

Ask HN: I was scammed on Craigslist. - scammed

I paid via Paypal for a Macbook Pro with the agreement that we would meet up to exchange later in the day. The seller never came; now she won't respond to emails. But, when I filed the dispute on Paypal, she said that we met, and that I took the item happily. I called Paypal, got the claim escalated, and told my side of the story.<p>WHAT CAN I DO FROM HERE? HOW CAN I MAKE SURE I GET MY MONEY BACK?<p>All tips welcome.
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there
i hope you paid through paypal with a credit card. if so, call the credit card
company or go online and dispute the charge. it will be on them to go after
paypal to get your money back after crediting you your money back. file a
police report, file a report online with the FTC, keep disputing the paypal
charge. if paypal is able to contact this person to get their side of the
story, they should be able to give you that information to hand over to the
police.

do you still have the emails/phone numbers from the craigslist contact? print
out emails with full headers for the police. i'm not sure if craigslist
changes any headers for mails sent through their sale-XXXX@craigslist.org
addresses. might want to contact them as well to get any information you can
to hand over to the police.

just some general words of advice with paypal: always pay with a credit card.
you get protection for just these types of cases. if you receive payment,
never let it sit in your paypal account. immediately move it to a bank
account. once it's there, paypal can never take it out without your
authorization (if the situation were reversed and you sold something, the
buyer disputed it, and paypal tried to reverse the charge on you). paypal is
not a credit agency, and any claims that they're sending you to collections
are just empty threats.

i've gone through this once before selling a laptop on ebay. the buyer paid me
with a verified paypal account that had been compromised. i shipped the
laptop, a month later the legitimate paypal account owner disputed the charge,
paypal tried to get the money back from me and threatened me with bogus
collection attempts.

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towndrunk
I would file a police report asap.

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clammer
I'm sorry to say this, but if you just got scammed out of $1,000 then you just
got a $1,000 lesson in life.

I think it goes without saying, but if you were going to meet to pick up the
mac, why not pay cash after you turned it on and made sure everything was all
set? I'm guessing it was a great price.

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there
i agree, i'm not sure why you would ever pay for something sight-unseen.

arrange to meet in person at some neutral place that has wifi, turn the laptop
on, use it, make sure it's ok, then login to your paypal account _on some
other device_ (not the one you just bought) and pay the person. they should be
able to check their email and confirm payment.

