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Stopped reading right there. I don't know why anyone thinks this kind of transaction will ever work out in their favor. FB Marketplace/Craigslist etc. are fine, but the golden rule is to use them for local, in-person, cash-only exchanges and nothing else.
Wow, for once a PayPal story where someone didn't get screwed.
When I do FB marketplace I go cash and in-person. It lets you assess the quality of whatever you're buying.
This is the way. Does FB Marketplace even have any sort of reputation system? Or are you banking entirely on the age of the account? I'm a heavy Facebook user, but I avoid FB Marketplace like the plague. Just seems like a great place to get scammed.
I used the same criteria: Number of items listed, number of items sold, how long they have been on the platform. For good measure, I cyber stalk them a little bit to make sure they exist.
Even with an Ebay-like ratings system, one of the thing which happens is legit accounts get hacked and go rogue. (I am guessing they got hacked; someone who was legit could also just randomly decide to go rogue) You're always going to be at risk of that.
Interesting story - I wonder how they managed to manipulate the Paypal account of the victim. Clearly Paypal has a problem there. But the other issue is that of general lawlessness and the fact that this scammer will get away with the attempted scamming, and probably do it to other people, too. For every person like the OP who manage, somehow, to protect themselves, there are 1000 others who don't. And there is the i…
Wow, for once a PayPal story where someone didn't get screwed.
Someone did get escrowed tho.
> I paid $1,030 using PayPal Stopped reading right there. I don't know why anyone thinks this kind of transaction will ever work out in their favor. FB Marketplace/Craigslist etc. are fine, but the golden rule is to use them for local, in-person, cash-only exchanges and nothing else.
> The next morning, I called PayPal and asked them how the seller could’ve opened a case on my behalf against themselves. They weren’t sure. That's scary :/
PayPal is the most annoying service I use because it asks for 2FA for every damn action. So how could they take that action? Surely if they logged in they left breadcrumbs?
The post is mildly infuriating because it doesn’t even try to answer very important that question.
There's a lovely line in the original BitCoin paper which says: > Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers. The word "easily" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there! Escrow is a difficult problem to solve. There is no infallible smart-contract which can protect both buyers and sellers.…