Sec. 75 with eBay

potts8

Does anyone have any experience with Section 75 claims with ebay purchases made by credit card and not paypal.
The transaction on my statement still says paypal as I belive eBay use paypal to process the transaction when not using a paypal account and it subjects you to these terms: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacywax-full?locale.x=en_GB


I've called my bank today to submit a claim for a retailier not honouring warranty however my banks initial response is that I won't be covered as I used paypal. They are looking into this further though.

ess0two

potts8 wrote: »

Does anyone have any experience with Section 75 claims with ebay purchases made by credit card and not paypal.
The transaction on my statement still says paypal as I belive eBay use paypal to process the transaction when not using a paypal account and it subjects you to these terms: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacywax-full?locale.x=en_GB


I've called my bank today to submit a claim for a retailier not honouring warranty however my banks initial response is that I won't be covered as I used paypal. They are looking into this further though.

How old is the item,can you not instigate something thru paypal etc.

potts8

Unfortunately not, its just over a year old and it's a 3 year warranty so I'm well beyond the ebay and paypal protection even if I could trace a transaction.

Terry_Towelling

A quick caveat - what follows is just my opinion.

I think you have a claim (subject to the normal S75 criteria). I imagine the CC company will try to claim that having PayPal as the merchant name on your CC statement means you chose to 'charge up' your PayPal account and then use those funds to pass on to the retailer - but you didn't; you don't have a PayPal account.

Yes, your CC transaction was actually made with PayPal (not the retailer, per se) but it was made under pre-existing arrangements between all parties, and those arrangements meant it could only be made for the sole and specific purpose of facilitating that particular purchase from that particular retailer.

No one could therefore argue that your CC payment could have been used for any other purpose or that the arrangements in place would allow it to be used for any other purpose. PayPal has an agreement with the retailer to process CC payments to said retailer in this way, and your engagement in the process was made in accordance with those arrangements.

I'm sure there are counter-arguments and more learned legal types will try to find them but I'd press ahead. I believe breach of contract claims have to be mitigated, which essentially means you will be expected to minimise the value of your claim to the cost of any warranty repair.

As a side issue, is the warranty service being provided by the retailer or was it sub-contracted to a third party warranty provider? What does your paperwork say?

potts8

My bank are quite adamant that there is no protection for this type of transaction so it would seem that no purchase on ebay of any kind would be protected under Sec75.

eco_warrior

potts8 wrote: »

My bank are quite adamant that there is no protection for this type of transaction so it would seem that no purchase on ebay of any kind would be protected under Sec75.

Your bank are correct. If the funds go via PayPal then this breaks the Debtor-Creditor-Supplier chain and the bank will use this reason to reject the claim, unfortunately.

antrobus

Terry_Towelling wrote: »

....
I'm sure there are counter-arguments and more learned legal types will try to find them but I'd press ahead. ...

Sorry. Waste of time and the wrong advice.

See the word on MSE
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/PayPal-Section75/

The FOS has stated;

"Although PayPal appears as the merchant on the cardholder's statement, it cannot be seen as the supplier in a debtor-creditor-supplier agreement under Section 75 because it merely acts as the payment intermediary by transferring the money from the buyer's account to the seller's account. Therefore it breaks that chain to be considered under Section 75."

Terry_Towelling

antrobus wrote: »

Sorry. Waste of time and the wrong advice.

See the word on MSE
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/PayPal-Section75/

The FOS has stated;

"Although PayPal appears as the merchant on the cardholder's statement, it cannot be seen as the supplier in a debtor-creditor-supplier agreement under Section 75 because it merely acts as the payment intermediary by transferring the money from the buyer's account to the seller's account. Therefore it breaks that chain to be considered under Section 75."

Thank you, Antrobus. I did say it was an opinion - not advice - and wrote a caveat to that effect but I still continue to challenge that view.

I'd agree there can be no doubt that funding your PayPal account by credit card and then using that funding to pay a retailer will definitely break the debtor-creditor-supplier chain and that any such payment would not be made under pre-existing arrangements.

Where I struggle to accept the view of the FOS (which isn't a legal ruling, just their view) is that the specific payment route here also proceeds under pre-existing arrangements and calling PayPal an intermediary because they took your payment and then paid the retailer would seem to be the same as the intermediary role played by Visa or MasterCard when they take payments and pass them through.

The only material difference between the two arrangements might be the order in which the physical financial movements take place - and perhaps that is key.

Now, I don't know if PayPal withholds settlement from its retailers until it has physically received payment through the card mechanism. If it does, I might be inclined to agree with the FOS view. However, if it settles with the retailer up front when the credit card payment is taken, I'd say that was pretty compelling evidence for pre-existing arrangements, no break in the chain and cause to challenge FOS and the card issuers.

For the purposes of this forum, I'll toe the MSE party line but I still don't agree with the FOS view and what is printed in their statement is ambiguous at best, in that it talks of transferring funds from the buyers account to the sellers account. The implication is that the 'accounts' being referred to are the PayPal accounts of the buyer and the seller - which is not what we have here.

18cc

I don't see where Paypal comes into this. The OP simply bought goods off eBay using a credit card - at the payment stage the OP entered the credit card details. This is identical to eg buying goods from any other online retailer and thus the same S75 protection should apply?????

bris

Even if it does there still needs to be a breach of contract. Retailers don't honour warranties unless the retailer is also the manufacture so they don't need to do anything at this stage..


If you want to invoke your consumer rights with the retailer then after six months it's you who first needs to prove via an independent experts report that the goods are inherently faulty.


S75 has the same rights as the retailer so you still need to prove it to them too, S75 isn't a money back guarantee.

Terry_Towelling

18cc wrote: »

I don't see where Paypal comes into this. The OP simply bought goods off eBay using a credit card - at the payment stage the OP entered the credit card details. This is identical to eg buying goods from any other online retailer and thus the same S75 protection should apply?????

I think the argument is that the buyer is actually paying PayPal and PayPal is then paying the retailer when they've got your credit card payment. I believe the transaction appeared on OP's CC account with PayPal as the retailer's name.

Perhaps the view of many is that, although you aren't overtly funding a PayPal account in your own name to then use for making payments to retailers, you are perhaps indirectly funding a 'proxy' single-use PayPal account. The difference is that using the 'proxy' route means you are obliging PayPal to pay the retailer and that, in my opinion, means the debtor-creditor-supplier chain is not being broken and the arrangements under which the payment is made are pre-existing arrangements.