

Not knowing what evidence you presented in court or what arguments PayPal made, I can't tell whether the judge's ruling is correct or not. But just from what you said, PayPal didn't do anything wrong.

Again, I very much dislike PayPal. They massively screwed me over. I'd be the first to agree if they did anything wrong. But PayPal makes reversible payments, period. And PayPal reserves the right to remove themselves from a transaction they don't wish to be part of.

Paypal User Agreement, section 10.2.d:

You agreed to it, whether you read it first or not.

And selling Bitcoins would probably be taken to fall under either: (Paypal Acceptable Use Policy)


or

It happened to me, too. Paypal & eBay scammed us. I sold bitcoins, I got positive feedback by buyer. Everything was looking normal. After 2 weeks I see the dispute. I sent all the proofs but they didn't do anything. Where's the seller protection?
Just stay away from those scammers.

Paypal do not want your business.
They do not allow sales of Bitcoin.
If you ignore them, they will reverse the transaction and leave you and the buyer to sort it out.

PayPal is quite clear that there's no seller protection from sales of digital goods or direct payments. In your case, the buyer still owes you the money and, assuming they still want to pay you, they should pay you. PayPal can't force an unwilling buyer to pay you money. PayPal makes reversible payments, period. The buyer pays you so long as the buyer wants to pay you.

So, I can do the same thing to other Bitcoin sellers in eBay, right? Because they don't protect sellers, they protect only buyers. I can buy all bitcoins in eBay and I open disputes to all of them. And that doesn't make me a scammer, right? I like your style of thought.

That makes you a scammer, not PayPal. If you agree to pay for something and receive that something, you have to pay for it. If not, you're a scammer.

In your case, the buyer still owes you the money they agreed to pay you, since they didn't pay it to you. If they're honest, they should still pay you. If they're dishonest, then they scammed you. PayPal and eBay don't provide seller protection for digital goods, you have to sue the buyer.

Then I'll tell judge what Bitcoin is on the court. Seriously, only 200-250 people know Bitcoin thing in Turkey. :)
That's obvious you don't know anything about Turkish law system, too.

That's not PayPal's fault. It's not their job to force someone to pay you if they don't want to. It's their job to make a payment from a willing sender. They also provide seller protection, but not for digital goods.

What's the best method to win a case like this?

Sue the buyer.

LOL Then why does eBay has a category SPECIFICALLY for Virtual Currency?

Category: "Coins & Paper Money >> Virtual Currency" On the "enter item details" page, there is a selection box labeled "Type" and you can select Bitcoin, Litecoin, Feathercoin, etc.



Sorry for bumping a old thread.

They have it now, but didn't have it before.

They made Ebay like ass...piss whatever...it is not just the same   :'( :-[
Ebay does not work for europeand nowadays this is the true. Where i live ( Bulgaria) i can deliver you almost everything from China with escrow for almost no fee, here we have a strong china community and they are delivering staight from china with ships via Black Sea so if anybody interested in china stock can PM me .

BR,

Gondel

I was thinking about something else

What if we sold paper wallets containing 1BTC on eBay?

we shipp it with tracking and everything

could paypal put a halt on it then?

They can and arbitrarily do anything they want, refunding the buyer, locking your Paypal account and funds, cancelling your other listings, invalidating past listings and scraping back those funds also, clawing back money out of your linked accounts, sending you to collections. Even with a signed delivery confirmation, a buyer that "disputes" only needs to return your (emptied) piece of paper with tracking to automatically win a dispute.

easy,man
this is a forum for discuss!

this is the reason why i dont use e money wallets or e currency there is always a risk from the other side , as you dont know when is someone you deal with is gonna reverse the payment leaving you with nothing ,, so its better to deal face to face ,

I have seen many forum posts with this type of scam. It was apparently quite common around a year ago until the BTC community caught on to what was happening.

Even though paypal reversed the transaction you still have the possibility of getting your money back. 

Since you have her name and address you could possibly sue her in small claims court to get your money back.

I would not recommend contacting her Facebook friends/family as you do not know for sure that it was her (could have stolen her identity and/or used a hacked account) and you could possibly be committing libel against her.

+1 for this part of your statement :)

additionally I would say anyone trying to sell bitcoin at this point needs to just have the buyer send the money as a personal gift, then it is both irreversible, AND you just cut paypal out of getting a portion of your money XD

I do this for anyone wanting to put downpayments on goods I make and sell, and it works wonderfully, the last big payment they make I let them pay normally if they choose but if they are willing to pay the same way on the last payment I just cut them a deal on shipping to give them back the fees paypal would have taken, now mind you if you do a LOT of business this way, paypal will catch on and probably screw you, but if you are not using them often for now, this way you should be good. :)

also you can sell a paper cold storage wallet and mail it too them first class with tracking if you want and just use paypal to make the shipping label cause a tracking number for something sent to someone is what they are looking for mostly when trying to figure out if someone is scamming someone else, so no shipment after a period of time, they get anxious and proactively react, before the buyer can complain.

Yes they do, you signed their TOS.

Trust me...this isn't something specific to bitcoin on ebay/paypal...I have several friends that regularly get their account(s) frozen (0 crypto-involvement whatosever) for one BS reason or another at least 1-2 times a month and these are well established account holders.  Ebay/Paypal basically have carte blanche insofar as how they handle your hard earned money because you agreed to their ToS.  They see you pulling in the big bucks consistently your bound to get hit with some sort of "security audit" or "suspicious activity" or some other BS excuse sooner or later.  (typically sooner)

I advice you to be away from eBay and PayPal, they are always full of shit.

When dealing with them, I'm feeling like I'm diffusing a bomb and in any second, it will blow me off.

Hi guys, this thread is very interesting. Also thankyou to everyone for brining it up.

My story is simply this. Ive been offering 'scrypt coin mining services' on ebay for the last 3-4 motnhs. Let me just say that not all ebay buyers are scammers. Although there are the few occassional(and usually quite large purchases, of my small $8.50 for 3 Hours of 80Mh/s mining listing for example) ebay users, whos accounts have been hacked(apparently) and ive already provided the service to the ebay buyer, by which point the ebay buyer then, uses paypal to create an unauthorised claim against my account.
Paypal will not protect ebay sellers offering virtual coin related listings on ebay, no matter they're years of completely legitimtae selling activity on eBay(since 2003 in my case), they're parent company. Im also a power seller and i still have to wait 21 days, to receive my funds via Paypal, because eBay have placed this regulation, which paypal customer service advised me of.
eBay customer service are still looking into this matter(yeah sure).

Sooooo, my question is. Does anyone know of any payment service that protects ebay sellers who list mining services?

Or are all ebay sellers, selling mining services and virtual coins, simply doomed to have to take, the occassional financial hit, now and again?

and when i mean again. I mean 6 times in 2 months out of the 30 transactions made by ebay buyers, whom have used my services.

Most of which were the larger purchases by the way.(So be cautious of those)

How can eBay allow this apparent hacking of theyre accounts to happen? Also, how do these "hackers", not only get the ebay buyers ebay user account details and they're paypal account details aswell?
Isnt that strange in itself?

Any help would be unbelievably appreciated guys.

cheers guys
Alex

ebay / paypal is a joke unless you ship with proof of delivery. I sold around $1000 in coins most of which were under 9.99  so in those cases I sent the coin in a brown envelope normal mail  (no reason to spend $4-5 on shipping and proof of shipping on a $10 coin.

Well about 15 people claimed to have had their paypal/ebay accounts stolen and even though I shipped the coins out and everything went smooth paypal still took my money out of my account and made me go -180$. So basically unless you have 100% proof of delivery they will always give it back to the buyer whether its bitcoins or any items.


the only thing you can do is sell the bitcoin and mail them something "showing proof of delivery"  my buddy will sell a toy soldier for $300 ship the toy soldier with proof of delivery and say "with the toy soldier a free .50 btc comes with it"  Thats the only way he hasn't been scammed by people as he has proof the soldier was delivered.

Yeah im wondering how paypal is going to deal with bitcoins, should be interesting to watch

I wish these kinds of stuff will not happen again.

PayPal has expressed interest in Bitcoin, and PayPal owns eBay, so thing should move along nicely in the future.