PayPal want £9000

[Deleted User]

soolin wrote: »

Clearing your account after each payment makes no difference as they just persue you for any debt, as OP has found out.

Yes, but at least they can't just rob you of the funds. You get better protection if you have the money in your bank account because then they have to invoice you. It can't legally become a debt if you don't recognise it as such and you can fight it much more easily.

If you leave the money in your account they can freeze all of it over one tiny transaction and you end up not being able to even buy more stuff off eBay with it. If you rely on buying parts from eBay to turn in to saleable products your entire business comes to a halt until it is resolved. Your choice is then either capitulate to whatever demands the buyer is making, no matter how outrageous or try to survive until PayPal rule one way or the other which usually takes weeks.

As for recorded delivery, if it doesn't work why waste your money using it? I send an average of 100 items a month, adding recorded to that lot would cost me £74 and for what? I'd rather have that £74 in my pocket thank you very much.

Well it does reduce fraud a lot because most people do sign for the package. Actually I think PayPal have revised their system now as it seems that lately if the seller submits a valid tracking ID that is supposed to be signed for they will accept it even if the package was rejected.

We got stung by that at work recently. Some guy sent us an empty box which we refused to sign for. PayPal said we should have accepted it and then returned it at our expense. The seller can then claim that YOU sent an empty box back to them at which point PayPal require it to be reported as a crime and will only accept a crime reference number as proof. Unfortunately the police in Portsmouth will not give you one for anything eBay or PayPal related ("it's a civil matter") but other forces will so it's pot luck if you can get one or not.

PayPal is amazingly stupid like that. I sold a coffee machine that the guy returned trashed and with parts missing. They wanted me to take it to a repair shop who could "independently verify" it's condition, despite me sending them photos. Even if I did pay to get it verified how would the shop know that I didn't trash it myself to win the claim?

PayPal is the absolute worst way to buy or sell anything, but eBay forces you to use it. I refuse to accept it via my web site but eBay is an important source of sales.

1984ReturnsForReal_2

DELETED USER wrote:

Sue my bank and eBay for not passing the information on to PayPal you mean?

Ebay/Paypal can't be chasing you for money. They have the evidence of where it went.

IE they have got to give you all of the transactional information showing where the money ended up & IP addresses etc (to pass to the police).

If they don't give you access to information to recover from the "thief" they can hardly chase you for money.

They must still think its you.

soolin

DELETED USER wrote:

Well it does reduce fraud a lot because most people do sign for the package. Actually I think PayPal have revised their system now as it seems that lately if the seller submits a valid tracking ID that is supposed to be signed for they will accept it even if the package was rejected.
.

I was querying why when signatures are rarely obtained or shown online why it is worth paying 74p extra on your postage. Even if you use recorded you'd losea paypal chargeback if it doesn't show as delivered online.

The refused issue is different, paypal will often find for the sender in those cases but it is still dependent on something showing online.

If I thought there was enough scammers on ebay to justify paying £74 a month extra postage for my 100 parcels i would give up selling online entirely.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

i dont know why, but this doesnt sound right to me....

if this was me i would be more worried about sorting out papyal, than worrying about how i could set up another account to pay for stuff off ebay.

you can allways do a bank transfer to the firm in china.

you also know your stuff with this quote

'It can't legally become a debt if you don't recognise it as such and you can fight it much more easily.'

so is this why you are not recognising the 9-15k could possibly your debt? ( this is just a theory)

[Deleted User]

I spoke to PayPal again yesterday and they said they would get back to me within 48 hours. No calls today though.

If I don't hear by mid-day Monday I will phone the Ombudsman.

1984ReturnsForReal wrote: »

Ebay/Paypal can't be chasing you for money. They have the evidence of where it went.

...

They must still think its you.

I think that is the basic problem. Whoever did it pumped a lot of the money into my personal bank account and then withdrew or spent it. They bought loads of stuff online with my credit card too. To make matters worse I had gone to live overseas at the time so my mobile wasn't active... By the time they decided to write to me I had already got back due to ill health.

The bank reversed everything and it all ended up as it was before I went, less some stuff I paid for on credit card while away. I thought that they must have returned the money to PayPal, except for the stuff the guy bought with PayPal (including loads of dodgy !!!!!! sites by the look of it) which was reversed. I don't think it came anywhere near £9,000 though, let alone the £15,000 they once quoted.

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

'It can't legally become a debt if you don't recognise it as such and you can fight it much more easily.'

so is this why you are not recognising the 9-15k could possibly your debt? ( this is just a theory)

Well I think in order to be my debt I would actually have to have agreed to owe that much money to them. That is generally how debts work - otherwise it's just an invoice.

[Deleted User]

They never got back to me so I called PayPal again today. This time the agent said that there was nothing at all I could do. There is simply no way to fix the situation, PayPal does not have any kind of system in place to deal with identity theft and no amount of evidence will ever satisfy them. For some unknown reason the debt now stands at over $13,000. I have no idea where they got that figure from or why it is in Dollars.

So basically I am banned from ever using eBay or PayPal again. My eBay account has over 500 positive feedbacks and I need it for part of my income.

I wrote to the Ombudsman today about it, hopefully they will be able to do something.

Best of all the agent said that they were getting the debt recover people in again. Looks like I will now be harassed by them again

cyberbob

DELETED USER wrote:

TFor some unknown reason the debt now stands at over $13,000. I have no idea where they got that figure from or why it is in Dollars.

Thats 8,800 pounds so less than your original figure

It doesn't sound like from your posts (i could be wrong) that the original identity theft was reported to the police. So if you cant give that sort of evidence I can understand PP point of view as its only your word claiming this has happened.

[Deleted User]

TurkishDelight wrote: »

They could have withdrawn it from there to their own account I guess, but to spend it they would need a card as well, so probably need the OPs physical address.

Does that seem at all likely to you?

I take offence at that. As I already stated they did have my address (it's on my eBay and PayPal accounts) and they did withdraw some of the money by spending it via PayPal or online shops. They seemed to have one of my credit card numbers. I think they moved some of the money to other PayPal accounts too which were then presumably linked back to mine.

My bank accepted it, eBay accepted it, the Police accepted it. It's just PayPal that won't.

cyberbob wrote: »

It doesn't sound like from your posts (i could be wrong) that the original identity theft was reported to the police. So if you cant give that sort of evidence I can understand PP point of view as its only your word claiming this has happened.

It was reported and I did send them the incident number. Apparently even that is not enough evidence. As I said, today that admitted that there is simply no procedure or evidence that can be used to prove identity theft to them.

Despite acting like a bank they are not regulated by the banking code so it is up to me to prove my innocence instead of the other way around.

isajoanting

Yes, surely the OP's address details, contact details and access to making payments by all registered means - bank accounts, credit cards etc - are all available immediately to anyone who has phished or conned their way to someone's details.

The point of this forum is or should be to give information back and forth to help others in similar situations. Even if the OP was responsible for running up the debts themselves, it makes no sense to even make the accusation as it can only serve to end the thread - the whole point of these forums is to bounce advice and ideas off each other to help others.

Even if all the original postings of threads on the whole forum are all just figments of people's imaginations it wouldn't matter as it is the resulting, genuine advice that is of value.


Anyway, it goes to show that PayPal is quite unsafe as so much info is there with access possibly to all your money from one convenient access point!

It still surprises me that the OFT or whoever still allows Ebay to insist on the use of PayPal. Have there simply been no complaints?

German Ebay for example doesn't have this requirement.

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the support isajoanting.

Well I have pretty much given up trying to reason with PayPal. Their entire system seems to be designed to stop you talking to anyone who can help you in any way.

For now I am using a friend's account to sell stuff. Next time one of my credit cards gets replaced I will be able to create a new account with just the card on it, so while it won't be able to receive anything at least I will be able to pay for stuff. The trick is to never ever supply them with more details than you have to. They try to force you to add information to the account but you can just keep ignoring it. They slyly try to make it look like you have to enter the data to access the account, but if you just click on the PayPal logo when they ask it will take you back to your account page where you can then access the resolution centre (or as I call it the "how to loose money fast centre").