Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov on buying from private sellers

An advance payment means you have performed your side and the other side has not. From there everything depends on their willingness to continue, and no mechanism on your side changes that.

If an advance is unavoidable, its size and route are chosen so that at least one path stays open for you: a card with a dispute route under the scheme rules, or a platform that holds the money until receipt is confirmed.

A platform is useful not for its interface but because a third party sits between the sides, holds the money and decides on a condition. A «pay directly» link removes exactly that.

A separate variant is a fake page dressed as a delivery or payout screen that asks for card details «to receive the money». Receiving money never requires the expiry date and the code from the back of the card.

Photographs are taken from other listings, so a reverse image search often settles the question in a minute. Reviews inside a profile are written by the owner of that profile.

What works are checks the seller cannot control: the creation date of the profile, the history of their listings, whether the name in the payment details matches the name in the conversation, and whether there is a written agreement on the deadline and condition.

Correspondence inside a platform is the evidence the platform looks at in a dispute. Correspondence in a private messenger is not evidence for it.

A request to move before payment also comes from honest sellers, so on its own it proves nothing. But agreements made after the move are worth repeating in the platform chat.

A card dispute deadline starts running at once and is short. A platform deadline is set by its rules. Both pass earlier than the patience of a buyer who decides to wait a little longer.

So the claim is filed as soon as the delivery date is missed, not when it becomes clear the seller has gone. Withdrawing a claim is easier than restoring a missed deadline.