the-silver-lotus wrote:
This is not good to hear.
I haven't had to contact PayPal about anything in at least 2 years, and my experiences with their customer service and general "with it"-ness were always very good. But yours is just the latest of a number of not-so-good PayPal experiences I've heard about recently.
As for the scams, if there is one particular country involved, maybe you should just add it to your exclusion list.
Also, I'd follow the advice in janewt-1's post.
Good luck.
I do require immediate payment on some BIN listings, not all, just with the big stuff because I kept getting bad buyer after bad who never paid. So I enabled that choice. But then I started getting the same buyers in the same area with valid paypal payments. Paypal initially told me if they say they recommend shipping, then ship.
BUT DON'T FOLLOW THAT ADVICE! (by the way, I don't require credit card on file for most auctions. I will change that and see if that makes a difference. It will make it more challenging for thieves to make purchases. So, no, its not a pipe dream that Ebayers make a living off their business but so do scam artists and organized crime. They probably make more than sellers. It requires organization to have buyers and shipping recipients demographically located.
There are subtle discrepencies in the transaction that are a 99% confirmation of fraud, but why Paypal did not and still is not catching criminal transactions, while they promote their fraud detection technology etc etc.
Being a programmer and analyst I have outlined a fraud detection algorithm that can immediately find suspected transactions and rate them by risk: BAD-DO NOT SHIP, HIGHLY SUSPECT, and OK TO SHIP.
Its a very simple mathematical formula that looks at key information in the transaction. Its relatively simple but time consuming. I specialized in risk management as an analyst and now I see a need in this area for sellers. Sellers need more support than they can get from Paypal.
Fraudulent buyers can NOT change certain information in a Paypal account holders file, without also having access to the victims email or their credit card on file or without a mailing to the account holders home location. When I compared key differences I am able to identify a bad check. So why isn't Paypal?
Paypal will not cover bad payments even though it is their responsibility to protect us from this type of fraud. But they still hold SELLERS responsible when money goes bad.
I am seriously thinking of writing a program to analyze the transactions exported from Paypal and rate them to identify an unauthorized purchase or a high risk transaction.
Paypal told me today, now that they are talking to me again, that if I suspect an unauthorized transaction, then I should just refund it rather than send it for a fraud review with their security team. I didn't like that answer, it puts more responsibility on me to do their job.
The good news is that I am onto the scam. It started slow, once they figured out that they could get one over on me, they made a mad rush to the store from about 5 different localities, shipping to all corners of the world. Transaction after transaction, every one, every day for a few days. Their own greed uncovered their crime.
The bad part is that Paypal only "automatically" detected and flagged one transaction. I found the next one, and contacted the Paypal account holder who just happens to live in my city (This was no coincidence.)
The fact that they were able to use a Paypal account of someone who lives down the street just goes to show how widespread and effective Phishing scams are. They are really effective, because there are still many people who aren't very computer saavy who are even easier victims than ebay sellers. I think its probably easier to get someone's account info than it is to get a sale.
Already, my own NEW fraud detection techniques are catching 95% of the unauthorized transactions. I have found 10 that paypal didn't, out of 63 transactions. There's probaby twice more but I haven't gone through and performed a complete audit.
If i can write a program that effecitvely flags bad eggs I might have a new product to offer you in about 3-6 months. I'm using this procedure now, by hand, and its working, but its time consuming.
As for now, sorry boys, but your free ride is over. Please move on to the next seller.
My
The Beach Hut Bus
Eddie would go.. 
Must use Buy It Now and PayPal.
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