I’ve bought some forks after an ebay seller agreed to a set price. They invoiced me with a paypal pay now email, outside of ebay, which I used to pay for the forks. The communication has been pretty bad with the seller during the negotiation, but maybe I am just being paranoid (job, busy life etc) The auction hasn’t been canceled yet even though I have paid. The seller has a good feedback rating, but I still a bit concerned as I have no way of leaving feedback as with ebay or with a trust based system like stw.

Do I have any protection as it’s outside of ebay??

No – you’re only covered under their buyer protection thing if you do it through ebay. Trouble is that ebay and paypal are intertwined and that paypal plays very much by its own rules with regard to how they deal with disputes of any description.

I would be keeping my fingers crossed if I were you.

Yes and no:
-if they invoiced you through paypal and you paid the normal (ie seller has some fees to pay out of what you sent) then you do have some protection. There are plenty ‘legit’ transcations that have nothing to do with ebay and still take place using paypal, (i use ‘proper’ not gifty paypal for selling records on Discogs for example).

-but ebay get very funny about sales outside of ebay; if they find out the sale was inspired using ebay but conducted without them creaming a further 10% off in final value fees then the seller will have some very difficult questions to answer, if notyou as well for agreeing to it.

However if i was going to circumvent ebay final value fees by going outside ebay, I would not dick the buyer about for fear of getting ratted on to paypal/ebay and getting my ebay account suspended.

So on balance, i wouldn’t worry. Some sellers are honest but just not on the computer all day or even once a day…

Cheers julian, that is what I had hoped. It was not a paypal ‘gift’ so the seller will have paid some fees.