A Question concerning Ebay's Buyer Protection Policy -- seeking some advice :)
 

Just won a card on Ebay for a fairly decent amount, $325 and had a question about Paypal/Ebay. The seller's auction description states that I shouldn't pay the invoice sent to me and instead, he'll send one seperately. This bugs me somewhat as the seller is outside the country, has a very low feedback rating, has no feedback at all for the sort of item I'm buying and when I received his invoice that he sent me, it took me to a Paypal page that wasn't tied to Ebay in the slightest.

So my question is, if I pay for the item, do I still fall under Ebay's buyer protection policy? Never had someone try to send me a seperate invoice before so this is kind of a new one. If I try to use the links through Ebay to pay for the item, I'm just taken to an error page that says "Invalid Transaction ID"

Just in case you're curious, the part of the seller's item description that mentioned the seperate invoice is below. I didn't pay much attention to this at the time as I just figured the new invoice he was sending would be through Ebay as well.

Thanks in advance for any insight....

--------------------------------------

On Dec-01-13 at 04:24:58 PST, seller added the following information:

Pls note:

It seems that I submitted a wrong paypal address, so pls don't pay immediantely,

I will send you a payment request for this ebay item.

Thank you very much!

---------------------------------------

Sounds pretty fishy bad to me! The facts you provided on the Seller would have scared me to begin with.

I also think if you pay off EBay your protection is null & void.

Personally I would send them an eBay message telling them to fix there mistake with the eBay/paypal email address. I would never pay the way you are being asked. I do not use eBay much but this sounds very fishy. Hopefully someone with more experience can help you. Good Luck.

that would make me nervous as hell to be honest

Derek

I would call eBay or PayPal (or both) and ask them about this seller. I would tell them the story and then offer to send them the e mail or other info you have.

David

You're right that you won't have any Buyer Protection through eBay if you pay that way (because as far as eBay is concerned, you didn't buy anything through eBay). Depending on how the seller invoiced you, you might still have a recourse through Paypal to reverse the charges if the deal doesn't come through. It's not as straightforward a process though, and if they just sent a "payment request" rather than an "invoice" through Paypal, you still might not have any recourse.

Basically, if it makes you uncomfortable dealing with anyone outside of eBay, don't do it. That's not to say that there is anything inherently wrong with doing business off-eBay, but if you're used to letting eBay's Buyer Protection promises override your Spidey Sense when doing deals on eBay, you need to start paying attention to it again when you step outside of that protective bubble.

Edited to add: There's nothing wrong with playing dumb or scared in a situation like this either and telling the seller you can't get the payment to work through eBay. If it's a legit sale and he wants to get paid, he'll figure out a way to either fix his eBay profile information or re-list the card with a BIN just for you. Ebay won't punish you for not following through with a purchase that the seller tries to take off-Bay.

I wouldn't pay using that method. I would aslo contact ebay to make sure you dont get an unpaid item strike on your account.

I agree...tell them you can only pay through the ebay item through paypal that way.....I wouldn't do it the way they are saying to. No way....

sounds to me like you just entered your paypal information into a phishing site, and now that person can login to your paypal account.

i would recommend changing your paypal and ebay passwords.

kevin

Post/opinion no longer available

That's really good advice. I recently had an Ebay seller request that I pay via "Vendio Checkout for fastest processing of your order!". I told him know and paid via paypal and he sent my item immediately.