Pay Pal Question

[Dan]

I have paid with a Pay Pal account before, but never had someone pay me that way. My son is selling a truck, and the guy wants to pay for it through Pay Pal because he's out of town and wants to get the truck. If my son gets paid through Pay Pal how long before he can get the money out to be sure it's a legit deal? My son is in Texas and the guy claims he works an oil rig and has to pay that way.

[Bender]

Your son's account will have to be verified to receive payments. After that I think it is pretty quick. Once the funds arrive you can transfer to your bank. I don't know if there is any way that they can take it back after you transfer it or not. That might be something to check into. Plus I would think the fees of PayPal would be pretty high. I like PayPal for small internet transactions but for something like that can't he bring cash when he comes to get it?

[Mike S.]

The money is there as soon as the person sends it.  You get an email verification from PayPal when the transaction is clear.  Then, you transfer the money wherever you want it to go.  Done deal.  I think the only time you pay fees to Pay Pal is when you use them to pay your bills.

[Dan]

Thanks guys. My son is old enough to know better, but he's a young guy out on his own and away from home. He gets an email saying that this guy wants to buy his truck 1999 Dodge 4X4 pickup for 6K. The guy claims he is a maritime engineer and wants the truck but is out to sea. He said he'd pay him using Pay Pal and would have someone pick up the truck. Just seems a little fishy that this guy would pay 6K for a truck he hasn't seen or driven. 

[Bender]

It may be O.K., and you can call me old school, but for something that expensive cash is king.

If he really is going to do the PayPal transfer then I would at least talk to the guy on the phone and try to get a feeling if he is real. On another fishing board a guy tried to buy a Jeep and they would only accept PayPal, turned out to be a scam.

[djkimmel]

Dan, I'm very concerned this may be a scam. I have never tried something this large directly through Paypal so I'm not absolutely sure if it can be done through a personal account? This person would have to be a verified US member to send this amount of money. $10,000 is the limit for a verified member for a single transaction. $4,000 is the limit for a US non-member.

The fee will also be very large for this transaction. Paypal will take over 3% of the payment to your son from the payment if the guy is transferring from his bank or Paypal account so take that into consideration. I would expect that will be the case since I doubt this can be paid using credit were the payer can designate the fee be charged to himself. You should ask how he intends to pay this - from a bank/paypal account - your should add about 3.5% to cover the fee. If somehow, this is a credit card or Paypal credit process (assuming legitimate) make sure the buyer knows to designate the fee be charged to himself.

All the person should need is your son's email address to make a payment so if he asks for anything else... scam alert. Especially if suddenly a foreign bank or country shows up in the picture.

If your son is not verified on Paypal this payment will be a problem due to limits on how much you can withdraw from your Paypal account per month. I think it used to be $500 per month for unverified but I don't recall, been a while. Not sure about person, but I believe there is no limit if your son is a verified US member of Paypal.

I'm not sure how this would be a scam, but there are so many Internet car and boat scams - my concern is if there is a chargeback or failure, when you use Paypal as a member to receive a payment, Paypal can attempt to get it back from your bank account automatically even after you've withdrawn the money. How or if this might happen depends on exactly how this person is going to pay. Often, someone makes a false or bad payment, and then someone picks up the boat or vehicle. It's gone, then the payment fails and you've lost. The most common one though is where they person sends an overpayment and then asks you to refund the difference. Refuse any payment that is not the exact amount you've agreed on.

See this link: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Marketing_CommandDriven/securitycenter/sell/TipsForSellers-outside

Frankly, anytime I'm doing a payment over the Internet for a large amount of money, I've paid the expense to use a well known escrow company to collect and guaranty the money, and then confirm the property is transferred. Everyone is protected that way. Some buyers don't like that but too bad. I've found that when someone has approached me for a large purchase (like a valuable domain), if the are fraudulent they immediately vanish when I tell them I will ONLY do the purchase through an escrow service of my choosing.

The scammers are becoming much more sophisticated. If your son wishes to go through this purchase through Paypal, I suggest he contacts Paypal and talks to them about this type of transaction to find out his risk and possible options. I wonder if he could get the buyer's Paypal user email and ask them if the buyer is a verified member also? Your son could also ask how much the fee will be for this amount. Good luck and be careful.as

[Dan]

Wow, thanks Dan, and thanks for the phone call. You went above and beyond the call of duty. I really appreciate the info from everyone. Thanks again. Now all my son has to do is take the advice. Not always a given.

[LGMOUTH]

DONT DO IT. I got the exact same email a couple of weeks ago and I mean exact on a response to my boat ad. It is a scam. DONT DO IT.

[Skulley]

Paypal got hacked last May and I got over 7000 dollars worth of charges to my account.  It was as bad as getting your identity stolen if not worse.  Since I got that all straightened out I quit Paypal.  They blamed the whole thing on my end and two days later I read in the local newspaper how their site got hacked and the hackers got away with all kinds of money.  I hope since then they got more secure. 


BD             

[djkimmel]

I do everything I can to be careful and safe with my accounts and this web site. It requires constant diligence. Because the scammers and spammers never rest. Until someone thinks of a way to make them all go away... that's just the way it is.

I was talking to Dan and he mentioned the number one rule that if everyone followed all the time, 95% of the scammers would stop making money - if it sounds too good to be true, it (probably) is.

The scammers are mostly dumb as rocks, but devious in a way that seems smart at times. There is an element though that is getting increasingly sophisticated.

Here's the first rule I follow ALL the time when I receive email from anyone no matter how sure I am about the authenticity of the email:
DON'T CLICK ON ANY LINKS IN THE EMAIL!

The visible link can say anything, but it is the code underneath that will get you in trouble. You can always open a new window and type the visible link by hand, BUT if it looks like it is not the main domain of the legitimate site, don't type it (or copy and paste it)!!

Code Select Expand

www.paypal.com/otherstuff?dosomethingokay
is probably okay because the domain is paypal.com right before the first forward slash.

Code Select Expand

www.paypal.bd.com/otherstuff?dosomethingbad
would be a no-no because it will actually take you to a web site
bd.com not paypal.com because bd.com is the domain (right before the first forward slash). A bad, bad person just put the word paypal in as a subdomain to confuse people. A subdomain is any word left of a period in front of the main domain and TLD (.com is a generic TLD - top level domain). www is actually a subdomain that most persons use to signify the worldwide web.

Definitely don't click on a link or even type one in if it has an IP address instead of a domain word. 99.99999999% of those are bad, bad, bad. Something like:

Code Select Expand

www.71.238.249.141/paypal.com/verybadthing?dontclick

I guaranty you will regret clicking on one like that most of the time. There are very limited, special uses for that type of addressing that most regular web users won't be involved in. Though you will get some legitimate links from legitimate sources sometimes that are really long with a lot of letters and numbers, this is also how bad persons try to trick you too with a bunch of slashes and even code since coded characters can be used that actually spell out a different word or command. Just look for the first forward slash from the left and see what is just to the left of that, but when in doubt AT ALL:

You can usually forward it to the company you think it is from and ask them if it is legitimate before trying anything in it. Many large sites have a 'spoof' email address like spoof @ paypal.com for this purpose. This web site sends out a number of automated messages too, sometimes with long addresses. If you aren't sure, or you are having trouble with it, just forward it to 'support at greatlakesbass dot com' and I'll let you know if it is okay or not.