Scammed using PayPal gift, what to do next?

I wish I was the young man I used to be, with the info you have on this dirt bag, he doesnt know about respecting other people. I'd go over his house, we'd have some coffee and I'd taught to him, he'd understand, youd get your money and a sovereign to remember him by. Cant hurt people on wed sites if you can't type or cant remember your name.

 

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Yes you can do that, but if you use the credit card dispute transaction methone to get back from paypal as "gift" you gave to someone else, there is a good chance you will no longer have a paypal account.

And the two of them are conspiring to cheat paypal out of their fees for a transaction and payment.

Chutzpah, cheat paypal, and then try to get them to help when the other guy cheats you.

 

I've used PayPal F&F to pay for several purchases from different sights including CT. I did so knowing full well I had no recourse if the seller balked, that being said I try and buy from members with a history on the sight and would have no problem outing them if only to prevent others from being taken advantage of. I use the gift option to save the seller fees but you need to try and know whom you're dealing with.

 

Don't use 'friends or family' unless you know it's 'friends or family'. Sorry for your loss OP but you trusted someone who wasn't 'friends or family'...........

 

I have used the PP Gift many times, but only after I've done business with them previously and have confidence in their honesty. It saves the seller the Ebay and Paypal fees and gets the buyer a lower price. Of course, it is against Ebay rules and Paypal frowns upon it as well. An alternative, is to have the seller invoice you outside of ebay for goods and use paypal to pay for them. That saves the bulk of his fees and gets you a discount and paypal's protection. As far as your recourse, it is unlikely that police or the feds would get involved, since the amount in their eyes is small, and there is no way of proving that you didn't give this guy a gift. Paypal isn't going to assist you either, because you sidestepped their process of earning fees. Might check his feedbacks on Ebay to see if he has small number of transactions or bad feedback, and he may work with you if you threaten to report him for doing a transaction outside ebay. But you are as guilty as he is on that score, so what's good for the goose ............Sorry for your loss.

 

Try to settle it without too much threats as he might send you a batch of useless coins and then claim you switched them, and still have your money. I would be sure to get the money back if at all possible, rather than some coins from him. They are likely to be substandard and then where will you be? I have used the PP gift process on some occasions , but with long time known posters and always below a certain amount ( say $20), and for more, it goes through the fee method for safety.

 

This is also true, but a productive discussion on the ills of PP Gift is being generated and I didn't want to antagonize the OP over the silliness of risking his money in the interest of saving $30 on a $1000 transaction.

 

For slabbed coins, I've gone up to about $5000 with someone I knew I could trust, but I turned down a $7500 deal with someone who was a first time seller to me. I had him bill the amount thru paypal and pay the 3%.

 

Well, just don't forget that by doing PP Gift, you are going directly against terms of service you agreed to upon joining Paypal, and screwing them out of the income they need to make Gift transactions possible. They're a business, and businesses are supposed to make money. With a Net-Net of 13% in 2015, they're not exactly stealing money compared to business as a whole.

It isn't something I can get behind in any moral sense. I'm no fan of Big Business as currently envisioned, but causing them to dislike their customers isn't how you change the system.

 

I don't do much of anything on ebay after one walter dardar of Mississippi sold me a counterfeit coin and neither ebay nor paypal would do anything about it. They clipped me for about $750.

 

I'm not sure what BST is. I have no experience with Paypal gift but it seems like a way to send money (for free?). I use ebay a lot. You said the seller was very nice and had quick responses, but i dont know how that translates to being potentially honest. He could have been nice and quick because he wanted to scam you! Maybe 1,000 is easier to gamble with for you than me, since id never imagine taking these risks. Whatever happens, i think you've learned that better people, stores, and online dealers deserve your business.

 

Paypal waives its' fees for Gift transfers, but they're not supposed to be for commerce. And since the IRS allows financial "gifts" of up to $14,000 per year to be untaxable, when income from selling something obviously isn't, by using Paypal Gift to purchase something you're cheating both Paypal and the IRS.

 

Once I've dealt with an ebay seller, I usually get a business card with the coin, alerting me to their own website. For future transactions, if I see it on ebay, I always check their site to compare prices, and more often than not, there is a significant difference from the ebay price, usually about 10%. I don't make a practice of circumventing the system by asking sellers to violate their agreement with ebay and paypal.

 

The $14,000 applies to EACH 'donee'. It is not an aggregate sum of $14,000. I buy and sell for and from friends all the time and we settle up through the paypal gift transfer system. There is no reporting by paypal of "gifts". I also have paid rents for our kids in college and many of their expenses that way. Never been a problem.

 

It's only a problem when you look in the mirror, and only then (obviously) for some folks. Sending money to your kids in college, regardless of what they do with it, is the whole point of both Paypal Gift and the IRS exception. Yes, the money ends up in commerce but you're only sending it because they don't have it and they're not returning value directly. They're returning value indirectly, by developing the skills to stay out of your hair later.

Being able to rationalize bending that system just to avoid what would be due if you conducted your business affairs honestly is something for each individual to work out in the privacy of their own mind. Me, I can't justify such casual larceny in my own life. I've done it on small purchases (literally) once or twice, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

If you are sending the money to your kids so they can pay their rent and expenses that is one thing. If you are using it to pay the rent and expenses directly that is something different. And the settling up with friends is a bit more of a gray area (Unless you used the Friends and family to pay for things you purchased for others or took it as paymet you sold for others.)

It is the Buy, Sell, and Trade forum here on CoinTalk.

 

I don't really see any difference between using billpay or my check free than using the paypal gift to settle accounts between friends or casual business associates. I've even put the description into the paypal gift as "august rent, etc." and never been questioned. They make a lot of money from my Heritage and other on-line purchases, on which the full fee applies. The money transferred for sales between friends has already been subjected to both the ebay and paypal fees, so I don't see any reason to feel guilty about avoiding double PP fees on the same transaction. We could use E-checks, as is often done with large purchases, but going through paypal keeps the bank account number from being passed over the internet.

 

There's no use arguing this. You accept a moral compromise that I will not, and we'll leave it at that.

 

I talked to a US Attorney in NC once about an $80,000 scam I learned of. He said they had bigger credit card fraud cases than that and they didn't have the manpower to pursue something that small.