bardospace

I cannot believe what I am about to write. This is frustrating, confusing, and a bit embarassing, but I’ve got to say something about it. I recently received word from Paypal that they are reversing a payment that I received for a computer that I sold through eBay. I am still stunned and completely unsure how this even happened, but at this point, it would seem that I was scammed and someone has successfully stolen my computer.

Ok, well, maybe I shouldn’t say “completely unsure”. I’ve done some research and looked back over how the whole transaction went, and unfortunately I can see where I screwed up. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but basically, I am the victim of a hijacked PayPal account. And I let the buyer convince me to do something that Paypal tells you not to, which is send to an unconfirmed address. I don’t think I had really thought through why that was a big deal, but now that I retrace the steps it makes perfect sense why Paypal does that.

Basically, both me and the actual owner of the account were victims, and one of us was going to be responsible for the money lost (God knows Paypal isn’t going to cover the lost costs), and since I didn’t follow every rule to the letter in the “seller protection policy” of Paypal, I’m the guy getting stuck with covering the costs.

Which means I just gave my computer away. Great.