Total Blank

It's not that I don't have anything to post about.... I'd just rather post about not having anything to post about.

So I have this big ass headache with PayPal going on. Basically what happened is that I sold my tv on ebay... and someone paid for it with "buy it now" only a few hours after I posted the auction. He then messaged me and stated the TV was for a birthday and if I could overnight it to him. I was just so happy that I sold the tv (that's a whole other blog post) that I really didn't think things through at first. I told the guy that overnighting something like a big-ass plasma tv was expensive, but I gave him a quote anyway. This tv I was selling was just discontinued and the newer model is not as desirable as the older model I was selling (they are going on ebay for a premium as we speak).

So the guy sends the additional amount and I ship the tv on a Saturday afternoon via FedEx. I then message him with his tracking info and that's that... (or so I thought).

Like I do with all money in PayPal, I transferred all of the money out of PayPal into my checking account. If you read PayPal's TOS you will see that basically they can freeze your account at any moment for nearly any reason they deem reasonable and hold it for up to 180 days. For this reason and this reason alone I never kept a large balance in my paypal account.

So I talk with a friend of mine the next morning who happens to be doing a lot of sales through ebay and paypal. He tells me of this scam he heard about while shipping items at the post office, a scam involving ebay, paypal and the buy basically reversing the charges then keeping the item. I tell him this isn't happening to me... well more like telling myself this and keeping myself positive about it.

That night the more I thought about it the more this transaction fit the profile. Guy with zero feedback buys big ticket item with "buy it now". Guy asks for it to be overnighted (to avoid charge reversal before he has the item) and also asks for item to be held at the FedEx facility instead of being delivered to the address attached to the credit card. It all made sense and I looked online, found out that paypal phone help was available 7 days a week so I gave them a call.

I asked them that I suspected a fraudulent purchase of my item I sold on ebay and asked if I should contact FedEx and have them hold the item until I figure this out. I was then put on hold by PayPal and after about 5 mins the lady came back on the line and told me not to do anything. To let the transaction complete as I didn't have any proof of any foul play (besides my instinct and common sense). She also tells me not to worry and that I am protected 100%. I say ok, and thank you and hope that I'm wrong.

3 days later I get an email from PayPal saying there was a credit reversal and that my account is frozen until I take care of my negative balance. I immediately get on the phone with paypal to see what the next course of action should be. The guy tells me that there is an investigation starting and I will get an email with a few days outlining the steps in the dispute process. I also tell this guy I called earlier in the week before the item was delivered and another PayPal agent told me to let the transaction complete. And that if in any way PayPal expected me to be on the hook for this after telling me I was 100% covered that they were sorely mistaken. I'm as polite as I can be for being raging mad and we end our call.

Luckily I had all of my money in the bank before the chargeback took place. PayPal cannot just dip into your bank account to retrieve the funds, and even if they did break the law and do that you can dispute the charges with your bank - get the money back and block PayPal from any further transaction attempts.

I uploaded all of my receipts, airbill, all correspondence with the "buyer" and all proof that I am in the right and as much a victim as the guy who's credit card was stolen. While they told me I was 100% protected it turns out that she was shoveling a lot of crap. The seller in most cases of a chargeback is not covered by any guarantee... all it takes is a asshat buyer to know how to use the system to get a free item AND sock the seller with losing both the item and the money for the item. Gladly I was not THAT naive to think I was actually protected and left my money in there. I have found a great resource on what to do in my situation called paypalsucks.com. Their forums are filled with people in my same situation and their stories and how they went about getting their money back and stopping the collection calls/harrasment.

It turns out what I do is NOTHING. I have my money... PayPal is the one out of money here since techincally they charged the stolen credit card, not me. PayPal touts their advanced "fraud detection" but that's such a joke. If your protections are so advanced how did you let this happen? What is the purpopse of even using PayPal then?

If you use PayPal alot please read around on this website to educate yourself on what PayPal says it can do with your account in their Terms Of Service you are forced to agree with just to have an account with them. paypalsucks.com has a great page where they take the whole TOS and break it down and explain what it means.

PayPal is not a bank or financial instiution and even if they take me to collections it cannot impact my credit report since they do not have my social security number. I'm just glad I was looking out for myself and have all my bases covered. And most importantly, PayPal dosen't have a penny from me!

http://www.paypalsucks.com/forums/

Circuit Chitty

So I popped into Circuit City's "Liquidation" Sale the other day just to see what the deals are like. People were buying stuff left and right to my amazement.... I guess there are people out there... a LOT of people who don't know about the internet. Prices are way lower on the exact same television sets at numerous online websites. (namely newegg.com, amazon.com, 6ave.com, buy.com, woot.com, etc....)

As I walked out of the store with a smirk on my face someone asked me if I needed any help. I said "no, I'll be back when your prices aren't so high" and walked out.

Circuit City's "liquidation" sale is a JOKE. 15% off MSRP? (seriously? nobody sells tv's even close to their MSRP) LOL

I guess I should feel bad for people who think they are getting a great deal.... but I don't.

Smelly Used Car Salesman

Yeah, I'll get to why this is titled what it is in a minute. Today is Halloween, and we are taking the kiddos to our friend's house to walk around their neighborhood. We had planned going our our new neighborhood, but we'll do that next year. Only problem is we bought a lot of candy.. hopefully the kids are still out in our neighborhood after 8:30pm. I have been attacking the Sour Patch Kids, damn good! Holden is a Sheep, Larry is a monkey, Pearl is a Princess, & Delilah is a lion (I'll put up pictures tomorrow, honest).

I bought a 22" wide screen LCD for the computah yesterday at lunchtime, less than 24 hours later and the damn thing is already out for delivery according to UPS tracking... talk about a quick turnaround. It's great to have the best online computer parts warehouse only 3 hours away. Now it will be a little less painful when I'm working with long video-editing time lines in Adobe Premiere & After Effects.

Finally got my business registered with the State of Maryland and was able to deposit all these checks I had that I've been carrying around with me for the past 4 months because they were written out to the "company" (that didn't "officially" exist yet). I can't think of anything worse than trying to deal with any State or Federal government agency... such a pain.

So yeah, anyway... we went to look at some mini-vans (welcome to nearing middle age Daddom & Soccer Momness). We look at nearly every van they had on the lot, nobody asking if we need help or bugging us about anything, it was great. We find a couple that are really nice for pretty decent prices. We are not planning on getting one too soon, but we saw what we could afford and we were a little excited about getting one in the next year or two. Before we could get by the front door the oldest, smokyest old used car salesman snags us. Asks us if we want to get one and take a test drive. I'm figured why not, we are already here... maybe we could get one sooner than we think if the price is right and they treat us fair on our trade (har!). We check one out and I take it for a test drive, nice van.. good shape, low miles. I wanted to make sure it wasn't owned by a smoker... but that was impossible cause the Used Car Salesman was a chain smoker and the car filled with his smoke when he lit one up right next to me and my family.

Right about then is when we were pretty much not going to buy from this guy. Common sense would dictate that you do not smoke around a young family with 4 children under the age of 3 and you definitely don't get the smoke in a car they are potentially gonna buy.

To cut out the middle and go to the end. We let them work up an appraisal of our Expedition. The guy tries to get us to put pen to paper before telling us what our trade is and before we haggle on price. Maria asks him what the trade-in value of our truck is... we are floored. We basically just get up and walk out... no need to haggle here... it's late on a weeknight and we didn't really even want to go through all this in the first place.

Moral of the story is don't smoke if you work in sales and don't even bother trying to help us if you wanna take advantage of people like that.