I had a similar problem with buying an item on Swappa - the very same “seller found a tracking number going to my town” and gave that to PayPal as proof of shipment. It happened oddly fast, and the ship-from location didn’t match the seller’s.
I think this takes advantage of recent-ish changes to shipping emails and tracking numbers where they don’t show the full destination address, presumably for privacy. Yay unintended consequences :/
In my case it worked out ok, just took a while. After some back and forth with the seller and then going radio-silent, I told Swappa, they canceled the sale and banned the seller almost immediately, and then I had to file a dispute with PayPal where they held my money for a full 30 days before handing it back.
I had a package. FedEx fucked up and delivered it back to the merchant instead of me. It clearly shows this on the tracking. I never got the package. My bank (Square) refused the chargeback as the package had technically been "delivered" even though it wasn't delivered to me.
This is a common scam on platforms like eBay, and it seems like Paypal's policies in particular make it very hard to get your money back.
Tracking numbers can't be considered anything but public information, considering both the ease of scraping and all the 3rd party sites to enter them on for tracking.
I helped my father with an issue where a seller (not on eBay) sent a PayPal tracking number for the same town as proof of shipment.
Oddly enough, they sent a tracking number for a package that I had seen that morning at my day job... I explained that to PayPal and we got our money back.
I think this takes advantage of recent-ish changes to shipping emails and tracking numbers where they don’t show the full destination address, presumably for privacy. Yay unintended consequences :/
In my case it worked out ok, just took a while. After some back and forth with the seller and then going radio-silent, I told Swappa, they canceled the sale and banned the seller almost immediately, and then I had to file a dispute with PayPal where they held my money for a full 30 days before handing it back.