You've done the right thing by reporting it. Most of these guys are actually really stupid and only get away with this sh!t because people don't take action.

What about contacting the local Trenton authorities? Explain the case and they might have something on him.

 

Maybe you are confused about what happened.
My son uses PAYPAL to collect on software he sells. Three times he has been burned by PAYPAL saying that the 'sender' of the money claimed they never made the payment. They then took that money back out of his account. So this sort of thing happens at paypal on a regular basis.
The idea is that the buyer used someone elses credit card number, and the seller is stuck.

Maybe you never made a payment through PAYPAL and this is some sort of mistake they made
by sending your funds to the rip off Trenton guy. It that's true, then you just have to tell your
CC company the fact that you never bought anything from anybody. Then it's handled like
your CC was stolen,and you owe them nothing.... they write it off and you get a new card.

If it's not what realy happened,it might be illegal to do this but your CC company would protect you if PAYPAL was not in the middle, so I don't see an ethical problem.... but I'm from Brooklyn.

 

Well, the story is more complicated for me because I sent this guy four different payments that totalled the ending balance of $1847.50. And it gets even more complicated because I sent one payment to his original paypal address, and then that one wouldn't work for the next payment, so he told me it was an account glitch and I could send the money to his Boss's paypal account and his boss would get the funds to him. So I then sent the remaining three payments to the other paypal address he gave me. I know, I was an idiot and I should have caught on to the scam right there, or even before, but I wanted to get that hardtop so bad that I didn't pay attention to what was happenning. If you read my whole story above, I admit to my stupidity over and over again.

So I basically made one credit card transaction to one address and three other transactions to another address. Each transaction was from a different credit card. I have emails from the scammer directing me to send the payments to the other paypal address, but I don't know if that counts for anything. I notated in the comments section of each payment what number payment each was and how much the payment brought the paid and unpaid balance to for the Honda S2000 Hardtop.

Just as an update, I got credtited back the last payment I sent him from my Visa checkcard which is debited from my checking account. I sent in a dispute and Visa went ahead and paid me back the $447.50 I sent, for the last payment, on an "Investigative" basis. They said that they will attempt to get a tracking number on the item I purchased from Paypal and if Paypal can't come up with one in the next couple weeks then I will get to keep the money. I hope the disputes with my other three credit card companies work as smoothly.

Oh, and yes, paypal will take money that is in his paypal account out and pay me back with it if there were any funds in there to take from. Since he's a scammer I'm sure he moves the cash out of there fairly quickly. And for this guy, I'm aware that theres a somewhat long line of folks waiting to get money and Paypal says its a first come first serve basis. So if others have made complaints and are asking for their money back before you, then you just have to wait in line and hope there's enough funds in his paypal account to pay you back too.

 

The way I see it, Paypal was not the problem here. As long as you think of Paypal as equivalent to sending cash through the mail, you won't have any problems. The problem was with the original Ebay auction. I just looked at that page, and the seller (njrestorations) had zero feedback. I've purchased many items through Ebay, and I would never try to buy anything that cost more than $25 from someone with zero feedback. That's what the feedback rating is for, and in some cases it's the only guarantee you have. Beyond that, the more expensive the item is, the more info you need to get from the seller. Real stret addresses, phone numbers, and of course a real email address. Instead of a webmail address like "excite.com," get the seller's real ISP address. You should contact Ebay customer service too, although the winning bidder is probably already doing that. Try this page: http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/select-RS.html

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all already know I'm an idiot for buying from this guy. I said in my original post that I don't need anybody rubbing it in.

I've had nothing but good luck in my past e-commerce purchases through EBay and other merchants and I guess I just got lazy with who I was trusting. But the milk is already spilled, so now I just need help trying to clean up the mess. I don't need people telling me what I did wrong originally, because what's done is done. I already know that all the signs were there that this was fishy.

 

Sorry man, you're right. I didn't mean to rub it in, but I got carried away. My main point was that I think you should also report it to EBay if you haven't already.

 

The auction winner has notified EBay. I attempted to but an EBay Rep told me that since I didn't even ever bid on the auction that I couldn't make a complaint. Only auction bidders and auction wnners can complain with EBay. It sucks, but I guess it kind of makes sense because someone with a grudge on a seller might call in a bunch of complaints saying the seller mistreated them outside of an auction when in reality nothing happenned and the complainer just wants to screw over an otherwise innocent seller.

 

AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I just pulled up to another silverstone S2000 and it had a hardtop on it! Man, that sucks. It should be me cruising the streets with my hardtop, not this other punk. If it wasn't for the fact that I have PIMPASS Work wheels and he only had the stock, I would have been really upset.

 

Update:

I just got my "Paypal Complaint Resolution" Emails sent to me. They were able to recover only about $323.00 of the $1,847.50 I sent to the guy. They said sorry for the inconvenience and next time you should read our money safety procedures to ensure good transactions. I hope my Attorney General and Credit Card company Disputes come up with a different outcome.

 

OK, It's been a while since I gave any updates and I really won't need to do any further ones after this.

I had been "conditionally" credited back all the money from the transactions I made from credit cards toward the purchase of this hardtop. It's actually weird, but within about 3 days of each other, I have now recieved confirmations from all four of my credit card companies that the investigation was found in favor of me and I get to keep the credited amounts. So I've been returned all my money and I am now officially a happy camper.

This just goes to show that using the credit cards was the smart part of the stupid decision I made to do business with this fraudulant seller. If I would have simply deposited cash into my paypal account and sent him that money, then I would have been sh!& out of luck. It did take about 60 days from when I originally sent the complaints in, but all is well now and I can attempt to buy another hardtop. I think I'll just buck up and get a new one now.

Man I feel better!