I lost £1,000 coin in eBay scam

I sold a 1974 Krugerrand gold coin on eBay and received payment for £1,020 via PayPal.

Shortly after that I received a message from the buyer’s official eBay account saying they had changed their address and could I send the coin to the new one in Hackney, London, instead of the original address inNottingham.

I sent the recorded delivery package to this new address and, according to Royal Mail tracking, it arrived the next day at the Hackney address.

Two days later I received an email from PayPal stating that my buyer said his account had been hacked and it was an unauthorised payment.

Once I explained that there had been a change of address to PayPal it promptly refunded my money back to him from my account. So I have lost the money and the gold coin.

EBay has now refunded its commission to me but I am still out of pocket.

Even though I received the money and was told about the change of address from an official eBay account, it is me who loses. PS, LONDON

Many readers complain that the financial institutions that are keen to take their money are less willing to answer legitimate questions.

I spoke at first to eBay, which said that, as PayPal had issued the refund, it was PayPal I should approach.

PayPal had retrieved the money for the buyer whose account had been sabotaged by the fraudster. It was the fraudster, of course, who had sent the email about the change of address.

Meanwhile eBay did mention that it had helped the genuine buyer reset his password and secure his account.

PayPal said: “Unfortunately Mr S appears to have fallen victim to a scam.

“Our ‘seller protection’ policy can cover the cost of an unauthorised payment if the seller sends the sold item to the buyer’s registered delivery address.

“Mr S sent the item to a different address, provided by the scammer, which meant we could not cover his loss with seller protection.”

It stressed that anyone should be on guard if a buyer changes the address to which an item should be sent so that it does not match the one provided by PayPal.

Contact PayPal customer support if there are any concerns regarding a sale before dispatching an item.

However, I feel that, given the circumstances, someone would have had to be very astute to realise that something was wrong in this case.

Anyway, my involvement led to PayPal issuing you with a full refund of the £1,020 as a gesture of goodwill.

EBay said that, once a case had been made to PayPal, as had happened in this instance at the buyer’s instigation, it would not open one on eBay.