Ebay / Paypal BEWARE

[Boddie]

Think that if you pay for something on Ebay using their sister company Paypal that you are covered?

Things are never that simple.

Their dispute and claim service seems weighted in the favour of sellers and designed so as to confuse and put you off persuing the claim.

I stuck to my guns but still one month on...

Read my experience with Paypal here > Andrew Hunter Photography: News

The articles read in chronological order from bottom to top.

[Lance Morgan]

Um interesting.

A similar thing happened to me but i was the seller this time. After selling an item on ebay I sent an item to USA. The buyer claimed he never received it although I have every reason to think he did. He then opened a dispute with paypal who withdrew the cash he paid partly from my paypal account and the remainder from my credit card i had on file with them.

Ultimately I was unable to prove that he had taken delivery of the item and had no proof of sending or tracking the item (I have learnt to send all items insured now). Anyway as a result I lost my money. i.e. he got his money refunded and probably kept the item as well.

[nightshade]

I have never had any sucess with Pay-Pal,I cannot even access my account although I have never even used it,I can however close it as long as I give them photo ID etc.etc.
Waste of time and energy
Most traders I contact will deal with me and the feed back is a reasonable guide
E-Bay/Pay-Pal does lots of trading with Dealers selling counterfeit asWatchdog established
but the trade is worth billions

[Boddie]

It has really annoyed me as I have previously spoke of Ebay and Paypal in a very positive way.

I would point out I have carried out some 300 or so purchases so this is not common, but I think it necessary to highlight as I would not like to see someone hard done by at Christmas

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Boddie

It has really annoyed me as I have previously spoke of Ebay and Paypal in a very positive way.

I would point out I have carried out some 300 or so purchases so this is not common, but I think it necessary to highlight as I would not like to see someone hard done by at Christmas

the problem is definitely with paypal rather than ebay as a whole , for a service that is touted as being there to protect the consumer their customer service is shocking.

what did you but that was snide btw ?

[Bushcraft]

Sadly it does happen.

[lewisa]

Originally Posted by Boddie

Their dispute and claim service seems weighted in the favour of sellers .

Sorry Boddie, this is not true. The polar opposite is in fact the case. Im not saying that about your case, but generally, in comparison to other payment service providers, Paypal go by a totally different set of rules towards merchants (and signigicantly higher fees as well)

There are strict procedures regarding chargebacks on credit cards for Customer Not Present transactions, and a basic fundamental one is that the merchant has a chance to respond to the request before the bank makes its decision. Paypal do not recognise this right and act in a judge,jury and executioner manner.

Probably the most amusing experience we have had is when a customer paid for about £300 of goods via Paypal, and was happy with his order. Two days later, and without notice, Paypal removed the funds from our account and gave it back to the buyer because Paypal claimed it was fraudulent.

After several days of both the customer and ourselves telling Paypal they had made a mistake, we ended up taking the payment again on the buyers credit card over the phone.

On that occasion we were lucky the customer was an honest paerson, but we lose a lot more than that every month through Paypals draconian implementation of regulations. If it gets much worse, we will stop using them, as many other companies are doing. But this isnt an easy decision as a quarter of all our payments are currently recieved through them.

Most large corporates who sell on ebay refuse to accept Paypal, Vodafone used to do it a lot and only accept payments through their own merchant facilities, because high street banks provide a fair servive for both parties, Paypal screw the merchant 99% of the time without even asking a question.

I'll stress again that im not talking about your case in particular, but I feel its important to have a pov from the other side.
I imagine you are feeling the Paypal 'judge,jury and executioner' act at the moment yourself, what im trying to highlight is that this happens very frequently to merchants, much less so to buyers.

As a merchant with a reasonable volume with Paypal and therefore having seen very often how they handle claims, im 100% confident that, if I was that way inclined, I could abuse it by ordering whatever I wanted, making a cpaypal claim in a certain manner, and always get the money back without fail while retaiing the goods.

It wouldnt even matter if the merchant could prove delivery with my signature.

[Boddie]

Originally Posted by lewisa

Sorry Boddie, this is not true. The polar opposite is in fact the case. Im not saying that about your case, but generally, in comparison to other payment service providers, Paypal go by a totally different set of rules towards merchants (and signigicantly higher fees as well)

There are strict procedures regarding chargebacks on credit cards for Customer Not Present transactions, and a basic fundamental one is that the merchant has a chance to respond to the request before the bank makes its decision. Paypal do not recognise this right and act in a judge,jury and executioner manner.

Probably the most amusing experience we have had is when a customer paid for about £300 of goods via Paypal, and was happy with his order. Two days later, and without notice, Paypal removed the funds from our account and gave it back to the buyer because Paypal claimed it was fraudulent.

After several days of both the customer and ourselves telling Paypal they had made a mistake, we ended up taking the payment again on the buyers credit card over the phone.

On that occasion we were lucky the customer was an honest paerson, but we lose a lot more than that every month through Paypals draconian implementation of regulations. If it gets much worse, we will stop using them, as many other companies are doing. But this isnt an easy decision as a quarter of all our payments are currently recieved through them.

Most large corporates who sell on ebay refuse to accept Paypal, Vodafone used to do it a lot and only accept payments through their own merchant facilities, because high street banks provide a fair servive for both parties, Paypal screw the merchant 99% of the time without even asking a question.

I'll stress again that im not talking about your case in particular, but I feel its important to have a pov from the other side.
I imagine you are feeling the Paypal 'judge,jury and executioner' act at the moment yourself, what im trying to highlight is that this happens very frequently to merchants, much less so to buyers.

As a merchant with a reasonable volume with Paypal and therefore having seen very often how they handle claims, im 100% confident that, if I was that way inclined, I could abuse it by ordering whatever I wanted, making a cpaypal claim in a certain manner, and always get the money back without fail while retaiing the goods.

It wouldnt even matter if the merchant could prove delivery with my signature.

I would suggest that it is very much true.

In this case I have received a partial refund - £105 of the original £160. That leaves 35 percent missing. The seller has been wise enough to not use his account as he is aware that any money he puts in will be taken out by Paypal to refund me.

I would say there are innumerable more buyers that get ripped off than sellers and that was the purpose of my original post.

The whole story can be found here > Andrew Hunter Photography: News

[canny]

I had a bad problem too. I will not use Paypal now.
I had a Paypal account and by luck I decided to look at my account one morning or I wouldn't have been aware of what was going on.
Money had been taken from my card and bank account, 2 seperate transactions in American dollors amounting to nearly £2000.00!! You can imagine the stress this caused me. I had to cancel my card tell my bank. Ring Paypal.
To cut a very long and stressful story short after many phone calls and many emails from them telling me I owed them this money (after I had stopped my bank paying them) I had to send an afidivit to America, I got my money back but no matter how much I asked I got no explanation and no apology for what had happened.
Won't touch them with a barge pole!!!

[nightshade]

Big article in The Daily Mail today, "How E-Bay Stole Christmas" in a nutshell thousands of people took the opportunity to buy up Wii consols and sell at double the price this was repeated with anything a child might want that was a very popular choice for Christmas
creating shortages that could only be filled by paying double on e-bay.Real Chrismas spirit or enterprise by certain people who do not pay tax on their ill-gotten gains

[Marvellous]

Wow, some shocking things happening on & around ebay!!

I personally bought a Kingston SD card off ebay, it was slow and only showed ½ of it's capacity available. I spoke to Kingston who confirmed it was counterfeit, you wouldn't believe how good a copy it was, it even had the Kingston hologram on it.

The guy did refund me after I took out a dispute via Paypal. I informed Kingston of his Id & informed his other customers of his antics.

If something looks too good to be true e.g high speed branded memory at a sensational price, it's likely to be counterfeit.

Hope you all have a good Xmas break.
Mick

[wildlifesnapper]

Ah, glorious Paypal !!!

Just read the ebay forums to see some great tales about them.

I do think that Lewisa is right though, more sellers get shafted than buyers.
The problem is Paypal do not accept ANY forms of Royal Mail methods as proof of postage, even special delivery signed for!! the only method I think they will accept is currier.
So if a buyer recieves an item signs for it then makes a claim tough, the money goes back plus charges.
So the only safeguard i feel is don't use them (a lot of people wont bid if you don't) or empty your account often.

Having said that, they don't give a s@$t about buyers either.If you don't recieve an item and the seller empties their account ,again tough, all you get is an email saying they cannot regain any money.

I got done with a flash but I paid with all but £10 via credit card and I was able to do a charge back(after the tough, no money in account email from paypal).So I got all but the £10 (which came out of my paypal funds) back.

I will never pay for any expensive item using paypal funds again.Clear your account first then pay via credit card.

I know this doesn't help you Andrew but I know how you feel.I only lost £10 but I felt like going round to the guys house and punching him on the nose( well ok , worse than that ).

Must go and de-stress now , paypal = bah humbug

Anyway, Merry Christmas to everyone

Neil

[Boddie]

I cannot believe for one minute that more sellers get ripped off than buyers. The professional crook element are all sellers. You dont get many professional buyers

[eeyore]

whoever is most ripped out of the buyer and seller, I think we can all agree that paypal - which is supposed to protect both sides of the transaction is doing a terrible job of providing customer satisfaction to its users and needs a right good ear bashing and/or a boycot....

[lewisa]

Im not saying that your situation isnt true Boddie, Im saying that Paypal favouring sellers in general isnt true. That isnt my opinion, its the widely accepted status quo of using Paypal as a PSP.

Its also the status quo of being involved in any financial transaction with a consumer, the difference is when its a high street bank mediating they actually investigate and make an informed decision, Paypal just press the 'side with buyer' button without a human ever reading a word of the issue, most of the time.

Im 100% sure that Paypal made a mistake in the first instance on your situation and whichever monkey it was pressing the 'resolve in favour of x' button, pressed the wrong button and actually meant to side with you in the first place. This will cause grief because Paypal hate reversing a decision, ive never seen them do it personally, youve done well to get it without Trading Standards help - this leads me to think that they did press the wrong button in the first place and never inteded to side with the seller, if they didnt you wouldnt have any of your funds back yet.

The partial refund thing is a joke, in fact im flabbergasted by that. If you had paid for those goods using a credit card the issuing bank would have repaid your monies in full no question, regardless of the merchants ability to pay at that point in time. I dont understand how Paypal can get away with not doing. they might exploit some loophole by masquerading their transactions as if they are debit card payments rather than credit card.

The moral of this one is for any future transactions use a credit card, never us a debit card, never use paypal, never use anything except a credit card, ever.

[Boddie]

You see it as a seller, I see it as a buyer, but I will maintain that most of the snide dealings on Ebay are from bent sellers and not buyers. I would imagine the crook that ripped me off did the same to dozens. All of whom lost money, whereas the seller did not. I find it hard to believe that the same proportion of buyers could rip a single seller off. Proportionally it is just not possible.

And of course Paypal / Ebay make their money from the sellers not the buyers, so it stands to reason who they might want to keep on side.

We are going to have to agree to disagree.

[lewisa]

Originally Posted by Boddie

You see it as a seller, I see it as a buyer, but I will maintain that most of the snide dealings on Ebay are from bent sellers and not buyers.

Ah, that explains our difference of opinion, Im not denying what you say there. Your sentance there is a different issue to what im arguing.

You are talking specifically about transactions that are fradulent from the outset, wheras im talking about when genuine good faith transactions go wrong in the eye of the buyer but are not actually wrong. Like when a buyer orders the wrong thing and tries to blame the supplier - thats where Papal automatically side with the buyer, whereas banks actually find out what happened.

Although, dont discount the amount of solen credit card fraud in the hands of buyers that takes place on ebay.

[Boddie]

Agreed but I did state in my first post that you could read my experience and would have read that it was a fraudulent transaction. The chap was selling counterfeit. My point was that the process seemed designed so as to put me off, as a buyer, (loads of red tape and long timeframes for the seller to resond and stall) and even after the guy admitted he was wrong and invited Paypal to reclaim the money they procrastinated and then when they did he partially emptied his account. For me this is disgraceful. Over a month to resolve something he admitted to and I still never got paid.

[lewisa]

I did read it I like to read transcripts like those from people I vaguely know on a forum as it gives another example of things. I must have focused in on the general buyer vs. seller bit, rather than the fraud bit.

[Boddie]

At the end of the day I have learnt my lesson and will take your advice and stop using Paypal. If it means I miss a bargain, so be it. Rather not line their pockets anymore.

[wildlifesnapper]

Originally Posted by Boddie

At the end of the day I have learnt my lesson and will take your advice and stop using Paypal. If it means I miss a bargain, so be it. Rather not line their pockets anymore.

Hi Andrew,

maybee not stop using paypal but stop using your paypal account funds.

Clear your account before making a payment then use credit card funded payment.
That way if anything goes wrong you can make a credit card charge back.The seller has little defence against that.In fact I think paypal get charged(though I may be wrong)

I no longer use paypal funds, it hurts too much when you get skanked.

I know you shot me down before but I AM really on your side

There are some real scammers on ebay and paypal don't care too much as long as they and ebay get their fees.

neil