Bitcoin Forum

Ah the Newbie with a problem question! ;D

Yes I know, but here goes and TIA for any helpful replies.

I had a problem with a sale on Ebay where someone purchased 4 bitcoins through different auctions. When they paid for the auctions, they used two different PayPal accounts and now one of those accounts funds are being 'Held'.

When I got the Paypal invoice as paid, I Emailed the stated Email address hoping that if I got a response then that would prove the Paypal address and payment was good. I got a response from the paypal linked email each time.

Ok are you done laughing at me yet? LOL  ::)

Anyway. My question is how that happened?

Thanks again.

Could be a number of things, such as filed a claim with pp or it was a comprimised pp account to start with. If it was the same person from two accounts I'm surprised the other account hasnt been held yet. That sucks, sorry man.

How what happened?

If you are not familiar with how PayPal operates, they will often place a payment received "on hold" and the reasons vary.  Sometimes they release the funds days later, and other times they don't.

But now you are on PayPal's radar.  If they haven't freezed your PayPal account (and any funds you had not yet withdrawn), it is just a matter of time before they do.

I think it was both a compromised Ebay account and a compromised PayPal account. The question is how can they reply back from a PayPal account provided email address? Did they hack that also?

Ok. Did the buyer do this or did PayPal take it upon themselves? FWIW I contacted the other sellers who sold to this Ebay buyer. He stated that he also got 2 different PayPal accounts.

One was the same as I have but his other one was different. Now we both have holds on the funds from the same PayPal account.

?

As someone who sells a lot on eBay and having had hundreds of transactions with PayPal, you need to be prepared to lose your merchandise on every sale. PayPal will side with the buyer 99.9% of the time if they dispute the charge. So a simple rule is to never sell something so valuable using PayPal that you can't absorb the loss if you never get paid and never get the item back. While most people are honest and pay, eventually you will get scammed and lose your merchandise.

PayPal is also run by crooks. They will freeze your money out of the blue and have caused countless small business to go under. (My son right now has over $50K in money frozen for 6 months in his PayPal account.) Avoid PayPal like the plague whenever possible.

If you are selling somethng like a Bitcoin, where you can't get signature delivery confirmation, you should only accept something like a check or a post office money order and then wait 2 weeks to make sure it is not forged and has cleared the bank before you transfer the money. If you are only selling 1 or 2 coins then you don't have to really worry too much about it. But if the sale is of significant value you run a very high risk of getting screwed if you use PayPal for anything.

This video is exactly how PayPal operates:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV2fk56ktVE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV2fk56ktVE)

That is great advice and 'thank you' for taking the time. I read up on the subject in these forums before ever doing it. I even read this...

http://virtualfaqs.com/forum/paypal/574-paypal-virtual-faq.html

I am still new and tried my best. I have since found out through talking to other people who sold to this individual, that the same thing just happened to them from him. The first seller even had the guy email over his Electric bill statement with a name and address showing then had them call her so che could verify the PayPal confirmed address to the area code he called from. You cant get much better checking up on than that.

Still what you said..."never sell something so valuable using PayPal that you can't absorb the loss if you never get paid and never get the item back."

Thanks again