Fraud Through Paypal Question

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Sounds fishy to me. I wound not want to accept a PayPal transfer for an item I sold through kijiji or Craigslist. It's risky enough having to do it through ebay.

Why is he in such a big hurry?

My only guess is it's either fraud or he is afraid you are going to be offered more money for it from someone else because you sold it too cheap.

Paypal will side with the Buyer unless you can prove 100% that the item that was advertised was delivered to the Buyer. The only proof of delivery that is accepted by PayPal is signed delivery confirmation VIEWABLE ONLINE from a recognized shipping company like the postal services, FedEx or UPS. Even with that you are not completely out of the woods.

I would only do this face-to-face, in a very public area with cash. If the buyer balks then you know it was fraudulent (or he didn't want it as bad as he thought he did).

Ask him to pay as a family/friend through PayPal. Then there is no fee and he cannot come back at you. He will have to trust you 100% though.

This is true, I didn't think of that. There's NO FEE for a gift payment and the buyer would be on his own, paypal doesn't guarantee anything for the buyer when paid as a gift.

The only thing to worry about is if the paypal account has been hijacked and this guy is looking for a quick conversion. You could have the money taken from your account!

I agree, don't do it.

If you have doubt then don't do it. I always go with my gut.

It's up to you of course but if a buyer wants to pay with PayPal I have no problem with it unless there is some other huge red flag. PayPal shipping rules will specify you ship with an approved service and use signature confirmation. If you do and then remove the money from your PayPal account you should be fine. Again, make sure it is cleared payment for "goods and services" and ships to the PayPal address specified.

Now if the buyer is really pushy and/or suspicious then just move along.

Thank you for all your comments. As a followup to what happened, I suggested to him that I wasn't going to do PayPal, but if he wanted to buy he could send a bank draft in the mail, and I could mail the banknote to him. (he was trusting me, supposedly, by paying first by PayPal anyway). So he responded that he had to do PayPal because it was directly linked to his bank account. I said that just because he had it linked to PayPal didn't mean he HAS to use paypal, there were lots of great ways to scam through PayPal, and he could still send a bank draft by mail and in a few days it would be all taken care of.

I didn't hear from him again after that.

A very hearty thank-you to everyone for your help - no scam happened here this time. :)