Paypal problem and NARU buyer leaves a big mess to clear up

cerveza

A purchase was made for around the £250 mark, for a computer item, the purchase was made BIN but payment took over a day or so overnight to come, the address was unconfirmed in a dodgy area.

So I tried to proces the refund immediately the next morning as I was not prepared to send it, the payment could not be refunded due to paypal stating 'You cannot refund this payment because the recipient is currently unable to receive money.' The user overnight had also become NARU of ebay. Rang paypal and they said no refunds can ever be made to this account. However I want to refund this guy the money but without processing it as a refund (which is now impossible), I feel left open to some sort of fraud ...what if the credit card was used fraudulenty etc.... If the money is sent to a new paypal account he has set up what if he says it was 'never received'.


Oh and by the way he says he has instructed a debt collection company on me who are working on the case, any advice please on how to sort this mess out.

Also he has set up a new ebay account and paypal (confirmed) account within 24hrs as he requested my contact details by purchasing another item he didn't intend to buy just to request my contact details inc. phone number.

Any advice please.

soolin

I think this is one that you are going to have to get paypal to sort out, be very firm with them.

As you say if you do not refund the original payment then you will always be in fear of a chargeback, so I agree that unless you can refund properly to hold the payment pending advice.

Meanwhile I would suggest that you email the buyer, keep a copy for paypal and in case of problems in future. Explain that they need to reopen or unfreeze their original paypal account so that you can return the payment to them. Obviously they will come back and say they can't. but do the 'broken record' bit, play a little dumb and just keep asking them to reopen their paypal account so you can refund.

If necessary tell them that they will have to chargeback the payment, although they will of course be unable to do that either, it will stall them while as you wait for paypal.

Also, as you have already found out it is easy for that buyer to open new accounts which can cause problems. However opening a new account when one is suspended is against the rules, so you might want to protect yourself meanwhile by reporting them for that, and watch your auctions meanwhile.

Soo

soolin

Zackeriney wrote:

cant you ban him from your auctions to stop him bidding again or not as he has won one in the last 30/90 days?
he could make up a neww account but that is quite time consuming.
good luck

According to the OP he has already set up a new account, so there is the possibility he can set up more.

Soo

Pound

It's very unlikely (almost no chance) that any debt collection agency would agree to purchase this debt from him. Even if he has, debt collection agencies only have the same power as normal people and all they can do if phone calls and letters don't work is to sue someone in a small claims court.

Personally, I would ask him how he paid. If he says it's with a credit card tell him to contact his credit card company and ask them to have them charge it back, he will get his money back this way and PayPal will take it from your account. Although, you'll be charged a chargeback fee if you go down this route. But, if you refund him with any other method than he paid with you could end up with a chargeback and losing the money twice.

I would keep emailing PayPal explaining the dilema hoping they'll sort it out, it should be very simple for them to simply refund it back him.

ant2006

Hi.
You can set filters on your auctions as well so that folks with less than up to 5 positive feedbacks cannot bid.
So, if he creates more accounts, he will still have trouble bidding on any of your auctions.

soolin

ant2006 wrote:

Hi.
You can set filters on your auctions as well so that folks with less than up to 5 positive feedbacks cannot bid.
So, if he creates more accounts, he will still have trouble bidding on any of your auctions.

Unfortunately you can only set your buyer preferences to exclude bidders with less than zero feedback, you cannot even set them to exclude bidders of less than 1 unless you add the caveat that they can't have bid on more than a certain quantity of your items over a specified time frame.

Soo

juno

You can set it so that people with less than 5 people can only bid if they have a credit card on file.