I'm always a little weary of accepting payments via Paypal from people I haven't dealt with before due to the fact that PayPal almost universally sides with the person sending the payment in case they charge back the sum they paid you. So, what are your ways of protecting yourself from this issue?
There's no universal way to protect yourself from chargebacks on paypal... there are ways that scammers know they can get away with this and that's why, until paypal takes steps to reduce the effects of these methods, paypal will never be a safe option to accept payments. For example, did you know that a scammer could reverse ANY payment sent to you simply by sending the payment originally from a computer he's not sent a payment from before, and then claiming somebody unauthorized completed the transaction on his account?
I've never heard of anything like this happening and this is actually the first time I've heard of anything like this. I get money sent to my PayPal account weekly and I've never had this happen to me before. I think the beast way to protect yourself is to know what you are getting into. Be careful who has your information for the most part. Whenever I start doing online work, I look up a company and see how legit they are (especially when it comes to payment methods) and like I said, it has never happened to me.
I'm currently having my 1st hassle on Ebay, this Chinese seller is so dishonest and a cheater. She gave me a fake tracking number which I sent her additional money for. I think she never shipped the item. So I intend to file a dispute if she doesn't refund my money. If the scammer has already withdrawn all her funds in Paypal, will I still be able to get my refund?
Yes you will, it will simply set their paypal balance into a negative. Despite being a terrible company for customer service, paypal will 99% of the time side with the buyer in most cases which is why you're pretty well off if you only use paypal to buy things and not to accept payments. If you use paypal to accept payments and the buyer is a dishonest person, then there's a 99% chance you can kiss that money goodbye. Just because you withdraw it into your bank account, there's nothing to stop them from still taking the money by putting your balance into a negative and then pursuing you via the debt recovery system for monies owed.
Well, if the person is like this Chinese seller, then they should really go after these dishonest sellers taking advantage of their buyers. Can they still pursue overseas delinquent sellers? And I'm quite patient in waiting for the item to arrive, so I wait for 2 months or more before deciding that the item was indeed lost/stolen or the seller didn't ship it. Good thing the maximum dispute period is now 180 days. I have couple of transactions that are more than 60 days already, and the sellers were unresponsive. Is there a chance that Ebay or Paypal can help me get back my money after the dispute period has passed if I email them?
