Paypal buyer dispute

cosmokramer2004

Hi all,

I've been reading the forums for a while now and find them very intersting with lots of great information. I never thought I'd need to post for advice however, until last week an Ebay buyer filed a Buyer Complaint against me on PayPal.

The buyer is from France and bought 2 mobile phones from a Dutch Auction of 5 in total. The phones are all locked to the '3' network and this was indicated in the item listing.

As soon as the buyer received the phones he filed a PayPal buyer dispute stating that the items were "not as described". I responded to the dispute stating the items were exactly as described with a link to the auction. I have also since received positive feedback from my other 3 buyers. The dispute is now in the "review" phase by a PayPal mediator, and has been in review for 11 days now.

When the complaint was made by the buyer, PayPal immediately locked the funds in my account. The buyer paid £200 for the phones and I had £80 in my account, so my balance is now -£120! :mad:

Additionally, I should make clear that I had no contact from the buyer until a few days ago - AFTER he filed the Buyer Dispute. The one email I have had from him is as follows:

"Dear ME,

This is the last time I send you an e-mail. You said that the mobile phones will work with French cards. Well, they DON'T ! Answer this mail within the next two days (until 9/02/2005), send back my money and I will send your phones to you. If you don't do so, I'll do what my lawyer has allready told by contacting Ebay and the Poilice. I really tried to do it in another way, I have sent you so many mails and you have never answered. This is your last chance!!

From HIM."

I decided it would be best not to respond to such a blatantly harassing email and instead forwarded it to Ebay along with his userid and the item number in question.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here has had a similar problem and could perhaps advise on how best to handle it?

If PayPal settle on the buyers side then I will be effectively 2 phones and £200 out of pocket? Would it be possible to take PayPal to a small claims court to reclaim the £80 which they have essentially stolen from me - they would afterall be maliciously breaking a contract which both the buyer and myself entered into via Ebay.

On the otherhand, if PayPal settle on my side then is there any further claims the buyer can make against me which I can protect myself against?

The entire situation is very stressful and had the buyer emailed me politely requestinig a refund, I would have been happy to do so after he returned the items to me. I'd appreciate any comments or advice on this.

Thanks,

Gordon

zacspeed_2

Never never never use paypal

Same thing happened to me. Paypal aren't intrested, they're quite happy to sting you with charges, but when the !!!!!! hits the fan, there is NO backup al all.


http://www.paypalsucks.com/

loafer_2

Ask the buyer to return the item and contact paypal to resolve the dispute, once your paypal account is unlocked you can return his funds and !!!!!! your !!!!!! to nochecx where the buyer has just about no rights thanks to their unfair T&C's.

Altarf

Well actually you are only down £80 , not £200 as the likelihood of Paypal being bothered to do anything if you walk away from the Paypal account are slim to none.

As for suing in the courts, even if you win, how do you think you are going to get your money from the bloke in France?

The answer for the future, is a new Paypal account each time you sell anything expensive, using a disposable email address (not linked to a bank account or credit card). When payment received, it is bounced through several similar accounts, until it reaches the real one. Draw the money down immediately, and give it a couple of days head start before posting the goods. If the buyer does a Paypal chargeback, the original account will go negative (as you found), and is Paypal going to be bothered to try and track the money or just say to the buyer 'tough -no funds to recover'.

Oh and before any suggests that this leaves the buyer up the swanny, anybody who buys expensive stuff on ebay without funding it entirely with a credit card is mad. That way, you chargeback your credit card and then the looser is Paypal (which serves them right for having such a silly system).

24seven

cosmokramer2004 wrote:

If PayPal settle on the buyers side then I will be effectively 2 phones and £200 out of pocket? Would it be possible to take PayPal to a small claims court to reclaim the £80 which they have essentially stolen from me - they would afterall be maliciously breaking a contract which both the buyer and myself entered into via Ebay.

If the phones were "as described" I cannot see how Palpay cannot find in your favour and if the buyer gets a refund and keeps the phones, he will be committing theft.

cosmokramer2004 wrote:

On the otherhand, if PayPal settle on my side then is there any further claims the buyer can make against me which I can protect myself against?

Again, only if the phones were not "as described" could the buyer try and recover the money back from you.

I would try and not worry to much and wait and see what Paypal do.

cosmokramer2004

Hi,

Thanks all for the tips and advice; I'm certainly considering never accepting PayPal again, but that doesn't really do buyer confidence much good.

zacspeed wrote:

Never never never use paypal http://www.paypalsucks.com/

loafer wrote:

Ask the buyer to return the item and contact paypal to resolve the dispute, once your paypal account is unlocked you can return his funds and !!!!!! your !!!!!! to nochecx where the buyer has just about no rights thanks to their unfair T&C's.

After getting that email from him the other day, I've decided there's little point in communicating directly with the buyer. But I'll be carrying that NoPayPal logo in all of my auctions from now on.

Altarf wrote:

Well actually you are only down £80 , not £200 as the likelihood of Paypal being bothered to do anything if you walk away from the Paypal account are slim to none.

As for suing in the courts, even if you win, how do you think you are going to get your money from the bloke in France?

I would (try to) take PayPal to a small claims court if the worst came to the worst. It's them who've currently taken £80 from me, not the French bloke. And at least by doing that I think I'd be covering my own backside from them attempting to reclaim the missing £120.

And yes 24seven, the phones were exactly as described. I've actually kept one here as "evidence"!

The thing that bothers me most is that I've basically been out of commission on Ebay since this whole dispute started. I can't sell using that PayPal account and from what I can remember, to receive credit card payments on PayPal you need to register a Credit Card (for a Premier account) so I'm out of options on that front.

PayPals policy of locking accounts during a dispute is ridiculous and paramount to theft. I don't know where they get the idea that they can police Ebay auctions, they may be owned by Ebay but they are run as a seperate company - or at least I used to think so.

Better stop rabbiting on before I blow a gasket

Gordon

dave96

If you are accepting paypal payments for high value or one-off ebay items, set-up a temporary paypal account, immediately transfer the money in to your bank account. When the money has been deposited into your bank, and has cleared, close the paypal down completely, then send the goods.
Better still, don't use paypal, use nochex.

Some problems are caused by paypal not identifying fraudulant use of credit cards (then passing the blame onto the seller cos paypal didn't do there job). Others its to do with the seller just trying it on, knowing they have nothing to loose, and knowing paypal may refund there money.
The whole paypal thing is a mess, and its getting like Western Union now, buyers realising they can fiddle the system by just lying.

VH

I've seen a lot of people posting on this board who have run into problems with Paypal, but I've not had any myself. Nor have I heard of any personally and I know around 15 people who trade on EBay.

It would be interesting to actually get some figures for the amount of Paypal transactions that go wrong, this would help people make a clearer judgement on whether it is worth the risk of using it or not.

cosmokramer2004

VH wrote:

I've seen a lot of people posting on this board who have run into problems with Paypal, but I've not had any myself. Nor have I heard of any personally and I know around 15 people who trade on EBay.

I personally have received payments on PayPal ~90 times without issue and apart from the high fees and extremely lengthy bank transfers (5-7 days!) I've had no problems until now.

From all the reading I've done on PayPal, that seems to be the trend. It's plain sailing until something actually goes wrong but when it eventually does, it REALLY DOES! :rolleyes:

Anyway, thanks to this board I've now had my eyes opened to NOCHEX url]https://www.nochex.com[/url which is cheaper url]http://help.nochex.com/?Action=Q&ID=92[/url - and that's all that was required to convert me!

Assuming PayPal settle on my side in this matter, I'll continue to accept PayPal payments, but I'll be heavily plugging NOCHEX in all of my future auctions and the reason why will be a link to https://www.paypalsucks.com.

Gordon

Altarf

cosmokramer2004 wrote:

I would (try to) take PayPal to a small claims court if the worst came to the worst. It's them who've currently taken £80 from me, not the French bloke. And at least by doing that I think I'd be covering my own backside from them attempting to reclaim the missing £120.

The chance of them taking you to court for £120 is nil, as you could have the case moved to your local court as you are a private individual. They would probably consider that their costs (which would not be recoverable) would outway the benefit of recovering the £120. That is not to say they might not try it on with a few threatening letters.

If you sued them, then they might feel that they have to defend the case despite the cost, due to the bad publicity that would ensue if they lost. I have seen court cases where individuals have tried to represent themselves when the other side have rolled out the high priced lawyers. It is not a pretty sight.

cosmokramer2004 wrote:

I can't sell using that PayPal account and from what I can remember, to receive credit card payments on PayPal you need to register a Credit Card (for a Premier account) so I'm out of options on that front.

You don't need to register a credit card to receive credit card payments; it just needs to be a Premier account.

All you need to set up a new Paypal account is a new email address (no credit card, no bank details, nothing). Hence the suggestion that you set up a new Paypal account for each auction, that is only ever used once to receive the money from the auction. You can then forget about that account (closing it if you wish at some later time).

24seven

Sorry to wonder off Topic a little but


I have read about Paypal recovering "their" money by using the direct debit that you set-up to become Verified.

Is this true, does anyone know for sure?

I guess there are 10000's of paypal transactions a day and we only hear about the ones that go wrong, but Palpay don't seem to worry about the people that are paying them, the Seller.

It seems to be more of worry selling on Ebay than buying.