PayPal won't cancel unauthorised 'donation'

75 Posts

I went to but a whisk from ebay, went through payment by PayPal, got my receipt. Then I got another receipt saying "thanks for your donation". I did not make any donation.
I've had some suggestions from friends. They say there is normally a checkbox on the screen, but I usually avoid that (I prefer to be more active with my charity things). I just clicked the pay button. On this transaction the pay button didn't seem to be working and I had to press it 3 or 4 times do maybe something went wrong somehow, but I did not opt to donate any money at that time and I did not click on any checkbox.
I am now talking to them for the fourth time as they have refused to cancel it. Apparently they don't offer buyer protection for things I didn't actively choose to purchase. According to them, all payment gateways have this potential issue. Surely that's not good enough if that were the case. How can it possibly be okay for payment gateways to have the ability to accidentally charge me for something I have no asked for, and then take away my right to cancel?
0
Latest MSE News and Guides
Replies
Companies are not allowed to have checkboxes pre-filled in for other services the consumer has to actively tick the box.
Sounds like another reason to avoid Paypal. You could check again by 'buying' the same whisk and seeing what Paypal does - obviously cancel before finalising your purchase. See if you can spot the charity box.
Its possible you bought (for example) a £10 item from eBay where the seller was giving 20% to charity, therefore they got £8 and the charity got £2.
The amount of the donation is frankly irrelevant as far as I'm concerned, and I'm really not interested in the money itself, I'm more interested in the fact they are gaslighting me.
This is a reasonable assertion. I did check on that. it wasn't ebay though. I got my receipt for the ebay item, the full price accounted for. then a separate receipt from "donation via paypal giving fund". I had no separate email from that, and I had never seen it before. It was a complete mystery to me.