Pay Pal/Ebay--Online Auction Ripped Off By Pay Pal Maybe Blowing Off Steam Here Will Help San Jose California

This was an Ebay transaction otherwise the money could not have been taken out of my Pay Pal account.

Consumers shop on Ebay because it is possible to purchase things very inexpensively. I have purchased 300.00 dollar vacumes new never used for less than 50.00 dollars.

There is nothing stupid about me.

I am far from the only victim of Pay Pal's dishonest practices.

Needless to say, I am closing my Pay Pal account.

You should try shopping Ebay, just be careful about opening an account with Pay Pal because they are extremely greedy.

Thank you so much for your advise. I did contact my bank immediately after speaking with Pay Pal and the merchant selling the product on Ebay. Ebay stands to gain monitarily so of course is standing behind the seller.

Investigation is in process.

Inez,

If you recieved an email from a legitimate Ebay seller, the notification would be on your "my ebay" page.

It is against Ebay policy to engage in a transaction "outside" of ebay.

What you encountered was a "phishing" email and now these scammers have your bank information too, so this transaction is only the beginnings of your problems.

I suggest you close any accounts that you gave them information on.

NEVER respond to an email that askes for personal or banking information. And on ebay, ONLY do transactions after logging in to your Ebay account.

Only he said it better than I did. You were at fake sites mocking legitimate vendors. Again, all you had to do was forward a copy to spoof@eBay.com or spoof@paypal.com and they would have verified if the item and seller were legit. They tell you to do this if you are not sure in their education materials. You decided you were sure it was legit.

"I was led to a link requiring my credit card information, which by the way was already registered with Pay Pal, I submitted my credit card information"
As I stated, there is eduction materials out there. The first thing I learned was looking for whether the link to payment was actually to a secure site-they all start with "https" in the address bar. Scam sites do not.

No legitimate company is at fault here.

Someone offers to sell you a brand new camcorder -- shipping included -- for $39.95. Anyone whose IQ is higher than their age would smell a rat on this deal.

Why would anyone offer a deal like this? Maybe you thought you were taking advantage of a really stupid seller. Maybe you thought you were getting a smoking deal on some hot stolen merchandise. You knew there was something wrong with this deal from the outset but you went ahead with it because you were greedy.

You got just what you deserved.

I doubt that Paypal was even involved. You said you had to enter your credit card information even though Paypal already had it. You were not on a Paypal; you were on a look-alike site. You gave them your Paypal account name, password, and your credit card number.

You CAN get your money back. Go to your bank and tell them what happened. Make sure they know that the transaction was NOT approved by you for that amount and request the form they have to fill out--the bank WILL get your money back for you--but you MUST do it within a few days!!!

Thank you for responding to my post.

I too was once trusting of Pay Pals promise to protect the consumer and realized that many on Ebay refuse to use Pay pal because of their greed.

Because of my recent devastating experience through research I have discovered that many have been victomized by Pay Pals greed and have many class action lawsuits against them. Some consumers have lost money in the thousands.

I imagine that most of the money which was stolen from my bank account ended up benefiting Pay Pal who actually helped this star seller merchant steal my money.

You will never know till it happens to you , so do not be so quick to defend Pay Pal as I once did

but there has been a rash of "second chance" offers by scammers posing as eBay sellers. So, I would assume that offers such as the one you received shouldn't be any different.

I got one (second chance offer) about a month ago-and I hadn't bid on anything. It had a legit sellers name but if you went to eBay, the real seller's name actually had 10 times more feedback (38xx as opposed to 385). Kinda hard to do with only a handfull of transactions within a few days. I forwarded it to spoof@eBay.com to verify if it was from a legit seller name and of course it wasn't.

Both eBay and Paypal have educational sections on their sites that help to prevent matters like this from happening. A little reading and caution go a long way. Sorry to hear you were scammed.