Using PayPal's New Holding Policy Seems Hard To Scam

[DasFox]

PayPal last year just introduced a new policy, called the 'PayPal Holding Policy'.

PayPal told that they will hold the money you are sending and not send it to the party until you've received and inspected, so if that is the case, then I don't see how someone is going to scam you if you use PayPal, what do you think?

The reason I'm asking about all this is that I've found some companies selling Apple Macbooks at TradeKey;

http://www.tradekey.com/index.html?a...mber=&country=

While I know that many of these are probably scams, the thing is one company sent me the serial numbers of the Macbook laptops and prices and they were for 1-3 year old laptops.

These were the prices on those laptops;

Macbook 13 inch 360USD each pcs,
Macbook 15 inch 410USD each pcs,
17 inch 490USD each pcs,

I've checked online and a macbook that is 2-3 years old might only be close to these prices, while they seem a bit low, I don't think they are really ridiculous, given they are a few years old...

So could there be also be legitmate vendors in China that have older back stock they purchased somewhere and have a huge bulk inventory, where you might see prices like this on 2-3 year old back stock?

So how is someone going to scam us if PayPal is going to hold the money until the merchandise is inspected? This seems like it's going to be really hard...


THANKS

[DasFox]

Ahh I thought I could edit the post...

Here's the 13" serial;

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009)
Serial Number: W89265EF66E

So to me $360 on a 3 year old Macbook is not that absurd...

AHHH but here we go, LOL...


http://www.stolenlostfound.org/stole...y-details-5106

And here is another serial number given to me;

http://www.stolenlostfound.org/stole...y-details-3884

Looks like some blackmarket sells going on...

[Dodobird]

DasFox,

I see you've managed to answer your own question, at least in part.

But you still need to keep in mind that avoiding scams consists of conducting your own due diligence, as well as using common sense and not expecting others to take responsibility for your actions. Needless to say, Paypal's new policy would never apply on stolen goods and even if not, scammers spend their days learning new ways around such barriers. Your golden rule of thumb should always be; "when it sounds or looks too good to be true, it usually is".

Once you claim 'not good' - then what? You have to return the item by a method that has online tracking. If it's a notebook that can cost YOU easily $100 or more.

And let's say you bought a fake Dre headphone - since it's from China it's obviously fake, sure. But still, how will you prove it?

And then what... the seller can claim 'that's not what we send!', or 'you broke it'. Remember, you deal with dishonest people to start with.

But in general I feel that will add a little bit of safety.

But keep in mind that the large majority of Chinese scammers don't accept Paypal.