The Wholesale Forums

[blade007]

Where: Alibaba(Trading Website) Listing (www.alibaba.com)
Who: Bdi Technologies
Payment: PayPal
How Much: $865.00 USD
What: PSPs
Scammers e-mail: john_damato@juno.com
Scammers Fake Name: John Mendesa

This sucks. Can't believe I actually got scammed. I'm usually pretty good with these things. They accepted PayPal! What the hell! DON'T LISTEN TO ANYONE THAT SAYS PAYPAL IS SAFE FOR PAYMENTS OUTSIDE OF EBAY
I filed a dispute with PayPal, and it was decided in my favor, but they said they couldn't get anything from the seller's account!

This was there response...
"We have completed our investigation of this case. We attempted to process a refund from the seller's account to your account. Unfortunately, the seller's account does not contain the funds necessary to cover this refund. We were able to recover $0.00 USD. We have taken action against the seller and are working to recover the remainder of your refund. We will contact you when we have more information. No further action is required of you at this time."
This scammer will obviously never make a deposit in his FAKE account.

I thought payPal would be able to withdraw the funds from the seller's bank account. That's not the case; the seller has to have money in his/her PayPal account to be able to receive anything.
Anyone can be scammed by PayPal, all they have to do is open an account, scam someone, get the funds transferred to their bank account, then close the account.

Has anyone been through this situation?
What should I do now?
Is there a website that handles cases like this that can get my money back?

I want to get his ip address...

[woodle]

sorry to hear this mate

paypal and ebay are pathetic when it comes to people being ripped off.......infact ebay recently dropped thier reimbursement values to ripped off customers as proof;\

alibaba?..........90 percent of psp,ipod,laptop etc sellers on ali are scammers......dont even bother with them....no matter how legit they look or whatever thier status is or payment methods they accept.Alibaba is good only for products which dont attract the scammers.

report it to authorities for what its worth but
the police wont even investigate it until multiple complaints are made against the scammer (you would need to find others).
Alibaba is your best source for that....but guess what?.........alibaba wil prolly tell you there was no other complaints from other people because they are already overrun with complaints and just honestly wouldnt care;\

my Advice is to stay away from selling high demand electronics.......big retailers are the only ones approved to sell these lines and unless you know a person on the inside of the big distributors/retailers...........then all you will find is grey market scammers.

[Boro97]

Sorry to hear about your misfortune, as for paypal if he never had any money in his bank account its then meant to come of his credit card.

[tantk]

Originally Posted by Boro97

Sorry to hear about your misfortune, as for paypal if he never had any money in his bank account its then meant to come of his credit card.

But if the credit card is a debit card, then paypal can still not recover as the debit card is

linked to the persons bank account and if the bank account has no money, they cannot

withdraw the funds. To open a verified account with paypal, the buyer and seller should

have a proper credit card registered with them. However if the credit card was actually a

debit card, it is useless.

[blade007]

I pretty sure they don't take money straight from a bank account
He has to have money in his PayPal account to be able to retrive funds I think

You don't need a credit card to sign up, this scammer was of course not verified

[Saajan]

Hi,
I'm really sorry to hear this You should always check if the seller has a fully verified Paypal account. Hmm...just trying to think of what you can do... Oh yes by the way, how many PSPs were you going to get for that price?

[tantk]

If the money was sent to his paypal account, it should be there. I am sure he could not

have withdrawn it since the account is not verified.

[Saajan]

Originally Posted by tantk

If the money was sent to his paypal account, it should be there. I am sure he could not

have withdrawn it since the account is not verified.

Hi,
But he could have sent the money to another PayPal account, which might be verified.

[BillyA]

Only use a CC to pay via Paypal. That way you have chargeback protection from your CC.

[blade007]

Originally Posted by BillyA

Only use a CC to pay via Paypal. That way you have chargeback protection from your CC.

I'm pretty sure chargebacks only happen if an unauthorized user uses your credit card to pay for some thing using PayPal.

i didn't use a cc, but I contacted my cc company if you are protected from fraud; and your not if you were the one that authorized the charge.

This is my credit cards company response to being protected from scammers...

"We would like to inform that any transaction, regardless how they are made, that is online or in store, require that you provide your RBC Visa card number and your expiry date. They constitute an agreement between you and the merchant you are dealing with. As a result, should this transaction be fraudulent and you would have paid willingly for either, a good or a service, the amount spent would not be refunded. Therefore, we advise you to be very careful about making online transactions before making them. RBC Royal Bank Visa cannot be held accountable of the use you are doing of your RBC Visa."

so all in all, there is no safe way to pay online, except if you use Escrow, which hardly anybody uses