Buyer paid via Paypal F&F w/o me requesting it- red flags?

FallenCow

Gawd
Joined
Dec 3, 2003
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So the situation is as follows: buyer contacted me about an iPad I had listed a while back that hadn't sold yet. He asked for pictures and asked for a price. I provided pictures and told him what I wanted. He quickly agreed and sent me payment via paypal. Payment was sent to me via Paypal Friends and Family. The email that the paypal was sent from looks legitimate (i.e. not a gmail/hotmail/yahoo account), but the user hasn't had much posted activity on [H] since 2017 and Heatware has about 27 feedback.

Should I be concerned about being scammed here? Looking for feedback before I ship the iPad.
 
If you want to be extra cautious, wait until the money is transferred to your bank account before sending it. As said above though, as long as the money is already in your Paypal account, there's little chance of it being a scam.
 
Wasn't sure since I had seen some posts on the Paypal forum where someone did a charge back through their bank account for a fraudulent transaction and got a F&F payment reversed.

I also did a name and address search and it looks like the name matches the address. Just cautious as I hadn't bumped my For Sale thread in months.
 
F&F can be reversed if the account was compromised or the funds were from a stolen source. Make sure the ship to address matches what Paypal has as confirmed and, if possible, hasn't changed recently.
 
So perhaps correspond with him and ask him to confirm his identify on a secondary account that matches?

I.E.
I’m archaea on all my forums and archaeantrader on ebay. Should he easy enough to prove his identity and intent through a secondary source that hopefully a scam transactor wouldn't have access to.
 
If someone in the forums is an established member and has some degree of reputation either via Heat or otherwise, and they send me a F&F transaction, I first would message them and explain to them that it's not in their interest to do so. If they tell you it's ok in writing, then I think it's just fine and they are extending you a favor.

If it's a new person with no or negative rep, I'm always suspicious of motive.
 
As long as you ship to confirmed address only, no sweat IMO. Since F&F is generally bulletproof otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it.

I've done F&F even when not asked if I have the cash on hand. But as a buyer, if it's big (say laptop or something in the thousands), I wouldn't do F&F just so I can get both Paypal protection and protection from the underlying credit card.
 
I as the buyer just sent F&F without being asked.

The guy is doing me a favor so I thought I'd send the few extra cents just to help pay it forward.

Not the same deal as yours but I thought I'd chime in.
 
No chance of being scammed with friends and family because he can’t recall his money.

So long as the money has cleared! (He didn't pay by e-check or some nonsense, right?)

it saves you a fee. He’s most likely just being nice.
Exactly this. From a sellers standpoint this is actually less risky for the seller.
 
PayPal F&F can be charged back if the buyer funds the payment through his credit card. He will have to pay 3% fee for the transaction. In your end, you won't know if they payment is made via debit card/bank/credit card.
 
PayPal F&F can be charged back if the buyer funds the payment through his credit card. He will have to pay 3% fee for the transaction. In your end, you won't know if they payment is made via debit card/bank/credit card.

This is accurate, friends/family isn't bulletproof against charge backs, it's just a nice way to circumvent fees going into black holes (see: paypal's accounts) which can be excessive for large purchases.
 
That's what I was concerned about. Paypal won't have the seller's back since F&F is not supposed to be used for purchasing goods.
 
PPal used my debit card instead of Goods and Services for a laptop I purchased. I just ate the difference. The buyer had already agreed to Goods and Services but since he said nothing about the extra money I forgot about it.
 
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