Help With New Dispute Scam

[Temp20220722W]

I am posting on behalf of a friend who wants to maintain annominity until this is resolved.

Today my firend received a Paypal (not Ebay) dispute that claims an item was not received.

The dispute did not come from ebay and is not in the Ebay dispute resolution system.

The dispute states and Ebay item number that can be found on Ebay and which shows that the item never sold.

The friend never recevied payment from this 'buyer'.

Pyapal has frozen the funds in the amount of the dispute.

How does someone submit an 'item not received dispute' if they never purchased or paid for an item?

When my friend called Paypal the agent wanted my friend to 'prove' that he never received payment (the fact that the account history shows no payment received was not good enough for this agent).

The Paypal agent did not understand when was meant by the fact that the ebay item number is for an item that ended without ever being sold.

How can this type of dispute get into the Paypal dispute system?

How can Paypal not take responsibility for this?

Is this an inside job and the agent my friend spoke to part of the scam?

Thank you!

[sharpiemarker]

This is bizarre.  How can a dispute be filed if there was no payment, so there had to be a payment somewhere.  Am I missing something?

[Temp20220722W]

Nope, you get it.

There was no payment ever received by this 'buyer' or for the disputed amount.

The referenced ebay item number is for an item that never sold.

The 'buyer' did send messages via ebay message saying things about wanting their item (that was never sold or paid for) and detailed amounts that do not match the item listing.  I suspect the ebay account has been hacked and is being used by a scammer.

But how does a Paypal dispute get initiated without a payment or an actual sold ebay item number?

Could someone have called in to Paypal to initiate a dispute over the phone and provided the information including the ebay item number and an agent entered this bogus claim in the hopes that the 'Seller' does not reply to the dispute and therefor looses the money?

The more I think about this the closer I get to concluding that it must be an inside job at Paypal.

[sharpiemarker]

I think your friend should call PayPal back during their business hours, call early, west coast time to get a US rep or a supervisor and make clear that the eBay listing closed without being sold.  That the buyer could have gotten an unsuspecting rep to start a dispute.  But how could it be done though?  You need a transaction ID of the payment.  The buyer has to know at least your PayPal email address at least to put the dispute on your account if they do not have transaction ID.  It would be a very big glitch on eBay and PayPal if the item was actually sold but was marked not sold and for the buyer to have sent payment but does not show on your account.

[Temp20220722W]

After my friend called Paypal and the agent told him to 'prove that he did not receive payment' which is not in his transaction history the friedn called me.  After looking at it with him I saw the referenced ebay item number and looked and confirmed it was 'Ended' and not "Sold".  I also was suspicious of the dispute being filed at Paypal and not Ebay (nothing in the ebay resolution center, only on Paypal). It took a while but i finally found a number on Paypal for their Fraud department:

“For any type of unauthorized transaction or error, you can call our customer service at:  <removed>”

and he is calling that number now.

I think getting or guessing the email address is easy, but how did they submit a item not received claim without payment being made.  And why would Paypal but a freeze on the ammount when they do not have the original tranaction.

Very consuming, and you can imagin a huge waste of time!

[DPCreations]

As you are posting on behalf of another, there are a lot of details missing and those details are critical.  You are only explaining what someone else explained to you, and we have no idea what really happened.  We need the seller to answer very specific questions.

If there is no PayPal transactdion, then there is no PayPal dispute.

If there is a PayPal transaction then your seller needs to find it and look at details.

It's not an inside job as an inside job, nor any PayPal dispute, cannot happen unless there is a PayPal transaction.

So you need to provide ALL the details in chronological order.

[Temp20220722W]

DPCreations, that is not correct.  I have fully reseached the issue with my friend by throughly looking at his Paypal and Ebay accounts. I saw things that my friend missed, namely the referenced Eaby item number that when searched on ebay confirmed that it "Ended" rather than "Sold".  There is no reference to a Paypal payment in the dispute.  And there is no payment in the account history that matches this amount. Also, the fact that the disputer for an Ebay item not received was not submitted to Ebay resolution center confirms that it was not an Ebay related payment as in my experiance Ebay handels Ebay disputes and Paypal only handels disputes that are not Ebay related.  I appreciate that you feel it would be impossible for a dispute to be initiated wihtout a payment but here we are.  Assuming Paypal is perfect and incapable of making a mistake or being subject to fraud or some sort of computer problem that may have mangled this transaction is not a good premise.

[Temp20220722W]

Looking again at the dispute I see that it is a Non-Ebay dispute though it references an Ebay Item Number.

Is there a way for someone to initiate a Non-Ebay dispute over the phone and get it into the Paypal dispute system?

Why would they be claiming it was related to an Ebay item that never sold?

But more importantly how did they get this into the Paypal dispute system without having ever received a payment?

It is like Paypal is stealing twice... not passing along the payment and then freezing funds for the dispute.

[DPCreations]

If PayPal is freezing funds for a dispute then there is a PayPal transaction.  That's the information needed, not all the email stuff.

[Whac-A-Mole]

Sometime a seller and buyer agree to complete the transaction outside Ebay,like seller would send a Paypal invoice for the ebay item and the buyer paid,then seller goes into his Ebay account and end the listing.

but for the buyer to file a dispute with Paypal,he must first find the payment he made to the seller and then open a case.

if your friend is named in the dispute,then the email addrss of the seller is his PAYPAL account ID,then where is the payment?

ask him to see if it is pending?can he search his own activity by dollar amount and date?