I recently sold a video game account that was delivered electronically on craigslist. I didnt want to jump into giving them the information right away, so I sent them an invoice on paypal, saying the money was not refundable. They accepted the invoice and paid it. With that I got an email from paypal in response to my invoice, stated below (and yes I changed their real name for obvious reasons...
* is a Verified buyer.
Has completed the PayPal Verification process to help confirm their identity, and they have a confirmed bank account, or been approved for a PayPal Plus Credit Card.
The PayPal Verification process is a security measure to confirm that a user is the owner of the bank account or credit card they are using in PayPal. Confirming each user's identity helps prevent fraud, such as identity theft, and increases the security of payments in PayPal.
This transaction will appear soon in the Recent Activity list on your Account Overview.*
That email seems to tell me that this person paying the invoice is who they say they are, all this confirming, and helping prevent fraud, and increasing security... Awesome. I also took screenshots of the conversation, just because I was pretty nervous about selling the account, which is worth $800, which I sold for $800. So I sent them the information, including account name, password, email address, and security question... Once someone has the security question, the account is fully compromised.
Not even a day later on may 10, just after 9AM, the charge was disputed by the buyer. I immediately contacted paypal, very upset, but not mean or demanding. I quoted to them what was in the payment email, as I had above, and told them I had a screen shot of them in messenger, saying they were said person and verifying their email address. They wanted me to upload the screenshot, so I did. And then waited patiently.
Nothing more was heard from them til may 16, at this point in time they received a notice from the buyers bank saying that the charges were being reversed on the banks end. As soon as this happened, paypal closed the current case, which had no changes whatsoever since I uploaded the screenshots, and they opened a new case due to the banks reversing the charges. I again uploaded the screenshots on this dispute, but the case was closed the charges reversed on May 18.
Its very frustrating to me, making you feel like the transaction is legitimate and then allowing this. Then letting the case sit there festering and not doing anything about it but when the bank reverses the charges its case closed. I'll also be contacting paypal today to let them know of my anger and of this post.
I was going to start on online webhosting reseller website, but now it makes me nervous knowing no business dealing with digital goods is not protected.
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