I've been an eBayer for several years now and this is a first for me, so I thought I'd post about it here. Last night, I was looking for a certain TV series and found an auction that was about to end that was at a price that I was OK with paying - the seller had only 1 feedback, but so did I back when I first started selling, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and bid - and won. I, of course and as usual, paid immediately with PayPal - and I came back a few hours later to see if there was a note from the seller about when it would be shipped or if it was marked as shipped, etc - when I saw that my payment was pending. Thinking I messed up and used a bank account transfer instead of my checkcard, which can sometimes take longer to go through, I went to PayPal to see what was up with the transaction. That's when I saw the following: there was a note in the transaction saying that the payment had not yet been "claimed" and next to the recipient's name, it said, "The recipient of this payment is Unregistered." This sent up red flags for me and since "cancel payment" was an option, I clicked that, canceled the payment, and contacted the seller, asking them for an invoice with a registered and verified PayPal user to which to send the money. They simply responded with an email telling me there was a "problem with the transaction" and that they had sent me an email with more detailed information. I rec'd no such email, so I again emailed them asking for an invoice with a registered and verified PayPal account. I heard nothing back from them. Now I am wondering: How can an eBay seller who only accepts PayPal as their form of payment not have a PayPal account? Should I pay them anyway or am I not covered if they are not a registered account holder? How safe is it to send money to someone not registered with PayPal? These questions and more will be answered on the next episode of ... PayPal Community Help Forum Thanks.
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