On the topic of scams, here’s a story in case it’s useful to anyone. This happened in 2019 in the US and I meant to post about it, but when I finally found time the scammer was already banned from grailed.
I ordered a J43A from this dude and everything seemed above board, until USPS delivered the package… and it didn’t arrive. I’ll spare the details, but I ultimately figured out he’d shipped it to a different apartment building in the same zip code, and then picked it up from that apartment himself (or maybe he had a helper idk).
First I went to Grailed. These guys are beyond useless. They basically just link you to the PayPal page where you can open a dispute, and then act as cheerleaders the rest of the time. There is no way in hell they would have made me whole if PayPal fell through.
PayPal refused to refund me initially because the zip code was right, and a tracking number only shows the zip code, so as far as they knew it was delivered just fine. They said if I got proof from USPS they’d refund me. They told me I could also dispute the charge with my credit card company.
When I called USPS, they were able to verify that the shipping address was the wrong place, the one I suspected, but they can only confirm it when prompted. They can never say “this is where it was sent,” only “yes” and “no” when you make guesses, lol. I tried but I couldn’t get PayPal to phone them.
Finally after a lot of persuasion and headache, I managed to get a physical printout of the shipping label at the origin from USPS. (To be clear, they are not supposed to give you this.) I gave it to PayPal and they initially rejected it, but then I was like “what the fuck this is exactly the proof you asked for” and they were like oh okay fine.
Lessons:
I deeply suspect Grailed purchase protection is never helpful. If you read their documentation you can see they never promise to reimburse you, only “work with you and the seller to make it right.”
PayPal seems to not be interested in resolving fraud claims. By about 2/3 of the way through this process it was clear that they wanted me to open a credit card dispute, because I guess credit card companies have properly staffed fraud departments.
If you complain enough to USPS they will actually confirm shipping destinations for you.