fraudulent item, paypal refund keeps getting cancelled and ebay case closed?

rolysatch

hi

i'm not sure if anyone can advise, as customer suppiort is closed for paypal and ebay currently. i purchased a graphics card for my son on 12th April for £383. my son then looked at the item on ebay and rang me to say it looks like a fraudulent listing. so i rang ebay urgently within 10 mins of purchase and asked them to cancel the purchase and refund. however the customer support person told me the item looked legit and not to worrry as ebay had full buyer protection.

anyhow about an hour later the item was removed from ebay (he was selling multiple graphics cards on same listing), ebay informed me of this by email and said a refund would be issued - i'm guessing as it was a fraudulent listing as we suspected. a refund was issued to paypal (echeque) and then sat pending in my account and then was cancelled. this has now happened 4 or 5 times. i contacted ebay last night and they opened a case. however i just had another email from ebay saying that the case has been closed because there's a paypal dispute (it says seller has opened a paypal dispute although no open or closed cases showing open in paypal)?

i'm now getting very worried as its a lot of money, the refund just keeps cancelling and ebay seem to have washed there hands with buyer protection.

i'm a bit confused as to what is happening here and extremely worried that i'm going to lose my money somehow as it's nearly a month now and the refund keeps being issued, then sits pending and then gets cancelled and this keeps repeating.

 i'm worried that this is all a delaying tactic by the seller until i'm unable to get my money back.

can anyone offer any advice please as very concerned and a bit confused?

many thanks in advance.

roland

MR1988

Have you tried contacting PayPal regarding the issue?

Since you say eBay has washed their hands with this and it's been already 30 days I strongly recommend getting in touch with PayPal as soon as possible and chase this transaction. If it's true the seller opened a PayPal Dispute and you don't reply to the Dipute you might lose. Get in touch with PayPal, they answer fairly quick to phone calls.

soolin

MR1988 said:

Have you tried contacting PayPal regarding the issue?

Since you say eBay has washed their hands with this and it's been already 30 days I strongly recommend getting in touch with PayPal as soon as possible and chase this transaction. If it's true the seller opened a PayPal Dispute and you don't reply to the Dipute you might lose. Get in touch with PayPal, they answer fairly quick to phone calls.

A seller can’t open a PayPal dispute ! Is there a chance that words got muddled somewhere and in fact you the buyer opened both a PayPal and eBay case, in which case the ebay one would be closed?

either way I echo the above, call PayPal immediately and ask what is going on and if there is no case open just open an INR case. 

rolysatch

hi guys thanks for your responses. i've just spoken to paypal and they say that no paypal case has been opened and that i should contact ebay as that is a mistake as no case has been opened. the email i got from ebay closing the case said "has been closed due to a PayPal dispute being opened for the same order." so going around in circles a bit. i'm just waiting for a call back from ebay now.

rolysatch

paypal said the refund has failed 4 times so far and the pending one will fail again. they did say to come back to them if i don;'t get anywhere with ebay and they will open a case but it will take some time.

rolysatch

i've spoken to ebay have they have escalarted it a couple of levels and it looks like i am getting somewhere now finally.

MR1988

I'm not too sure if eBay will go back on their decision since it's been closed already. You can indeed try again and tell them you have been in contact with PayPal and that PayPal told you there is no Dispute opened for that transaction. Considering you bought this on 12th of April I'd say you still have couple of days to deal through eBay with it. But if you don't get anywhere with eBay just go straight ahead and open a Dispute in PayPal. You can do this manually online or you could give them a ring and have an adivsor open a Dispute on your behalf.

rolysatch

thanks, well ebay are getting back to me within 72 hours, but the lady I was talking to said about issuing me a refund directly and pursuing the seller for payment but she needs to speak to her manager. but i'm not holding my breath and will wait for the outcome of that before celebrating too much.

rolysatch

so ebay have now got back to me and i have to wait until the 11th for the 5th pending echeck refund to cancel before they can apply my refund. however i've got a twerrible feeling that it wioll cancel and a new echeck will be applied as a refund. i'm not sure if it's the same echeck is being applied or if the seller is reissuibng new ones. just concerned its a delaying tactic so that my time limits with ebay and paypal run out.

does anyone know if the worst comes to the worst whether i can chargeback the credit card that funded the paypal transaction?

theonlywayisup

rolysatch said:

so ebay have now got back to me and i have to wait until the 11th for the 5th pending echeck refund to cancel before they can apply my refund. however i've got a twerrible feeling that it wioll cancel and a new echeck will be applied as a refund. i'm not sure if it's the same echeck is being applied or if the seller is reissuibng new ones. just concerned its a delaying tactic so that my time limits with ebay and paypal run out.

does anyone know if the worst comes to the worst whether i can chargeback the credit card that funded the paypal transaction?

Your time limits are for opening a case and escalating it.  Other than that I am not aware of any other time limits a buyer has to adhere to.

If you are looking to chargeback via your card then you may have to convince them there was no breakdown in the chain - paypal are an intermediary in the payment chain.   I would wait until you have exhausted ebay before you do anything else. 

The likelihood of the first delay is that the cancellation/refund was within a few hours of payment - thus the funds were not physically where they needed to be to be refunded and it seems you are now stuck in a cycle of the funds not having actually 'landed in their account' to be refunded.  

rolysatch

yes the time between ordering and paying, ebay cancelling and the original refund being issued waas a only 1-2 hours so that would make a lot of sense. yes i was only thinking about a charfgeback as a very last resort. thanks for your help!