Ask HN: I was scammed on Craigslist.
I paid via Paypal for a Macbook Pro with the agreement that we would meet up to exchange later in the day. The seller never came; now she won't respond to emails. But, when I filed the dispute on Paypal, she said that we met, and that I took the item happily. I called Paypal, got the claim escalated, and told my side of the story.
WHAT CAN I DO FROM HERE? HOW CAN I MAKE SURE I GET MY MONEY BACK?
All tips welcome.
(
4 comments
| on HN
)
do you still have the emails/phone numbers from the craigslist contact? print out emails with full headers for the police. i'm not sure if craigslist changes any headers for mails sent through their [email protected] addresses. might want to contact them as well to get any information you can to hand over to the police.
just some general words of advice with paypal: always pay with a credit card. you get protection for just these types of cases. if you receive payment, never let it sit in your paypal account. immediately move it to a bank account. once it's there, paypal can never take it out without your authorization (if the situation were reversed and you sold something, the buyer disputed it, and paypal tried to reverse the charge on you). paypal is not a credit agency, and any claims that they're sending you to collections are just empty threats.
i've gone through this once before selling a laptop on ebay. the buyer paid me with a verified paypal account that had been compromised. i shipped the laptop, a month later the legitimate paypal account owner disputed the charge, paypal tried to get the money back from me and threatened me with bogus collection attempts.
I think it goes without saying, but if you were going to meet to pick up the mac, why not pay cash after you turned it on and made sure everything was all set? I'm guessing it was a great price.
arrange to meet in person at some neutral place that has wifi, turn the laptop on, use it, make sure it's ok, then login to your paypal account on some other device (not the one you just bought) and pay the person. they should be able to check their email and confirm payment.