Selling a car, guy says by email he wants to buy it full asking price unseen, will pay via paypal (all in best Nigerian….)

google’d it and this seems to happen a lot but I can’t work out how it works? Assume they pay into an artificial Paypal account that looks like your own?

any ideas? thanks

They offered to collect? unless you send it recorded to the address on the PP account PP won’t cover it so the buyer disputes it and PP give your money back to him so he has your car and the money OR they send you an email that looks a lot like one from paypal you log in and bingo they got your account details.

from some googling, been tryiong to flog my car too.

As said above. And it’s not just cars.

There was article in the local paper recently about a guy who sold his laptop on ebay, received the money via paypal and the buyer collected.

The buyer then reported to paypal he had not received the money and had it transferred back to him.

Moral of the story, if the buyer collects only accept cash.

I got a few of these when I tried to sell my car. I think they pay more than you are asking for, then ask you to write them a cheque for the overpaid amount when they come to collect the car. Then they drive off in the car, with your overpayment cheque. Then they cancel the paypal payment. I’m not sure of the details, especially around the cancelling of paypal payments though. Anyway, obviously a scam to be avoided.

they claim they didn’t receive it and demand a refund via paypal?
Or claim that it is substandard/not as described.

Paypal will then take the money back off you.

Very difficult to prove in the case of a car, but paypal is heavily weighted in favour of the buyer.

Beware.

don’t trust paypal when I can help it, certainly wouldn’t in the case of a large value item like car.

I’ve had someone do this to me several times for small items, one I couldn’t prove and lost the money – but another the buyer had actually left positive feedback on ebay so I sued paypal and they settled out of court.

but paypal is heavily weighted in favour of the buyer.

Nope, its weighted against the person who has the cash/item…

I bought a seatpost on ebay. Empty envelope turns up. Ebay sided with the seller as he ‘proved’ he sent it. Possibly didn’t help that I called a lying ‘turd’, after a number of email exchanges…

Tell him to pay it by PayPal Gift then he can’t claim it back*

*Apparently.

this might give more info about the scam
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/selling-car-on-ebay-potential-dodgy-offer

Phil w says if the buyer collects only accept cash. Problem in glasgow recently with that. A woman was buying high value items and paying with counterfeit notes.

What usually happens is that at the last minutes the buyers paypal account will stop working so he’ll ask you to send the money by Western Union or Moneygram. Or he might send you a stolen or fake cheque instead or possibly he will ask for a few hundred pounds by money transfer to pay for some documents that his shipping agent needs.

Why would you accept anything other than hardcash

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHsQUJtSlfo[/video]

yeah man, I have had 5 emails asking to sell my car for asking price and more. they are almost all from nigeria as they claim they cannot get the car collected until i send them £400 via money gram or western union to pay for the commision on the car collection fee!

They use a fake Paypal template and a fake email address (look at the source of the email and you’ll see it’s from a different email than the one that appears in your inbox). its all very clever and could easily fool an unsuspecting OAP though I doubt they would be using Ebay to sell their car!

They always start the email like this

—
hello is this car still available

note the ‘–‘ as they all seem to have it on the initial email! they also generally have very poor grammar for someone called Calvin Harris (genuine scammers name!)

Gumtree have this as what happens:
One popular scamming method currently being used is where the scammer offers to pay the amount via PayPal. When the amount comes through to the seller, it is £0.00. The scammer then states that PayPal is holding the funds until you send the goods to the buyer. You may even receive emails from PayPal that look real, but they are actually fakes?

The PayPal mails then look heavy implying you are breaking some law by not passing on the car

I knew it was a fake as my PP account is connected to a different (Gmail) email address and I received the PP email in my Hotmail account! idiots!

further to that I received an email from in my hotmail account saying that an attempt to access my ebay account was detected and that I should click a link in the email to confirm it wasn’t me. My Ebay account is also connected to my Gmail account so I should have received it there!

further to that I received an email from in my hotmail account saying that an attempt to access my ebay account was detected and that I should click a link in the email to confirm it wasn’t me. My Ebay account is also connected to my Gmail account so I should have received it there!

ukrswebhelp@ebey.co.uk

spot something wrong with this email address?

the above email was sent from this address

RECEIVING money by Western Union is fine, it’s sending it in return for goods/services that’s the problem.

MY GF has previously sold something on ebay & sent it abroad – the ‘paypal’ payment notification was a fake and it was only when I spotted a typo in it that all became clear. You need to login to paypal directly to make sure the money is there.

but paypal is heavily weighted in favour of the buyer.

Nope, its weighted against the person who has the cash/item…

yep, sorry. the only thing it’s weighted in favour of is paypal itself.

I bought a seatpost on ebay. Empty envelope turns up. Ebay sided with the seller as he ‘proved’ he sent it. Possibly didn’t help that I called a lying ‘turd’, after a number of email exchanges…

That’s a bit of a nasty trick really, as although he can’t prove he sent a seat post, he can prove he sent *something*. I would have sued the seller in that case.