Screwed... Aren't I???

There is no 100% surefire way to not get scammed, however I have tried to add pointers in the sticky to help. I also added this last section at the request of a POTN member, just to provide at least some advice to others not exactly sure how to wheel and deal on the forums. Also one of the other bullets I have in a different section calls out googling the paypal address of the person you are about to pay. If you are in the first group to get scammed, this won't help, but hopefully in the early phases of the scam, the forums are all abuzz with the email addy and you can save your funds.

It is also probably very true, that if you buy and sell online regularly, at some point somewhere, you will end up falling victim. My sticky hopefully stacks the odds in your favor though.

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=292688

Payment-Related Suggestions

1) Remember that you hold all personal responsibility for how you send payment to the recipient. Nobody else outside that transaction is to blame if you lose your money on a bad deal.

2) There are many forms of payment, but the most popular to pop up is Paypal personal payments (otherwise known as Gift, money owed, etc). Think of this as no different than sending straight unadulterated cash to a recipient via uninsured, unregistered first class mail. Would you do this if you trusted the person at the other end? Sure. Would you do this if you don't know the other person but really want in on a good deal? Your call, but also your responsibility.

3) Look at all the alternatives when you make a payment: Paypal, Paypal Personal/Gift, Paypal Masspay, Money Orders, Checks, Google Checkout, Chase Quickpay, and many other options.

4) Many will suggest to make sure your payment through paypal is done via a credit card in order to garner other protections. A good idea, but be sure you know your credit card account terms, and the Paypal terms.

5) If you send money via Paypal personal gift payment, Paypal will almost never help you, and you certainly cannot pin blame on the forums or others outside the transaction for having sent that to an unknown party. Always double-check the seller's reputation first and foremost, then decide whether you would send cash to the person with no traceability for the item, and if the answer is yes, then using Paypal personal payments is really no different.

6) If the seller and buyer both don't want to budge on the paypal gift idea, perhaps the two could compromise and split the fees down the middle. I personally have used paypal personal payments with no issues at all, but I have also split fees with buyers in the past, as well with sellers. This leaves the normal Paypal protections in place, for what they are worth.

Motto to Live By
GREED or LUST for new equipment or a spectacular deal makes people do crazy things! Take some time and think about what you are about to do especially if it is a high-dollar item! Also ask yourself whether you could continue to make ends meet, if for some reason that money were to disappear and you received nothing. In the end remember that you, and you alone, were the one to send the money out the door, and that is a decision you ultimately have to live by.

Just to clarify, my comments on MY getting ripped off are NOT by the seller in the OP Post, my situation is with the other thread going entitled
"I think I am getting Scammed" entailing actions of another seller entirely.

I am in no way implying that I have any knowledge of the person of the subject of this thread other than what has been posted by the OP.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #12080232
... 1) Remember that you hold all personal responsibility for how you send payment to the recipient. Nobody else outside that transaction is to blame if you lose your money on a bad deal. ...

Are you basing this on any actual legal knowledge or just repeating what sounds good? I don't have the background to know for sure but I would think that in some circumstances (particularly in the case of criminal fraud) that the holder of the funds (particularly when the money transfer hasn't been consummated) has a responsibility to work with authorities and see that the money is delivered to its rightful place.

I'm not saying that the US mint is responsible if you hand cash to another party, but if funds are being held by an intermediary and they are made aware that the receiving party is acting illegally, I don't think they can absolve themselves by turning a blind eye and relying on internal policy.

Edit: However, we do agree on the most important aspect. Buyer (or Seller) Beware.
Sure, if PayPal transferred a gift payment to a fraudulent charity scam, I'd figure that I was out of luck. But if PayPal was holding my money because of other concerns with the recipient, I have a hard time imagining that PayPal has the right to simply walk away from the situation. And, its impossible for me to imagine that PayPal has the right to walk away holding the money just because the transfer was labeled incorrectly.

I am not sure what your question is. First, these are reasonable guidelines to follow. I could certainly add a litany of legal precedents if you would like in a new section called "Above and Beyond", but really, that post is laid out for reasonable expectations and responsibilities.

I also consider any litigious actions that can be taken to be outside the scope of my sticky as well. If you have ever entered into a legal suit regarding lost funds, you would quickly realize that considering the time, money and effort put into that, in almost all cases, the lawyers win, you might recoup some of your losses, but it could conceivably cost you more than the loss to win that amount.

We are also talking about exchanging funds in a bartering system, not illegal charities, nothing else. All of that is out of scope of that sticky, since it is covering purchasing online.

1) If the intermediary has no malice involved, and terms of use hold legal scrutiny, and you still willingly make use of their services, your legal recourse is very limited. IE. You could send EFTs from your bank to the receiver's bank, then the receiver skipped town, and the bank would not be liable. Good customer service would dictate that they try to help you, but again very limited expectations should be had.

2) The intent of sender would certainly be under scrutiny as well. "Just because the transfer was labeled incorrectly", ie. gift payment was made instead of a normal payment, doesn't hold water. Paypal makes the payer go out of their way to designate a gift, you cannot just do that as an "accident". Then if you follow that up with an address in the note, or send an email later with a shipping address, you add insult to injury. It shows that the person intentionally skirted the normal services offered for some sort of personal gain, if there was intent of receiving a product after that payment was made.

In any case, any reasonable person should expect that when they decide to send money to an unknown party, besides trying to take legal action against the recipient of the funds, they really have to look in the mirror and ask "how did this happen". In all cases, the person in the mirror sent the money.

We live in a society today that loves to pin blame on everyone else first, it seems. Do what feels good to the self regardless of others, and if there are unintended consequences, blame others.

Sure it hurts when you get scammed, it is the same feeling you get when you walk outside and see your car window busted and your personal belongings stolen, or you go out back and your ZX10 is missing, and all you see are broken pieces of ignition on the ground, etc. It doesn't feel good. But in those cases, somebody came and took something personal away, where sending money for something to someone unknown has an added element, you initiated the action.

Here is a scenario, what would you do?

1) A new member joins FM, they accumulate 3 posts, all sell items, zero feedback at this time.
2) They offer up a 1DMKIV for $3500, no pictures in the post, just a phone number.

Great deal eh? Would you go for it?

Okay, now from a personal note.

I did. I contacted the person via email, they replied back. They sent me pictures. We called each other, I now had their name, cell number, and their home number. I researched all personal info, and found out what his wife's name was, where they went to school, etc. They were in their 60s and this person has never really used paypal for the funds. Here are the events that unfolded.

- I decided $3500 was a good gamble given our communications back and forth.

- I knew personal info about this person, enough for him to do a double-take and ask how I knew certain things

- I found previous feedback on photo.net

- I googled their email and also entered it into paypal to see the history

- I started to get worried about their lack of experience, and that the email address being used for communication was already used in paypal for some dude that sold phone apps

- The person had a different paypal address, and stated he received strange emails about paypal stuff, and it was because somebody had this email on their paypal account for whatever reason

- He asked for shipping costs, we agree to $50, since he already lowered his price down to $3500 from $3700 on photo.net, etc.

- I sent a masspay payment to them (paypal gets a small fee, I had the funds in my paypal account)

- The person replies back that it was going to take 5-7 days for this to reach his account, never having used paypal before, and he kept calling them since he was unfamiliar with it.

- At this point I state to go ahead and refund the payment, he said he did, his account now has 0.00 in it.

- I looked and he hadn't yet, and he thought it would take 5-7 days, I said no, it would be instant.

- It turns out that he tried to do the bank transfer twice and when it said it would take days, he thought that he had canceled out. But alas paypal doesn't have a cancel, it already initiated the transfer and pulled it from his balance.

- He ends up shipping the camera because he trusts me and my experience with paypal while the transfer is happening. I received the camera and some extras he hadn't even mentioned.

It looked ugly, it started ugly, but I was comfortable through the deal due to what I knew, and how the other person was responsive every step of the way. I would have been upset over the loss if it was a scam, and I would have had no real recourse, nothing reasonable anyways. But I had already considered that in the deal when I sent payment. Also, this entire scenario took about a total of 4-5 hours start to finish, which was worth it for the money I was spending.

There is nothing better than actual personal contact, people need to move past the digital part of deals and actually talk to people, you gain a tremendous amount of knowledge of that person through the act of physically speaking to one another. If you are in a big deal with somebody, ask for a phone number and call. Ask technical questions about the equipment, drum up a bit of history about the person's photo background, etc. You may get a funny feeling from that call that won't happen from emails.

With my feedback, he was able to sell his 400mm f2.8 and 500mm f4, etc. He had a ton wrapped up in gear, and wasn't using it any more, and had a son that needed treatment with down syndrome, etc. It all turned out great for him, and all parties were very happy with the deals they received afterwards.

There were several other individuals nipping at his heels, but none were willing to send the funds. I started my research immediately though and we had 3-4 phone calls while FM replies were all going on from others. There are great deals out there, but research first and foremost before sending out the money, most are legit deals, some will be scam artists.

Not quite the same thing, but kind of related in a sort of 'who do you trust?' way.....

When I was fourteen, twas 1970, I had wagged a day off school and spent most of it in the local museum, where I used to sketch some of the exhibits. An old guy walks by and we make eye contact. He smiles. I duck my head down thinking "Uh oh...."

He walks over and sits next to me, but not too close. I ignore him. He starts asking about my sketches and I give one-word answers, planning my escape. Then he notices I have a camera - a cheap and nasty thing, but my pride and joy at the time. He asks if I like photography. More grunts and monosyllable answers from me as I slowly inch away, sliding along the bench.

He doesn't give up, asking if I have any photos to show me. I decide to leg it if he offers to show me any of his.

Then he started writing on a piece of paper. He passes it to me and says, "I have some old cameras you might be interested in. Here's my address." Yup, I think, he's definitely a weirdo. But as he got up to leave, he said, "See if you can get your Father to bring you over and pick it up."

Hmmmmmm. Surely he can't be a nutter if he's happy for my Father to take me, can he?

Well, we went over that evening and it turned out the old guy had lost his only son a few months earlier. He wanted some of his son's possessions to go to someone who would appreciate them. He gave me a Bolex H16 cine camera, complete with five lenses, a projector, some unexposed stock, some very fancy fishing gear and some books. He was a really nice guy, still dealing with the loss of his son, and he thought it would be nice if his son's gear went to a good home. He said "Use it or swap it for something more useful."

Well, I tried to use the camera but the processing costs were beyond my means, so my Father and I took it to a local camera shop to trade it. We were told it was all pretty useless, but they would give me a brand new SLR in exchange. I walked out with what I thought was the best camera in the world, but was in fact a Zenit B

I found out a year or two later that the Bolex was worth much, much more than they said. Some vintage camera enthusiasts still use them today.

So, the weird old guy turned out to be a gentlemen, whereas the camera shop happily ripped off a kid who knew no better.


Oh, and that Zenit B got me hooked. Basic, but also unbreakable. I recently bought another, for old times sake.
Take from that what you will.

Neat story, too bad about the camera shop.

Just shows you that even an established business cannot always be trusted either.

That was really neat of the old gentleman trying to find a good home for the equipment too.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #12082092
I am not sure what your question is. ...

TeamSpeed. Sorry, that sounded far more confrontational than I intended. I just think that a gift-type payment is no reason to give up on a claim. There is always a chance (sometimes slim) that PayPal will rise to the occasion.

Great stories - it's always a crapshoot but due diligence changes the odds considerably. Most human beings do the right thing. It's instilled in us. After evaluating the risks, I never hesitate to bet on the integrity of others, and I've never been disappointed.

There is no free lunch. A lens available at Costco has more value than a lens supposedly being mailed by a stranger. A smart buyer can save money, but there is cost (time, energy, risk) in dealing with strangers. The worst cases of fraud involve someone who figures that they've luckily stumbled onto a free lunch.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #12082117
...There is nothing better than [I]actual personal contact[/I], people need to move past the digital.......

This is the key to my e-bay sale (if I have to). I state clearly if we cannot talk i will not ship. And I will do the same here if I am not selling to a person with established history.

The only times I will do gift is with well established members, and to an extent. Meaning, I won't send gift for a $1,000+ lens... But maybe for something <$200.

alpha_1976 wrote in post #12085093
This is the key to my e-bay sale (if I have to). I state clearly if we cannot talk i will not ship. And I will do the same here if I am not selling to a person with established history.

That's actually a good way to get negative feedback... the slightest inconvenience tends to piss off buyers. Removing negative feedback is not something easily done.

OP, I'm confused about something: You did not ask for your money back, you were under the impression everything was going according to plan and you received a PM saying he can't send you the money back? So he actually alerted you of an issue you were unaware of when things were apparently going fine?

So, was the item shipped or not? Hope you get your things sorted out and all is just a misunderstanding.

Rafa.

cacawcacaw wrote in post #12085012
TeamSpeed. Sorry, that sounded far more confrontational than I intended. I just think that a gift-type payment is no reason to give up on a claim. There is always a chance (sometimes slim) that PayPal will rise to the occasion.

Great stories - it's always a crapshoot but due diligence changes the odds considerably. Most human beings do the right thing. It's instilled in us. After evaluating the risks, I never hesitate to bet on the integrity of others, and I've never been disappointed.

There is no free lunch. A lens available at Costco has more value than a lens supposedly being mailed by a stranger. A smart buyer can save money, but there is cost (time, energy, risk) in dealing with strangers. The worst cases of fraud involve someone who figures that they've luckily stumbled onto a free lunch.

Wow!

Correct, I was told it was shipped 2 hours earlier. I just randomly got that PM in the original post.

I haven't heard in days now. Looks like the money is gone. No lens.

RafaPolit wrote in post #12088178
OP, I'm confused about something: You did not ask for your money back, you were under the impression everything was going according to plan and you received a PM saying he can't send you the money back? So he actually alerted you of an issue you were unaware of when things were apparently going fine?

So, was the item shipped or not? Hope you get your things sorted out and all is just a misunderstanding.

Rafa.

MOkoFOko wrote in post #12085821
That's actually a good way to get negative feedback... the slightest inconvenience tends to piss off buyers. Removing negative feedback is not something easily done.

I haven't got any. I see what you are saying but I'd not rather lose $1000.