Paid with BidPay, doubt I'm getting items, what can I do?

[goatdan]

Hey everyone,

I won two auctions on eBay a while back that were going to go into the GOAT Store inventory from a seller that had 850 feedback and almost all positive. They said they only accepted Money Orders and Bidpay. After a little while, I sent a BidPay payment to the seller.

That was over a month ago. Since then, I haven't been able to contact the seller and eBay shows them as "no longer an eBay member."

I've had to cancel payments on things before, but I have never had to do this with BidPay. I emailed them yesterday at about noon, and I still haven't heard back from them. Has anyone dealt with BidPay before and how you can file a claim? In reading through eBay's policy, I should just go to the credit card and tell them.

I'm rather worried because it has been over a month with no contact (and I've tried) and the items were a bunch of money.

Thanks in advance for any tips!

[Funk Buddy]

So you paid with a credit card right? If so dispute it with the CC company, if not I don't think there is much you can do.

[Vroomfunkel]

Ditto - if you used your credit card to fund the Bidpay payment, you should be able to recover it via them. Amost all credit card companies give you protection against not receiving goods that you pay for with them - as long as you can show that you didn't act recklessly.

As the seller had high, good feedback you should be in good standing on this count.

If you didn't fund the payment with a credit card, you should be able to recoved some money from Ebay's protection scheme - although they will make you jump through a score of hoops to get it. I don't know what the level is in the US, but in the UK it is up to £120 ($220), with an excess of £15 ($28). So I would be able to get up to a maximum of £105 back if I did not receive goods from a transaction.

Vroomfunkel

[goatdan]

I did pay with a credit card, although I think that BidPay could fight it to say that the money order did, in fact happen and get sent. On the other hand, I have now been waiting for over 36 hours for BidPay to reply to my email, and considering the amount of transactions they handle, they should have had someone email me back by now. If I don't hear by them by tomorrow, I'm going to call the credit card company to see what they think that I should do.

[mcgrail0007@netzero.net]

I had a problem last year with someone that I paid using Bidpay. I contacted my credit card company and they gave me the phone number to Bidpay. The seller did not cash my money order and Bidpay after 30 days agreed to refund my money - which they did. The girl that I spoke to at Bidpay told me that people did chargebacks all of the time against money orders that they had processed. This might be part of the reason why Bidpay no longer accepts Mastercard and why payingfast.com is no longer in business.

Depending on how much you paid you might be able to file a claim through eBay (I am not sure if that is the case though since you used Bidpay). You can also contact the local law enforcement where the seller lives, file a complaint with the FBI Internet fraud division, and file a mail fraud complaint.

Good luck!