I am writing the details of what happened below in the hope that someone here might be able to help me out. I sold a laptop on ebay to a guy in California. He had a Verified paypal account with a confirmed address. He Had over 200 positive feedbacks and only one negative. Everything sounded fine so far. His paypal email matched his yahoo email and his ebay account. He communicated to me through all three of these. I get payment. He asks me to send it to someone as present. I sent it to that address. He left me negative feedback because I took 3 days to ship it out. 3 weeks later, I got a notice from paypal saying that he did not authorize this payment. I gave them the tracking number and copies of the emails, but they refund the money into his account. I sent him several emails, but he never responded to any of them. Ebay also removed the auction.. you can't see it anymore even if you type in the auction number. So now someone has the laptop and I don't have the money. I also paid over 40 dollars to ship the thing. What should I do?
Well that's the problem right there. You should never send it anywhere except to the address that's on the persons account. I know you're trying to be a nice person but people on ebay are turning into scum. I'm not saying he didn't scam you but he could have had his accounts hacked. What did paypal say after you send them your information?
Paypal said I was not protected under it's seller protection policy because I shipped it to an address that was not on his account. I also just checked the IP address that his emails came from. The IP matches the city that is on his paypal account. So if someone did steal his account, it was someone from the same city.
I have a "silly" question...... How come you don't ask on http://hub.ebay.com/community?ssPageName=h:h:over:US I mean they have forums.....does this forum help members of ebay?
Well even if your not protected by paypal's policy, you are still protected by the law. I think it's time you go to the police.
I'll record it and post it. On a separate note, I'm not really sure where you can go from here. If you're desperate for that money back, I think you should contact some sort of law enforcement agency. I hope you get the money back.