posted on March 17, 2002 09:44:58 AM new
Hello All:
We received an email from a Seller on eBay, offering to sell us a Monitor direct. After checking his feed backs we agreed and charged it on a credit card through PayPal.
The seller accepted the payment within seconds, but never sent us the monitor. We were faced with long delays in receiving responses to emails, claims that he had sent it to us by priority mail, that he had to physically go to speak to the post office, that he had to wait until either we received it or it was returned to him, etc.
After he refused to email or fax us copies of the USPS receipt and completely stopped responding to our emails, we filed a complaint with PayPal.
We received an automated response from PayPal, assigning us a number.
There was no further action on the matter until a few days later, when we tried to send a payment and were faced with a message that our account was RESTRICTED.
Upon clicking for an explanation, it stated "We have restricted your account because you initiated a chargeback through your issuing bank."
Although we had used a charge card through PayPal, we did not request a chargeback through the bank, as PayPal requires that we first file a complaint with them and let them investigate it.
Having complied with PayPal's terms, we are now faced with having to pay our bank for the item which was never shipped by the seller, as well as being unable to access our funds already in our account, or to send payments.
PayPal has failed to respond to emails, including emails to Damon Billian at [email protected] and [email protected], fax to 1-650-251-1101 and calls to 1-650-251-1100 and 1-402-935-7733.
Although this is only our first bad experience with PayPal, we find that their poor customer support skills is cause for great concern for both buyers and sellers seeking a fair, expeditious and impartial agent to transmit funds.
Now we sit and wait until the powers that be at PayPal decide to grace us with a decision.
posted on March 17, 2002 06:40:07 PM new
dont worry,paypal bashers will soon come to your rescue,they never sleep.
by the way,this seller who contacted you to sell you a monitor outside ebay,is he a regular seller of monitor??
it seems this is becoming more frequent,sellers with high feedback,sellers who claimed to have brick and mortar stores,sellers who come across as nice guys are all scamming buyers on ebay??is this like killing the golden goose??
they would be banned from selling on ebay ,just so they can take off with a few hundred to a few hundred thousand dollars,is it worth it?????????????
posted on March 18, 2002 07:25:43 AM new
dont need to bash paypal anymore these days they appear to be doing an awesome job themselves just let people speak the facts on these boards....only reason i ever found this forum was because of problems with paypal sure for many others its the same
posted on March 18, 2002 08:57:58 AM new
Same thing happened to me except that Paypal did not Restrict my account immediately. I filed a complaint with them first, waited 30 days, they said I was indeed a victim of fraud but they could do nothing because the seller's account had $0 in it. I then did a chargeback with my credit card. After a couple of months, they sent an email that said they knew I had initiated the cb and that I should have filed a complaint first (which I did) but my account remained open. About 2 months after my cc took the charge off, they tried to reverse the cb. That did not work (my cc just asked me to send another letter stating I had not received the items). About a month after that, my account was restricted. Elapsed time between fraud and restriction: about 5 months.
posted on March 18, 2002 03:55:19 PM new
Ok, we just exchanged emails with Damon.
The first email stated that their chargeback team is claiming that there was a duplicate refund issued to our account. One from our credit card company reversing the charge and a partial refund from the Seller's account.
Absolutely no transaction numbers, dates or names were mentioned.
Their Bull Dog attitude of restricting first and then dealing with the problem is simply bad business practice. Why can their Chargeback Team not send out an email explaining the error and demanding payment before they restrict an account.
Anyhow, we ended up researching the matter ourselves and discovered that the error was from a transaction that took place 5 months ago. A seller failed to ship us goods and we filed a complaint with PayPal, followed by a complaint with the credit card company. The credit card company credited the full amount and PayPal issued a credit for a small amount, presumably the balance in the seller's account.
Bottom line, we do owe PayPal the amount that they credited. Now, the next problem is that we have been unable to get instructions from Damon about the mechanics of giving them what has been agreed is owed and having the restriction removed.
Damon claims that he needs to speak to the Chargeback people to get us an answer.
The recent fraudulent transaction by the seller of the monitor apparently had nothing to do with the restriction.
posted on March 23, 2002 07:31:31 AM new
Well gang, we are still waiting for Damon and his Accounting Department to remove the restriction against our account.
They first restict our account without any prior notice.
Then they make us figure out why they might have restricted the account.
Then they refuse to remove the restriction by accepting funds due to them.
This sounds like a dictatorship, not a private enterprise in a capitalistic society.
posted on March 26, 2002 05:09:21 PM new
Damon wrote:
Hi,
I supplied you with the information on how to pay the money back to the
account. I am sorry for the delay in response, but I do not work on
weekends. I was also out of the office on Monday. However, while reviewing
your account, I did take note of a positive balance in the account. Would
you mind if I check with the chargeback team on recovering from that amount?
Regards,
Damon
We responded:
Dear Damon:
Please do check with the chargeback team about deducting the $166.33 from our account, but we do not think that you will have any luck.
Here is what we received from them today:
Your account has been restricted due to the type of chargeback we have
received from your issuing bank. The type of chargeback that you submitted
was an "unauthorized charge", which states that you had no prior knowledge
of this transaction. This type of chargeback is usually associated with a
stolen credit card. Due to these circumstances, this type of chargeback
automatically results in the restriction of the account. If you filed the
wrong type of chargeback, you can appeal this via webform at
www.paypal.com/wf/f=ra_default or by faxing the following information to
402-537-5755, Attn: Account Review/Chargeback:
1. A copy of your current driver's license.
2. A copy of your most recent credit card statement.
3. A copy of this email.
In appealing this restriction, you agree to hold PayPal harmless for the
charged back amount and to reimburse PayPal. You can give us written
permission to remove the funds from your PayPal Account or you can send a
check to:
PayPal
Attn: Accounting Dept
PO BOX 45950
Omaha, NE
68145-0950
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.
Sincerely,
Kevin
PayPal Chargeback Division
We NEVER advised our bank that this was an unauthorized charge. They were told exactly what you were told, which is that we order merchandise and charged it on the card. We never received the merchandise and the seller stopped responding to our emails.
The long delays and constant new excuses is causing us significant inconvenience and certainly can not be benefiting you in any way. We are not transacting business through the account, you and the chargeback people are wasting your time and this way of doing business only gives your company a bad name.
How long do we keep up these nonsense exchanges??
Please take the initiative to put this matter to rest and devote your time to real problems.
posted on March 27, 2002 09:31:43 PM new
Something's probably wrong here. First, PayPal thinks it's just a regular chargeback and asks the seller to pay them since they already got credited through PayPal. Then, they decide over a week later to check the type of chargeback? Even if the issuing bank did make a mistake on the type of chargeback why wasn't the user e-mailed at the time he got the chargeback reported to him? And if the issuing bank didn't make a mistake then why is PayPal saying it is an unauthorized use chargeback?
[ edited by andrew123s on Mar 27, 2002 09:32 PM ]
posted on April 2, 2002 04:58:29 PM new
Well, we finally got the following email from Paypal.
Dear Bakshi,
We have completed our review and have removed
the restriction on your account. Thank you for your patience during this process and for helping to make PayPal the safest and most trusted online payment solution.
Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Team
The journey from restriction to removal of the restriction was approximately three weeks.
We certainly do not consider PayPal the "safest," nor the "most trusted" online payment service.
We were needlessly harassed and inconvenienced by PayPal's error and the lack of proper procedures to address such errors.
Indeed, we expect to have to live through the same set of events in the very near future, as the failure of the seller to ship the monitor (see first post - 3/17/02), has resulted in a very small credit issued by PayPal and the bank will be crediting the full amount.
Damon, are you listening??
Please enlighten us as to the procedure that we might follow to avoid a reenactment of the events of the past three weeks.
This issue was caused by the fact that you received a partial refund from your Buyer Complaint of 166.33. You then went to the credit card company to chargeback for the full amount (not subtracting the 166.33 you already received back through the Buyer Complaint Process).
You were essentially double-dipping for the same transaction. While an honest mistake, this is what caused the account restriction.
I don't foresee an issue in the future if you don't file a chargeback for the full amount when you had already received a partial credit for a transaction.
