There are already too many sites full of posts about how evil eBay and PayPal are but not one of them have ever given any advice about what you should do to protect yourself or how to get your money back. This website is not about bashing eBay or PayPal, it is about getting important information to those who have been scammed through eBay or PayPal and getting out information to help you avoid being scammed again! Yes, you can complain here too but only if you take action to either recover your money or to make sure it does not happen again. I want to help you recover your money or at least avoid losing more!!!

You have to know what to look for. Many of the things scammers do make them obvious. Things like demanding unusual payment methods, claiming to be in the USA but being unable to speak or write English well, selling high priced items but asking for a downpayment or a security deposit by western union or bank transfer, offering an expensive item with free shipping(no one ships a car for free), offering expensive items like cars, boats, trailers, ATVs at way below market price. Demanding an immediate downpayment or holding fee by western union or bank transfer for a car or truck. These are all signs of scammers.

Most people that are scammed wind up saying "I knew something was not right....but....". If it does not smell right then it stinks. Dont send a payment to anyone if it looks fishy. Never trust anyone that is in a hurry. That means they stole someone elses account and they want to collect the money before their stolen PayPal account is shut down. Never trust anyone that wants you to go through a complicated payment procedure or who sends you detailed instructions on how to pay or how to ship an item. This is how crooks work. They try to make their victims do something they would not normally do like send a western union payment to another country. NEVER pay for any auction by western union, not if it is going to another country or to the USA. Western Union should never be used to pay for any auction ever.

If you are a seller and someone sends you more than the value of the item you sold, they are scamming you. They will send a fake cashiers check for $2000 to pay for something that cost $500 and then ask you to send the overpayment back to them. They will even tell you to keep $200 for your trouble. Then the bank cancels the deposit to your account because the check was counterfeit and you now owe the bank $2000 and the scammer has your $1300. This is a very common scam.

If anyone sends you a payment and then requests the item be shipped to a different state or different country than the verified address, dont do it.

Crooks also try to con you out of your telephone number. Some scammers on eBay bid on auctions only to obtain the name, address, and phone number of the seller. Many people will not fall for internet scams but if someone calls them on the phone they may give away more information than they should. Crooks will find out your name and phone number, then they will call you and they may even use fake caller ID information to make it look like they are calling from a bank or some big company, they may just block their caller ID information. They will then call and ask for you by name, give some story about needing to verify your bank account information because of some problem and ask for your social security number, credit card number or other information. NO LEGITIMATE COMPANY WILL EVER CALL YOU and ask for your social security number and you should never give a credit card number to anyone that calls you. Anyone that calls your phone and asks for information is a crook. The best rule to remember is If they call you and want something, they are crooks! It does not matter who they claim to be calling for, a bank, a charity, the phone company, if they want your credit card number, want you to send a check, or ask for any personal information, they are trying to con you and they are crooks. If your bank needs something they will send you a letter in the mail or call and ask you to come to the bank. If the police need something from you, they will knock on your door. If eBay needs something, they will have a message in your message center on your MyEbay page. If a charity wants a donation, they will not call you on the phone out of the blue. Crooks can make caller id say anything they want, they can claim to be anyone and they can threaten you with anything because you do not really know who or where they are when they are talking to you on the phone. Anyone who calls you on the phone and says you won a contest or they will give you a loan, or they will help you out of debt is a SCAMMER. They are all lying. No one will ever call you to give you money. If you really win a contest, you will receive a registered letter or FedEx with information including contact information for the company and it will be a contest you remember entering. You will NEVER have to pay anything to obtain a legitimate loan, or to claim a legitimate contest winning, or to any legitimate debt-relief company. They will never even ask you for money.

Beware of scammers offering jobs. They will offer fake jobs to obtain your credit card number. If you say something in your auction about being unemployed and selling items, you can expect fraudulent bids and calls from scammers who want to obtain your social security number and personal information.

Sometimes victims never see it comming. They may be unfamiliar with how eBay or PayPal work and the crook takes advantage of this. They may be unfamiliar with common scams. An escrow company sounds like a great way to protect youself in a purchase, that is if you dont know that escrow fraud is one of the biggest scams on the internet. Almost every website that has escrow in the name is a fraud. The only real escrow company that is authorized for use on eBay is escrow.com which is owned by eBay. Never use another company.

You have to prepare yourself for eBay or PayPal. You would never try to fly a plane without learning how it works would you? You need to learn how eBay and PayPal work before using them. I have been using both for years and I am still learning new stuff. Even if you have been scammed, it is not too late. There are many things you can do to recover your money and you can avoid problems in the future.

Giving up on eBay or PayPal is not a choice. When your friends are using eBay and talking about the great deal they found, you are left out of the fun. What good is that? Being scammed on eBay and quitting eBay is like being in a fender bender and giving up on driving. You can still participate in eBay and use PayPal IF YOU DO IT SAFELY!

There are many books about eBay and I have read most of them. They are useless. All they tell you are some basics about eBay, how to search, how to place a bid. At best they tell you to look at the feedback of a seller but they never tell you what you should actually look for, and I dont recall ever seeing a book on using PayPal safely. Some of these books are downright irresponsible in encouraging people to use eBay without telling them how to do it right.

There are two books I consider must reads. The Don't Bid On It and Scams and Scoundrels books dish out the dirt on eBay and PayPal and tell you how to use them without getting ripped off . There is a lot going on with auctions and payments that you could never know about unless it was too late and you were scammed by one of these methods. Even after someone is scammed, sometimes they have no idea what actually happened. These books have much more information and protection measures than I could hope to go into here. Both books are shown in the right sidebar. I will talk more about these later.

First things first! You must install a toolbar called MyLittleMole from, of all places, mylittlemole.com This is a free toolbar that warns you about spoof eBay and PayPal websites(the ones fake emails lead you to). If you forget or are tricked into clicking a link in one of these fake emails, this toolbar will alert you so you do not give away your password to crooks at a fake eBay or PayPal site. This toolbar also warns you about fake escrow companies. Escrow fraud is very common on eBay. I saw a message board link recommending a company but I had already knew escrow fraud was a huge scam so I went to the site to check it out. Immediately a mole popup warned me that it was a fraudulent site. I cant imagine how many people fell for that fake post and used that company before it was shut down. The website looked really legitimate and professional but a few days later it was gone. If everyone had this toolbar installed, phishing sites would be a footnote in history.

You also must have an anti-virus program and a firewall program. Some scammers trick people into clicking links which actually run programs that monitor the victim's keystrokes. The hacker will then see them type their eBay and PayPal password, banking password or anything else. They may even install software that sends the hacker a real time video showing them what your computer looks like and what you are doing. A good anti-virus/firewall program will stop these trojan programs that crooks trick people into installing.

If your computer came with a 'free' anti virus, YOU ARE NOT protected. Those free programs do not update regularly with new information to catch new viruses and trojan threats. That is why they keep popping up asking you to register. Also, many of those anti virus programs bundled with computers do not include firewalls. You need a firewall software program to monitor your internet connection for hackers attempting to gain control of your computer and anti-virus for trojan programs attempting to send information to crooks.You can use Mcafee, Symantec, or my favorite Zone Alarm and there are others. Beware of sites offering free anti virus or spyware removal tools. Many are fake programs that actually infect your computer with spyware or adware. Two that I am familiar with that I know to be legitimate are AdAware and SpyBot(be careful, many dishonest companies are using the spybot name eventhough they are not the real spybot company).

Should I stop using PayPal?

Avoiding PayPal means you are very limited in what you can buy or sell on eBay. Not using PayPal also means you cant use PayPal to pay at websites. I dont know about you, but when I want to order from a website that I have never heard of before, I prefer to use PayPal. If I give them my credit card number and they are crooked, they can run up a huge bill.

I can report the charges as unauthorized but then I have to cancel my card, get a new card number issued which takes two weeks, notify everyone like the cable company and phone company that I have a new card number, fill out the forms swearing I did not make the charges and if my credit card company believes me, then I start over. With PayPal I can send a payment, I control the amount and never have to worry about losing more than I paid. If I dont receive what I paid for, I can file a PayPal complaint. It is much easier. A credit card does give 100% fraud protection but it also is much more trouble.

How do I get my money back?

File a PayPal complaint! It is amazing how many people post to their blog about how they were ripped off but they never bother to ask for their money back. PayPal does not have insurance but they do have a policy that will usually recover your money. If you paid for something and did not receive it, then file for a refund. If it was not exactly as described or not like you thought it should be, that may be one of the risks of doing business with other people. If you received a brick instead of a new DVD player, then you can still recover your money because that is significantly not as described and that is covered by PayPal's policy..

How do I get my stuff back?

Easy, you dont. If you sold something on eBay, then the charge was reversed, you will not recover your stuff. If you follow the PayPal rules then you will not lose your money either! I have seen many complaints about PayPal reversing a payment but it was because the seller ignored the rules which protected him. You must always ship to the Confirmed PayPal address. If anyone pays you with PayPal and they have an unconfirmed address, cancel the payment and ask them to resubmit with a confirmed address. Then ship only to that address and ship with a tracking number. That is all there is to it. As long as you can prove delivery and you ship to a confirmed address, the buyer will not be able to reverse the payment. Many sellers ship to unconfirmed addresses or without tracking, then they have no protection because they did not follow the PayPal rules. Follow the rules and get the protection. If you dont follow the rules, you dont have protection. It is just that simple.

Is paying through PayPal with a credit card safer than using a bank transfer?

How you send money to PayPal does not matter. Neither is safer than the other. If you are thinking you can reverse payment on your credit card, think again. When you send payment to PayPal you are agreeing not to file a chargeback. Filing a chargeback is actually fraud. It may not seem like it, but it is. Just because a buyer has been defrauded by a seller and they happened to pay using the PayPal service does not give the buyer the right to commit fraud against PayPal to recover their money.

My account was disabled. How do I get PayPal to turn it back on?

Explaining your version of what happened, in most cases makes no difference. At PayPal, they have no sure way to know they are talking to you or if they are talking to a crook who knows everything about your account. It could be a criminal who stole your information or a dishonest family member pretending to be you. The simple fact is, once your account is associated with criminal activity, it is a criminal account and PayPal wants nothing to do with you. They cannot give you information because they may be giving information to the crook. They do not want to turn the account back on because if it was used to commit scams once, then it may be usef for more scams and they do not want that so they will leave it off.

If you had money in your account, you will eventually receive it back. They usually hold it 3 to 6 months to see if anyone else contacts them claiming fraud or to see if the police come around asking about you. If they think you or someone using your account has obtained the money illegally, they may never release the money.

Where does the money go? It does not go into their pocket. They have to turn it over to the state of California just like it was an abandoned bank account. The bank does not get to keep the money and neither does PayPal. Some people like to claim otherwise, but this is the law. PayPal has to turn money over to the state if an account is abandoned for, 2 years I think it is.

What if I stop accepting PayPal on eBay?

That will make your life on eBay much more difficult. Many buyers associate a PayPal account with honesty. If a seller(or buyer) cannot obtain a PayPal account, then it is assumed they have financial problems, or they cannot obtain credit cards or a bank account and are therefore not trustworthy, or they already scammed someone using PayPal and had their account shut down. None of these are good for a seller on eBay. If you are going to sell on eBay, you will HAVE to use PayPal. If you do not then you will receive fewer bids for your items and you will receive less money when your items do sell because people that like to pay using PayPal will not even bid on your auctions. Putting up a message in your auctions bashing PayPal is a sure way to drive potential bidders into the hills. They will not just pass over your auction, they may report you to eBay as a suspicious person. If your bidder has never had a problem with PayPal and they see you complaining about PayPal, they will distrust you, not PayPal.

Many larger businesses are now accepting PayPal. You will see the PayPal Pro logo popping up at big name sites. Not accepting PayPal makes you or your business look like it cant get a credit card because anyone that has a credit card can sign up at PayPal. Who wants to do business with you(or your business) if you are not willing to accept a common payment method that the buyer is comfortable using? Very few people, that is who. Not taking PayPal will mean lost sales.

Not taking PayPal on eBay can also make you look dishonest. Many scammers on eBay also avoid PayPal. Scammers can have trouble with PayPal because if they scam a few people and their PayPal account is frozen, they dont get the money they stole so they have done a lot of work for nothing. Scammers will often place in their eBay ads messages about not using PayPal or claiming PayPal is a scam in order to justify their not accepting PayPal. They can then force buyers to pay by check, money order, or western union which leaves the buyer with no buyer protection at all. Beware of sellers who make an obvious attempt to discredit PayPal, they are often scammers trying to force people into using unsafe payment methods.

It is not fair to yourself to walk away from eBay or PayPal either. There are so many items on eBay that you cannot buy anywhere else and so many bargains, you just cannot quit using eBay because of one bad experience. Trying to use eBay without using PayPal is like trying to shop with Pesos(that's Mexican money). Very few people will be interested in doing business with you. You need to use eBay and you need PayPal to effectively use eBay. It's quite the catch-22.

How do You know all of this stuff about PayPal and eBay?

Two ways. One, I have been the victim of scams on both eBay and PayPal. and two, I have read nearly a dozen books on eBay. I used to be unsure when looking at an auction whether or not it was legitimate. Now I can spot crooked auctions in seconds. I go through eBay and laugh at stupid scams that I might have been foolish enough to have bid on before. If you have been scammed, dont give up on PayPal and eBay, you cant, they are a fact of life in this internet world. The Dont bid book and scams books will explain how to survive and how to use these services safely.

If you ask me, no one should be allowed to use either eBay or PayPal until after they have read the books from dontbidonit.com. Ninety nine percent of the complaints I have seen on the internet would have been avoided if someone had told those people about these books before they were scammed.

Do you work or have you ever worked for PayPal or eBay?

No, I have never worked for either and I have not worked for any company directly connected with either.

How did you get scammed?

Good question. I doubt even I would be here if I had not been scammed. The first time I bought a printer on eBay. The seller never shipped. I was new to eBay at the time and had no idea what to do so I did nothing. That was a mistake. I did not pay using PayPal either. If I had, I could have filed a PayPal complaint and recovered my money but I did not know that.

I sold a lot of small stuff on eBay with out problems. Just extra junk here and there, a garage door opener from an old garage door, old music CD's, that kind of stuff. I then became more serious as a seller but it was still a part time thing for small items. Then I sold a used car and the buyer paid with PayPal($3500). I should have known something was fishy because no one pays that much with PayPal. PayPal payments are usually under $1000. The guy sends a service to pick up the car and I let it go. I send him the papers by overnight mail. He files a PayPal complaint but I did ship him the title which I proved and it went to his verified address. Then he lies to his credit card company and says the charge was unauthorized so PayPal puts a hold on the $3500.00 in my account. It took several months before it was resolved but I got my money even though this scammer tried to keep the car and the cash. If I did not have my tracking number, then I might have lost this one so it was close. Thank goodness I knew to ship with a tracking number. Recently I bought a $20 statue on eBay. It was just an impulse buy. I PayPalled immediately. The seller would not respond to emails and I did not receive the item after 10 days so I filed a PayPal complaint and recovered my money. If I had sent a money order, I would have been scammed and out $20. I was sure glad I used PayPal this time.

I have never fallen victim to a phishing email either. I came close when I received an email from someone claiming "where is my stuff, contact me or i will report you to eBay" but the email sounded too fishy and then I noticed it was sent to an email address that I did not have registered with eBay so I knew it was fake. One other one was a fake PayPal email, and yes, I clicked and I entered my password but as soon as I saw a message asking for more information like my name and address and credit card number, I knew something was fishy and I then noticed the site was not an SSL site. I immediately went to the real PayPal site and changed my password so no one could access my account. I was safe after that.

Do Everyone A Favor And Link To Us

If you are are reading this, then there is a good chance you have been screwed by someone on eBay or using PayPal. If you really want to get even with them and help others avoid the nightmare you went through, link to PayPal-scam.com or eBay-scam.net on your website or blog. Everyone we can catch and educate BEFORE they are scammed means one less payoff for a scammer. If we can educate enough people, then scammers will no longer be able to make money.