Seller advice...

[thezelgoddess]

(comes out of the woodwork to post on this topic)

I got burned this way years ago when first starting to sell on Ebay. Paypal will NOT protect you if you accept a payment from a person who is not the buyer. The buyer could be using someone else's Paypal account fraudulently, which means when the person who owns the account files for a chargeback, Paypal will protect THEM and take the money right out of your account. You will have shipped the item(s) and have no way to get them back, and you will have no recourse through Paypal to recover your money.

A 0 feedback international bidder asking to pay with an account that is not theirs is the HEIGHT of sketchiness and you should not agree to it.

Izobel
the Zelgoddess

[Golden Boy]

I would agree.

I would be more inclined to tell the person that you will wait a few days till they get their own paypal account straightened out and that you will not except payment from their "friends" account. If they can't produce a valid paypal , have them send an IPMO via trackable mail.
What ever you do , don't send it till payment has been made & cashed.

Hmm, I guess I should have followed my gut and canceled these bids when I had a chance.

Nonetheless, this has turned out to be quite a sticky mess.

So, even if I got a legit paypal address with confirmed mailing address, I still wouldn't be sure it was his account. Besides, Paypal wouldn't cover me even if it was his account.

As for an IPMO, does the French post office issue something like that and is it something the USPS or a US bank would accept?

I'm more in favor of cash or maybe Western Union.

Lastly, after having thought about this for the past two days, I'd be willing to just "cancel" the transaction, take the negative feedback and swallow the final value fees.

Now you might ask yourself (and I have), why not just go through with the transaction. Well, there's no way in heck, I'm going to lose money and the cels in this situation with so little protection.

I haven't sent an invoice and I probably won't since that offers a Paypal option which is something I probably want to avoid.

I appreciate the info everyone has provided. Any more thoughts would be helpful. Thanks!