r/Switzerland • u/FlippinTurd21 • 1d ago
How can I get my money back.
I went onto facebook market to see if anyone had any old nintendo switch consoles they were selling and stumbled upon a deal for 125.- I messaged the person and we came to an agreement that Id pay 125.- plus the shipping cost of 10.- Now my situation is now I had already paid and expected the parcel but when I asked about it she told me that shipping all of a sudden costs an extra 60.- and Id need to pay for that too if I wanted it. I told her that there would be no way I would be paying for that as that 60.- extra came out of nowhere and just doesnt make any sense why it would cost 60.- I then asked her for a refund and she has only responded that I can pay 50.- instead of the full 60.- and I told her that I just wanted my money back since she has been really hard to deal with with hours of no response and ever since she hasnt responded at all. Is there any way I can get my money back at all? I have all screenshots of the conversation we had.
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u/PtrcSlv 1d ago
Facebook market is the worst. Mostly sellers are scammers. Be careful, never trust if you can't pick up things in person.
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u/justamust Aargau 6h ago
Or at least ask if you could pick it up since you are close by, if they insist on shipping because it is more convenient ore something, you'll know it is a scam. Also very good prices for items that are easy to sell like iphones or ps5 or stuff like that are mostly dead giveaways.
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u/ZestyclosePension798 13h ago edited 12h ago
First rule of buying on Facebook, Anibis or any other site: never pay in advance, and pick up the goods at the seller's house
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u/Ok-Environment8730 1d ago edited 1d ago
You don’t
second hands shop like tutti Ricardo and especially Facebook are not covered neither by banks and insurances. It’s the buyer responsibility
The only time you are covered is if the seller accept payment via PayPal (goods and services if it ask to pay under friends and family is a scam)
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u/LBG-13Sudowoodo Zug 15h ago
Ricardo also provides the seller's details so you can draft the formal payment request, which is then evidence once you take the legal route to get your money back.
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u/Salty-History3316 15h ago
Which however is useless if the account was hacked or registered under false name (there's a scam where hackers offer a job to sell stuff on Ricardo and they will deal with shipping for you). You can get your money back if you use Moneyguard and don't receive the item, there's also a buyers protection for certain cases.
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u/LBG-13Sudowoodo Zug 15h ago
Then again, one would try to avoid apeing into a deal that's too good to be true on a throwaway account, but that's neither here nor there.
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u/Salty-History3316 14h ago
That would be ideal, yes, but there's posts about this almost daily in the swiss subreddits, it just keeps happening.
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u/Ok-Environment8730 14h ago
125 for the switch given the fact it’s a technology pieces especially a console which lose tons of value and the upcoming switch 2 is not unreasonable too good to be true deal
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u/dmmeyourworries 12h ago
Stolen accounts still have the banking details of the original owner usually. They’ll ask for TWINT payment only and that’s your red flag for noping out and reporting the account (and informing the owner of the account they’ve been hacked)
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u/Salty-History3316 12h ago
If the original account owner has no banking details entered, then the hacker can just add their own. It sucks and they should just enforce that everyone adds their iban and be done with that.
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u/Brilliant_Evidence43 Genève 14h ago
Agreed! Correct me if I’m wrong here, but you need to verify your account physically with a letter in the mail that has a code. (At least that was my experience) On top of that some buys have this twint feature (forgot the name) where Ricardo holds the money in “escrow” until the buyer confirms satisfactory delivery.
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u/LBG-13Sudowoodo Zug 14h ago
Afaik, yes, there's some degree of identity verification, and there's the possibility to cancel orders. Fraud goes both ways...
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u/Ok-Environment8730 14h ago
There are websites for temporary e mails phone numbers and everything you want. It’s not difficult to fake the identity on reselling platforms
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u/sw1ss_dude 10h ago
It's probably not worth the effort though for the scammers a new address check everytime they scam somebody. That is why Ricardo is safer than anything else. The other being seller rating
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u/Salamandro Bünzli 22h ago
In Ricardo you have at least the rating system for buyers and sellers, and I find it unlikely that someone with 100% positive reviews suddenly starts scamming people for 100.-
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u/uknwnsrv 20h ago
got scammed by a seller having 98% positive reviews on Ricardo, apparently they hacked into that account. don‘t rely on reviews only.
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u/dry_yer_eyes Aargau 14h ago
That can definitely happen. An original, honest, account with good reviews can be taken over by a scammer.
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u/beeftony Zürich 15h ago
Ricardo does have buyers protection, but only in certain circumstances.
I also never really saw scamming attenpts on Ricardo.
Tutti is on another level though lol
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u/Low_Advantage6322 7h ago
Incorrect. Got scammed like this and since my TWINT was hooked up to my platinum credit card which insures cases like this, the amount was refunded by the credit card issuer. 😊 Just had to prove by sharing the conversations with them and the police report.
P.S.: The Zurich cantonal police caught the Italian national who did the scam en-mass and contacted us to provide testimonies for the court proceedings as well.
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u/Ok-Environment8730 7h ago
Most people don’t have this privileges of platinum premium weird cards and similar
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u/Eskapismus 17h ago
Why is everyone so god damn complacent here? Why is OP getting downvoted? I know everyone is being a smartass and OP should have known better but Switzerland is a place where people should be able to trust each other.
OP and everyone who gets scammed should raise hell on the scammers (especially if the scammers live in Switzerland). That includes Betreibung, police and everything that is legally possible to make scamming not profitable to the scammers.
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u/Station3303 14h ago
The point is, these scammers don't actually live in Switzerland. Facebook and other online places are full of scammers from all over the world. Facebook does not care at all. You can send them proof that a profile is scam, they will literally reply, we don't care. I've done it. I've also reported scams to the police, they have a special division for online fraud. And they, too, won't do anything. It's too much. If you go to the local police, you'll only be wasting everybody's time. Take it as a learning experience and move on - never pay in advance in an online deal with a stranger.
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u/dmmeyourworries 12h ago
The internet isn’t Switzerland.
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u/Eskapismus 10h ago
Then send an email to the recipient bank and inform them that you have a suspicion that they are providing assistance to money laundering to one of their clients. If they are in a developed country they are forced to investigate/lock the account
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u/pbuilder 4h ago
I was scammed by a person with a Swiss bank account, wrote to bank - got canned response that they don’t disclose the details of their clients (I’ve never asked) and I should go to police (they, obviously, did nothing).
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u/Eskapismus 3h ago
It’s one thing if you say “one of your clients might have done something illegal” but if you say “I am accusing you as a bank of assisting someone in committing a crime/assisting in money laundering” they should act very differently.
I’m actually toying with the idea of getting myself scammed on purpose just to see what the reaction of a bank would be if I accuse thrm of assisting in money laundering
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u/SellSideShort 14h ago
Always check the FB profiles age, if it says it was created in 2024, it’s likely a scam.
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u/bobdung Vaud 1d ago
Yeah good luck .. It's a turd indeed but nobody can / will help .. It's you and the seller, good luck ..
Best case they are trying it on and you might get something back but more likely there never was a switch and you sucker paid 125.- already so are seen as daft enough to pay another 60.-
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u/Nerkeilenemon 1d ago
When it seems too beautiful to be real (as "it's a real good deal!"), it's a scam most of the time.
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u/Optimal_Inspection83 1d ago
Buying second hand should always be in person, where you directly receive the item you're purchasing. There is just no guarantee otherwise
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u/cAtloVeR9998 Zug 1d ago
You’d have to sue them for something to happen. Thos assumes you know their real Swiss identity.
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u/Stranghold 23h ago
marketplace is full of fake nintendo switch to be sold . here a hints to see the legit sellers : don't buy from account that are less than 10 years old .
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u/Immanuel771 1d ago
Yeah you walked in the Scam Trap, likely the “Fake Shipping” one. There’s nothing you can likely do, to get your money back but next time you might see something suspicious it’s better if you ask some of your friends about that, which might have seen it before.
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u/Hellie_LF 17h ago
Small instance court is an option but I wouldn’t say that it’s worth it for CHF125 and authorities will most likely not care for this kind of amount. People have lost tens of thousands of francs and it took years to get some of the money back and a LOT of hassle.
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u/_JohnWisdom Ticino 15h ago
it honestly depends mainly on how you paid. Twint or bank transfer? You have a high chance on getting the money back since the number or bank account is tied to a physical person in switzerland. If this person is working as a mule, reporting it could save many others too. If you used paypal or other payment services, you have 0 chance of getting back your money but reporting is always important here too, even if you’ll never get your money back.
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u/tight_shoe_778 11h ago
A lots of comments here are saying you don’t, but how did you pay for it? Was it with Revolut? Was it with crypto? Or was it via normal bank transfer?
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u/FlippinTurd21 8h ago
I did it using twint shouldve probably added that info.
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u/tight_shoe_778 6h ago
U can always ask twint for your money back and say that u sent it to the wrong number
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u/Internal_Leke Switzerland 6h ago
Important: Transactions that have already been completed cannot be canceled. If the transaction has already been completed, your only option is to contact the person or merchant that received the payment and request a refund.
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u/fabkosta 8h ago
Report to police, continue all the way to sue them. I was victim of almost same fraud on tutti, and the scammer literally is in prison now.
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u/Dense_Unit420 7h ago
You got scammed, money is lost. Scammers will try to squeeze every rappen out of you.
Police report will help the statistics, but you still wont get your money back.
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u/These-Doubt-5413 5h ago
You should always ask for an address and phone number when buying used goods, unfortunately in this case you can’t do much. Only thing you can try to do is call Protekta, but without an address they can hardly do something. Report the account to Facebook to prevent her from scamming other people.
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u/Ornery_Art_4437 5h ago
Same thing happened to me earlier this year. 'She' said she lived in Lucerne but when I told her that I lived 30 minutes away she suddenly lived in Valais! I agreed to transfer half the money. She sent a false DHL confirmation of having sent the package. Totally my fault for being scammed so easily .I called the police and was told to fill out forms etc on an 'E' crimes site. I didn't bother.
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u/Gokudomatic 5h ago
If it's a scam, then that person will disappear the very instant they see that they can't get any more money from you. You can always try to report to the police, and I think you should do it, but since you went on a transaction with someone you know nothing about and who can disappear in an instant, the police can't do anything for you.
The only thing you should not do is to send more money. Anything you give them will be lost.
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u/mpr-5 1h ago
My wife got scammed recently for around CHF150. Classic story, reported it to police, not expecting any positive outcome and that’s ok.
The part I don’t get is how come that in 2024 in Switzerland recipient bank is not able to do anything. Basically their response was we cannot confirm nor deny that the person with that IBAN exists as our client. The feeling was they don’t care and won’t even look into it.
Seems that having some kind of cyber insurance would be the safest bet.
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u/hometrails 1d ago
is there any cover if you use twint? any system to return the payment?
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u/Salty-History3316 15h ago
No, you authorize the payment through Twint, they won't help you to get it back afterwards. If it's gone, it's gone.
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u/sandorfule 9h ago
Never EVER pay upfront especially on FB Marketplace. The rule is: MEET IN PERSON and PAY IN CASH. I hope you can get your money back, but id say: it costed you 125 + 10 to learn the hard way.
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u/Slendy_Milky + 23h ago
Never trust anyone outside of Ricardo to send something to you (even on Ricardo but it’s less likely with reputable seller). But yeah, marketplace is known for all these scammers that will first steal identities of people to use them on marketplace.
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u/TotalWarspammer 17h ago
Ebay is also fine, better than Ricardo even, as long as you pay within the official payment systems.
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u/dr_deeep 23h ago
No chance to do anything. You can report it to the police but very unlikely they can figure out the person behind it. Facebook marketplace is just connecting two individuals for doing a business, there is nobody covering anything on any side. I would avoid Facebook marketplace or just agree on cash at pickup. The pay in advance fraud is getting more and more over there…
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u/R3stl3SSW4rr1or Bern 1d ago
Go to the police and report it. But there is no chance for you to get your money back. Not even think about getting a Nintendo Switch. What happened to you is called pay in advance fraud