Bought an item on a BUY IT NOW this morning, have since had an email from the seller saying they no longer wish to sell the item. Good feedback history, seems genuine, offered to refund via bank transfer today.

I think this all sounds fine, what potential scam am I missing?

How did you pay, paypal?

How did you pay, paypal?

Indeed – ideally you want to be refunded by the same mechanism you used to pay. Try to avoid any steps that takes the traceability of the transaction away from ebay/paypal

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/pay/refund-buyer.html

If it’s paypal the seller should follow the correct process. Don’t agree to anything outside of that.

Sorry yes, was paypal, I should have put that. I will ask that they refund via paypal then.

If you paid by Paypal and they want to refund by BACS, they’re more likely to be scammed than scammers I’d have thought?

Yes, my first thought was that, and then I thought “but that’s how they get you”. If there is a proper paypal procedure I will ask them to use that.

Refunding via Paypal is very easy…

Does seem odd they want to use BACs

Weird – a couple of clicks to refund by Paypal, considerably more complexity to send a BACS transfer, plus you having to provide your a/c details.

Still can’t see how you’d get scammed, unless they can somehow reverse the BACS transfer by telling their bank it was sent in error.

I’d just say you want the refund via PayPal, end of.

Maybe they’ve already transferred the money from their Paypal into their bank…
You could always ring eBay for reassurance.

But if they make a payment from PayPal without any funds being in the account, it will just take it from their nominated bank account which would probably be the account they had moved the money to…

I think if you refund a buyer from a Paypal account with no funds in it, there is a delay of 3 or 4 days before the money goes to the person your refunding.

I’ve had this in the past, even with a bank account linked to my Paypal account.

True yep. I’d be calling 0208 0802164 for advice.

Really they should choose to cancel the sale and pick the ‘item is out of stock or unavailable’ reason. They then get an option to refund the buyer via Paypal. The seller may be wanting to refund outside of eBay to keep his/her return/refund rate down but can always just issue the refund directly from their PayPal account.

Teach them a lesson.

Accept the BACS refund option first.
Then raise an “Item not received” with eBay and get a second refund through PayPal.

Sorted.

Don’t you have to give your bank deets to be able to be paid by BACS? That would worry me!

Account number and sort code only, just like the info printed on cheques.

And just like the info Jeremy Clarkson put in the paper to show it was safe and no-one could get your money.

And said ta-ta to £500 as someone proved the point

Paypal for sure, most good scams start with a story (just cos people can’t work out the scam doesn’t mean there isn’t one). Besides it serves them right for selling summit then changing their mind.

And just like the info Jeremy Clarkson put in the paper to show it was safe and no-one could get your money.

And said ta-ta to £500 as someone proved the point

Someone set up a direct debit with it, IIRC. I think they had his physical address too, mind.

The risk involved in giving someone your bank details is so vanishingly small it’s really not worth considering.

I had my bank details on my company website for years, so people could pay easily, as do many other companies.

Remember cheques?

We ll they have all of your bank details on.

Lots of people use them quite safely.

Right, eBay seller gets paid exactly what they want via buy it now, changes their mind on selling (probably because they realise they pitched it too low) and now wants the buyer to accept refund by a non standard method.

Just to, you know, keep this vaguely on topic seeing as Jeremy Clarkson and chequebooks are now in the mix

BACS payments can be reversed weeks or months down the line if it turns out they were fraudulent.

A potential scam is they refund via BACS from someone else’s hijacked bank account. Once the person who owns the bank account realises they inform their bank and the bank reverses the fraudulent transactions. You lose the money and they’ve long since disappeared with your paypal payment.

I’d request they refund via paypal and can’t think of any reasonable reason why they wouldn’t agree if it’s all above board.

Even if they seem like a trustworthy ebay seller there are plenty of examples of scammers hijacking other sellers ebay accounts to run these type of scams so they appear more legit.

Can’t you.lodge a non posting seller complaint or somehting

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