Amazon payments - how to be safe

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allen5055

[H]ard|Gawd
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I'm selling an item and I would like the guy to pay through Amazon payments because it has no fee. My question is, how safe is Amazon payments compared to paypal? I know that if the seller ships to a paypal-verified address he is pretty much secure if he gives the tracking info and takes some pictures of himself packing the item. Does Amazon have any such protection?

Does Amazon usually favor the buyers or the sellers? I'm a little suspicious about the guy I'm selling my monitor to because one, he offered to send a check/money order, and two he said that he has a company account that he can use to send me a FedEx pickup. However, if I send the monitor, take pictures of the packaging, and am paid in advance via Amazon I don't see how I could be screwed over. Am I correct in thinking this?
 
Why take amazon, if the buyer offered you a money order? There's not a process I'm aware of to claw a money order back.
 
Money orders are easy to fake according to Craiglist. The worst part is that after you cash them the banks can retroactively take the money back from you if it's fake and you can be fined.
 
Well "easy" is relative .. they're (roughly speaking) as easy to fake as paper currency .. given the costs (of faking) faking them to the extent it's difficult to detect may make financial sense when "transacting" a car, but not a monitor (I presume yours is not more expensive than $1K).

As for amazon payments: a buyer can file a chargeback with amazon or directly with the issuer of his credit card (this has a time limit of 60 days after close date of the billing cycle in which transaction took place). From my reading the forums, "buyers" tend to "win" in these situations.
 
Make it a USPS money order, they give you the cash on the spot as I recall. If the guy's willing to do a money order, that usually means he's not too concerned about being protected himself.

As for the FedEx company shipping thing... the guy could just honestly be trying to save a few bucks.
 
First of all you are kidding yourself if you think paypal is "safe" against a shady buyer. If a buyer pitches a fit you can expect a charge back. Amazon is no different they just don't charge a fee for the illusion of "safety."

I second the USPS money order as you can walk into a post office and get cash. I will also take a personal check that I can walk into a major bank and cash. Obviously both of these are contingent on a buyer having decent heat but that's regardless of payment method.
 
Don't use someone else's shipping account, they can redirect packages while en route.Amazon doesn't provide "confirmed" shipping addresses like PayPal, so he can have you ship to an address not on file with his credit card and charge it back and you will lose. PayPal is safer than Amazon payments because of that.
 
Personal checks, cashiers checks, and money orders aren't safe either. These scammer fools print them on legit check paper & use legit banking routing & account numbers. I've had fools on CL try to pass these on me twice. Both times the bank took it and even verified the numbers by calling them in. Only to get a call back from the bank some 5 days later.

Luckily I was aware of these scams and didn't hand over the items, I was going to wait 2 weeks. I'll tell you though, I'll never accept any kind of so called "bank paper" again. Cash only.
 
I've only done Amazon once. Didnt seem too bad, but honestly I like Paypal.

I've been selling on here for about 4 years and neve had a single issue. All paypal.
I've had a few sales where the guy was either a little slow on the deal or not the most personal, but 100% AOK.:D
 
I am not a big fan of paypal's ever increasing fees, however, over the past 15 years I have done lots of deals here, on many other boards, as well as ebay & have NEVER EVER had any problems whatsoever.....

although there is a 1st time for everything, hopefully having problems with a paypal transaction will be something I don't have to experience.......
 
I have been using Amazon only to receive payments lately. I will not give PayPal my money....... If I am the buyer and the seller wants PayPal then I will use it that way.

IMO you are taking the same risk no matter which payment method you use. When I am about to receive a payment through Amazon, I ask the seller to put the shipping address in the comments of the payment along with the name of the item he is getting.

The rest is basically a trust thing so if its a high dollar item I tend to go with well established traders only.

I have almost 260 heat transactions over the last 11 years, and out of all of them I have only ever had to leave 1 negative evaluation. Use your common sense, open up good communications and you should be able to trade safely for a long time.
 
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