Ebay permits this?

[trikiliki]

I sold an item yesterday afternoon. It was a buy now purchase and the person paid right away. I was at work at the time, and two hours later when I got home and checked my sales, thIe item was not showing in my items ready to ship section. I scrolled down to find the transaction in the list of sold items and it was there, however the payment had been reversed. I checked PayPal, to try and figure out what happened, as I did not issue a refund, nor did I have any communication with the buyer yet.

The paypal transaction only showed it had been reversed, there was no reason or explanation.

I messaged the buyer to ask if they knew why the payment was reversed and proceeded to check their buying history. I discovered they bought the same item from someone else 2 minutes after buying my item. 

The buyer replied with this a few hours later "I paid with the wrong card and I'm going to buy it again with another".  I am pretty sure this is a lie, considering they purchased the exact same item from another seller after mine. I highly doubt she needs two of the same bikini...

So is this allowed? Someone buys and pays and then without requesting a refund from the seller or asking to cancel the transaction, can just go and snatch their money back? How did they even manage to do that?

I wouldn't think someone can buy something and just call up PayPal and say I found a different item, I want my money back....can they?

Also, the item is not showing in the waiting for payment section. Since it has been "paid for", even though the payment was reversed, it is not considered as unpaid. This is ridiculous.

What should I do? Call Ebay or PayPal, hit the report button, or what?

[queenpalmer]

If you're not out anything ($) move on.  Chalk it up to experience. 

[trikiliki]

Your'e right, I guess I just let the audacity of it get to me 😉

But this person can still tamper with my feedback if they wanted and I am out my fees...

[dipmicro]

Maybe this is different problem, but I see this happen sometimes: buyer pays and payment is reversed in 2-3 seconds in full including $0.30 non-refundable fee. There is no way buyer can do this that fast. Sometimes they don't even know and repay and then it's fine. Must be some PayPal error.

[pjcdn2005]

If you were charged fvf make sure that you file a mutual cancellation.

[trikiliki]

Since they are lying about the fact they said they paid with the wrong credit card and will pay again (they still have not repaid, even though I sent a PayPal invoice since they cant repay through Ebay) I don't trust them to accept a cancellation. I was trying to avoid a lengthy sit down on the phone, but I guess I will first call Ebay... then PayPal if I must..

[trikiliki]

Just got off the phone, they submitted a report, went right to trust and safety, and are investigating. They said if they see that this buyer has done this before they will be restricting their account. They said I could not file an unpaid item dispute because the item had initially been paid for and told me to send a cancellation request. I was concerned that this dud will not get an unpaid item strike for this stunt but she said the account will stay flagged and if sanctioned, it will be worse than an unpaid item strike.

She had no idea how the person was able to snatch back their payment the way they did. I asked under what circumstances can someone just call up PayPal and get their payment reversed, she didn't really know either and said probably a credit card charge back. I am skeptical about that because it was done so quickly and I was not notified of an unauthorized transaction or charge back.

I will now call PayPal and see if they can answer that question.

[tuscanyd]

I suffered a similar bad experience with my first sale on ebay.  A girl won the auction, and sent me an immediate email asking when it would be shipped, and how she had had other experiences with sellers who didn't send her this item, and listed a whole sob story of her experiences on ebay.  I said I would send my employee to ship out the item that day.  She continued 4 more ranting emails that day asking when it would be shipped, and one email freaking out saying that Paypal said my ebay account wasn't currently linked to a paypal account (which is neither her nor there!) 

When the employee got to work that day, there was a massive flood that happened in the office.  He immediately had to deal with that.  I emailed her and said shipping would be delayed until 8am the next morning and she replied "fine".  At 8:38am, I got a cancelled transaction notice. However, that cancellation notice did not show up on my ebay mobile app!  LUCKILY I gave my ebay password to my employee to enter the tracking number when he did ship it (all of which was still within the 24 hours of the auction ending).  He was smart enough to login before he went to the post office at 9:00am, and on the laptop website was able to see that she cancelled her payment, and he did not ship the product.

She was a scammer hoping to get the shipment and not pay for it. 

I am disgusted that ebay/paypal allows people to cancel a transaction AFTER winning without asking the seller to confirm it!!  I could have easily shipped it and had a hard time in following days to recover my money or item.  Ebay said they would have requested her to ship the item back, but who is going to do that?  Or they could use the item for their purpose and THEN resend it back to you! 

Ebay/Paypal should require buyer AND seller to confirm cancellations, but it is solely in the buyers hands!!  I am leary of ebay now, and the scammers!

[pjcdn2005]

and one email freaking out saying that Paypal said my ebay account wasn't currently linked to a paypal account (which is neither her nor there!)

It certainly isn't common for a buyer to be able to get their payment reversed without asking for a refund from the seller. Your buyer could probably do that because your ebay and paypal account were not linked.