Yup, so paypal just stole $675 from me.

[CRog075]

Oh well........sigh, but thanks for the flame

[Tunaman]

Its not a flame. It may be a lesson well learned. Especially when Paypal even lets you know that the address is unconfirmed and you are not covered. Set your paypal preferences to decline all payments that have an unconfirmed shipping address and refuse them all. No exceptions. I have heard every sob story in the book as to why people dont have confirmed addresses. None of those stories got the item shipped there...

[CRog075]

A lesson learned? **** that, having to sell my car I just bought, to pay back my parents the debt, isnt a lesson learned. It just makes me want to steal.

[cphilip]

...well I will add to that. Do not ship to an unconfirmed unless the two following are met...

1) You know them and trust them.

2) They give you the confirmed one as well as the non confirmed one. Often people want them shipped to another addy that is like a work addy and they cannot get that one confirmed because their confirmed account will not allow mutliple billing addresses.

Those are the only exceptions you can make to it.

Now my suspicion here is they were not "Verified" and if thats the case you may want to think twice. If both of those things do not match then your taking a risk.

[CRog075]

Ok, I have been doing some more info. His account is verified, so that adds more to it. I sent an email to him, I got this reply:

"I have no idea what you are talking about. I have not
contacted you nor have I received anything. Please let
me know what you thought I received. I have turned
this into paypal and maybe they can straighten it out. Thanks"

The name on his email is "Jon Jones" and the guy I sent it to was "Jim Jones"

They both live in Springfield, MO 65804. I think its a kid trying to think he can jip me off, but once this goes to court, we'll see whos laughing now. I'll sue his punk *** till his parents are broke.

[Restola]

As my dad would say (and has several times to me when I lose/nearly lose a couple hundred bucks for whatever reason)

"Consider it an inexpensive lesson."

$675 may seem like a lot, but in reality its a pretty cheap price to pay. Life goes on. Live and learn.

[Mossman]

You can try and take him to court, or paypal, whatever. You may get your money back. You have to find out who you sent it to, get the police to go to that address, and see if that person lives there. If you have delivery confirmation saying that it was delivered that should be enough to get the police/fbi/postal inspectors working for you.


The kid's story about not ever talking to you is probably true.

If you hung around here and any other places on the internet, and are on tons of crap email lists like I know I am, from time to time you get fake paypal/ebay emails telling you to enter your user name and password. When people get tricked into doing this, it goes into a huge datebase that people can sort through. When you sold your gun to him, the scammer may have found one of these databases, found a login/password that worked, wired 675 off the credit card, and made out like a bandit.

When the words UNVERIFIED SHIPPING ADDRESS came up red flags should have came up, I am not sending this 700 dollar gun to someone who could possibly not be the person I think he is.

I'm sorry for you, and i hope you get this worked out, but it's gonna be tough. Contact the police dept. in that town immediately.

[CRog075]

Originally posted by Restola
As my dad would say (and has several times to me when I lose/nearly lose a couple hundred bucks for whatever reason)

"Consider it an inexpensive lesson."

$675 may seem like a lot, but in reality its a pretty cheap price to pay. Life goes on. Live and learn.

Yeah, but im a 16 year old, jobs are hard right now, and not to speak that my parents were kind of enough to lend me $1,000 for my car. Now, paypal takes $675 from there CC.

[CRog075]

Originally posted by Mossman
You can try and take him to court, or paypal, whatever. You may get your money back. You have to find out who you sent it to, get the police to go to that address, and see if that person lives there. If you have delivery confirmation saying that it was delivered that should be enough to get the police/fbi/postal inspectors working for you.

The hard part is finding out who to sue. I think im going to have to call USPS and get more specific details on the address I sent it to and who ( This was 2 weeks ago, I dont got the address, but I got the delivery number) then once I get the address and name of the person I sent it to, sue him for Mail Fraud, and somekine of internet fraud or whatever, since he "stole" a credit card. I might also see if theres any way to sue paypal, because anyone then, can say there CC got stolen or someone else used there account, and get there money back just like that!

Originally posted by Mossman

The kid's story about not ever talking to you is probably true.

Yeah, but the thing that bothers me, is that they both live in Springfield MO, and have the same last name.

Originally posted by Mossman

If you hung around here and any other places on the internet, and are on tons of crap email lists like I know I am, from time to time you get fake paypal/ebay emails telling you to enter your user name and password. When people get tricked into doing this, it goes into a huge datebase that people can sort through. When you sold your gun to him, the scammer may have found one of these databases, found a login/password that worked, wired 675 off the credit card, and made out like a bandit.

That sucks.So basically he used a stolen credit card, so I could sue him for something in the matter right?

Originally posted by Mossman

When the words UNVERIFIED SHIPPING ADDRESS came up red flags should have came up, I am not sending this 700 dollar gun to someone who could possibly not be the person I think he is.

Yeah I know, I learned my lesson now. I mean, I saw the money in my account, so I got all excited and didnt expect anything.

Originally posted by Mossman

I'm sorry for you, and i hope you get this worked out, but it's gonna be tough. Contact the police dept. in that town immediately.

It will be tough, probably take a few months to get it all over with. As long as I get my gun back too, thats all that matters, so I can sell that again. Oh well, I have to talk to my dad soon about it, on what to do about this. (my dads a lawyer for the police station, so he gots alot of friends at the sherifs office :) )

[shartley]

[SpongeBobSquarePants]

I agree with Shartley, only use it for small items, if I want to buy some spare parts or sale some small stuff I use it. However, I do NOT use it for large items I want a a MO for the cash in my hand. I'm sure some way it will be possible for you to get your money back but it will take alot of time and work. I hope you are luckey and get this settled qiuck. Good luck.

[CRog075]

Thanks. It will take a long time though

[UThomas]

Hey, thats a tough break, you got screwed. I would go through hell and high water to get that $675 back if I was 16. Keep pushing on the kid. I would call him, call the fields around him, e-mail him daily, etc. Hell, me personally I would fly out there just on principal. I had some guy do that to me about 7 years ago when I was in highschool and I filed a complaint against him and he shipped it to me.

[Star_Base_CGI]

If you research pay pal you will find out alot of things not so good about them.

There not a bank and not a credit card company.

[Mossman]

Just to clarify, paypal didn't do anything wrong. There is TONS of fraud on the internet. I heard a statistic, I don't know if i believe it, but it was that 2% of all online CC transactions are fraudulent. Recently CC companies have made it tougher on stores who ship to addresses different from the billing address. This is the same thing paypal is doing. The problem is the stores will say "INVALID ORDER" or something, and all paypal does is waive your protection from them, in small letters at the bottom of the screen.

IF paypal is going to allow people to ship to unverified addresses, I think there should be a big disclaimer screen before the send payment screen, just so it's drilled into people's heads that they are not protected.




Also, about the similar names thing, it doesn't matter. You sent to some random house, in the same town, the guy obviously wouldn't put some bogus name like BobbyBoy Bojankles, so he made a name that sounded like he was part of the family who's paypal acct he was using. It doesn't matter what last name is on the package and who lives at the address, the USPS will still deliver it.


The 3rd scenario, possibly the easiest to solve but the hardest to prove, would be if the kid of the family, a charming teenager like you and me, used his Mommy and Daddy's paypal acct, bought the gun off of you, had it sent to some other house in town, went and got it and hid it or immediately sold it, and never told his parents. The kid would have to be a pretty good liar to pull this one off, but it's possible.

Best of luck getting su dinero back.