Scammers must be having a field-day (field 2 months) at the moment, what with deliveries being dropped off without being signed for and no help available from any online companies due to covid.
Anyone else fallen victim to the non-delivery scam, or found a way to beat it?
My son sold something online and did everything right, apart from carefully choosing his buyer. Now the payment is On hold and as far as I can see Paypal will refund the scammer, who will have a nice free item. As soon as the delivery site showed “Delivered” they started texting him saying they had changed address. I can’t get any response on Paypal. Any ideas?

PayPal should not refund as long as he sent it to the address registered on the account.

He did. But “buyer protection” worries me, that they will side with the buyer. There doesn’t seem to be any seller protection!

There doesn’t seem to be any seller protection!

There definitely is! (As long as he’s jumped through all the hoops). Explain the “changed address” thing?

Must be great for dishonest delivery drivers too – put parcel on doorstep – take a photo of it – walk off with parcel!

Explain the “changed address” thing?

He just got a bunch of texts saying things like, I didn’t put the correct address in depop, I forgot to put a door number, I needed it delivered to my nan’s… all those and more!
After I told him to just reply that he was reporting them and to ignore all further texts, they said the item had been sent back to depop.. (yeah, sounds real!)

As long as son sent it registered/tracked to seller’s registered address (definitely shouldn’t change it for any reason!! seller sounds like either muppet or scammer – or both) he should be OK.

Cheers for the replies. It’s just frustrating that you can’t get any reply from Depop or paypal.

I’d suggest stopping talking to him via text, for a start. Use something easier to evidence. Does Depop have an official communications channel he should be using, like ebay has? Don’t stray out of that if so.

Update, cos I know you’all bin on tenderhooks (are they a thing?)
Paypal messages I left were replied to – just not at the time I typed them , like a normal inline chat window. Appeared in the account a few days later – good response too, PP said can see why worried and released the funds into his account.. I was still paranoid, so got son to transfer the money to my PP.
Then the buyer contacted him through Depop msging, said have the shoes been returned? Weird…. cos the next day they left him positive feedback! So either they weren’t a scammer all along, or they were trying and gave up! Who knows…better safe than sorry anyway!
cheers

I know you’all bin on tenderhooks (are they a thing?)

its ‘Tenterhooks’ – for stretching fabric while it dries

You wouldn’t really want to be on Tenterhooks unless you’re Stelarc though

weren’t tenterhooks for smoking kippers..?

weren’t tenterhooks for smoking kippers..?

a tenter is a frame for stretching and drying wooden cloth and the hooks are made for that purpose – a sort of L-shaped square section nail that won’t swivel round under tension.

But maybe as a metaphor sense of tense anticipation and suspense is like that of a fish being smoked 🙂

you can hang anything on a tenterhook but the metaphor refers to being stretched between two rows of hooks

Ah, cool. I thought it was tenter, but didn’t seem right as I typed it. Now I know 😁