[paulcole]

Sounds like the author doesn't know how to detect fraud. Shop.com for $500 is insane and he knew it. He thought he was free-rolling. Either he'd take advantage of someone selling a domain at well below market or he'd be covered by PayPal's fraud protection.

Lesson learned for him, I guess.

[ceejayoz]

"You should have known better" is not fraud protection. PayPal is entirely in the wrong here.

[zamalek]

> PayPal is entirely in the wrong here.

Exactly, the only way to find out if PayPal is on the ball is to make a mistake, I can't understand why there are so many comments harping on about this blatantly obvious point.

Otherwise what would the author (or any journalist) do? Fake a fraudulent sale (which would still be fraud)? Or intentionally find a fraudulent seller? "Hey PayPal, I purposefully went and found a fraudulent sale, can I have my money back?"

[notahacker]

This isn't journalism though. This is someone buying something they think is almost certainly a scam with the assumption that either PayPal will underwrite the loss or they'll be a millionaire. What should the author have done? Not buy it, obviously.

Frankly, given that a thorough fraud investigation would have revealed two separate attempts to gauge eBay/PayPal's refund policy followed by the purchase of an asset, followed by the claim, he's lucky he hasn't been accused of being complicit in the scam. A more on-the-ball protection team certainly would have raised that possibility and escalated it.

[vitd]

"with the assumption that either PayPal will underwrite the loss"

No. He called and spoke to both eBay (who said they would not) and to PayPal and they assured him they would underwrite it. Per his article:

"The very helpful gentleman I spoke to informed me that ever since the eBay/Paypal split recently, domains are actually covered by their buyer protection now!" (Emphasis in the original)

[notahacker]

They did not assure him they would underwrite the specific loss, they merely pointed out that domains were covered by a buyer protection policy which allowed Paypal to make a decision at their discretion.

Frankly, I can't recall ever seeing any complainant more deserving of being on the wrong side of Paypal's discretion than this one.

[zamalek]

> he's lucky he hasn't been accused of being complicit in the scam.

Which means that PayPal still isn't doing their job correctly.

[j_s]

"Too good to be true" is pretty good fraud protection. Too bad it requires self-enforcement.

[paulcole]

Unless the person actually does know better, which is the case here.

[ceejayoz]

That's a very blurry line to enforce and would render a fraud protection agreement effectively useless. I've met plenty of folks who wouldn't know better in this situation - do you take a quiz on domain valuations before getting your refund or something?