It sounds like a scam to me. I would never enter my CC info for something like that.
If you just made your payment... why would they need any CC information? Couldn't they just post the rebate as a partial refund against your just-completed payment? Or send you a credit thru PayPal? Or a rebate code to use on a future purchase, from the same seller, via PayPal?
Something definitely smells wrong here. eBay does not allow sellers or other third-parties to market to their customers, and from what you described, there was something wrong.
You should report the seller to eBay and have them check out the payment link the seller is providing. If the seller is doing nothing wrong, they may appreciate knowing that the payment service they are using is NOT following eBay rules, which could put the seller on the Suspended list.
PayPal doesn't ask for that kind of data - they'd just post a credit to your account or give you a rebate code to use with your next purchase. eBay doesn't ask for that kind of data - they'd use a PayPal rebate code (similar to eBay Bucks) or something similar. And since they hold all the transaction data, they already know where you live if they wanted to mail you something.
Contact eBay and PayPal (if that was the payment service used) and let them know what happened. It's a breach of their security and they'll want to know more.
-Bob.
PS: come back after and let us all know what they said... we're all curious now... 🙂
There are three possiblities here, two of which are most unlikely, and one of which is most likley:
#1: You were on an eBay page, then eBay displayed the pop-up as part of a marketing promotion. Highly unlikely as eBay reportedly does not provide such marketing to third party companies. Also, from looking at the eBay pages themselves, all eBay 'ads' are flat -- they display a message but do not 'pop-up' and certainly don't ask you to fill in a form or answer questions.
#2: You were on a PayPal page and they displayed the pop-up at part of a marketing promotion. See explination above as to why this is highly unlikely.
#3: You were redirected to a third-party payment site (not PayPal) and they 'served' you the ad as part of a promotion created by the company you were purchasing from. This type of promotion also happens when a mass retailer (airlines, for example) engages a third-party marketing firm to offer 'free vacation' packages at hotels/resorts they are heavily invested in. The retailer system will 'serve up' the ad as part of the payment process for buyers who meet certain criteria (everything from "everyone" to "bought over $10K in last 3 months").
It's also possible that you have malware on your system that noticed you visited a certain URL (PayPal) and popped-up the ad at a time when it would look like it was part of that URL's natural stream. Malicious software is getting smarter -- it's no longer 'kludgy' and wrought with misspelling and grammatical mistakes (scammers have spell-checkers too).
First rule - if it doesn't feel right, it may not be. If you don't see a reason for a webpage you did not initiate to be asking for the information they are asking for (and the more personal the information, the more suspicious you should be) -- just close the page.
This is basically the same rule eBay applies to email purported to come from them -- if it doesn't show up in your eBay Mail, it's not from eBay. A lot of their messages are simply one-way information: You made a sale, a listing ended, etc. They tell you something and that's it. But whenever there's a "click here to do something" link or button -- forget it. Check in eBay Mail -- if the exact same message isn't there, the one in your regular email was a scam and should be reported (spoof@ebay.com).
Your instincts were right.
-Bob.
