Paypal Payment - Help Required

nathan1978

Hi, just a bit of advice required, as I made aa massive error. Not sure if this is the correct place, but it dies involve a credit arrangement. 

I purchased something from an unknown shop I found after searching for a particular product on google shopping, I had a dig around the website and it looked legit with 100’s of lines available so I went ahead as I really wanted the item and it was sold out at other stores.

The item was priced at 30euro and 10euro postage, but I was a little wary as I hadn’t heard of the store. So I opted to use my paypal account to pay thinking it offered better protection if items don’t arrive. However I went to process the payment, got routed to paypal’s secure site to sign in. After signing in I noticed the item was in yen, confused I pressed ‘review order’ button so I could see why the transaction was in yen. However unbeknownst to me this was actually the pay button and the transaction proceeded, it turned out that the yen paid was equivalent to £2900.00, then paypal rerouted me to somewhere else rather than back to the website I ordered from (some other payment site).  I instantly thought it must be a scam so rang my bank immediately to stop all payments out of my account, they said there wasn’t any showing, so I cancelled my DD to paypal and rang paypal. I reported what I suspected was fraud making clear the item was not valued anywhere near the value that was processed. I also said the transaction was unauthorised as I had never confirmed the transaction, maybe naively thinking there was another step before the payment was confirmed as ‘review order’ is not the same as confirm payment.  I filed a dispute saying that I hadn’t confirmed the order and the website owner must have don’t this without my permission. But this was rejected, I appealed this and this was rejected too.

Another important note is that I didn’t realise I had a credit arrangement with Paypal for thousands of pounds, I assumed they just took the money for transactions straight from my account, not lend me the money and get it back later. Ironically, this transaction wouldn’t have processed if I hadn’t used Paypal as I didn’t have that sort of money in my account.  I was reading on here that this may be a good thing, as I may have protection under section 75, does anyone know if this applies here? I wasn’t sure as this isn’t a regular transaction.

Do I have any other recourse or am I stuffed? Appreciate I was a bit stupid, distracted during the order process but still seems harsh considering I only misunderstood what ‘review order’ meant, if it was clearer I would never have proceeded.  

grumpy_codger

>> Complaints

After completing the complaint escalation process, if the outcome isn’t to your satisfaction and you are a UK PayPal customer, you can refer your complaint to the UK Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).

However, do your best to explain everything better and prove if possible.

Difference between €30 and £2900 is far too big. Is the item still listed at €30? How much is it elsewhere? Can you repeat the process of payment (without completing it) with the same or other item?

Under what jurisdiction does the website operate? Do any distant selling regulations apply? In UK and and in Europe they certainly do.

sourcrates

All sounds very dodgy indeed, and yet another reason I refuse to use PayPal.

If you don`t pay, PayPal will engage a debt collector, who will write a series of standard letters to you, failure to get you to pay would see them return the debt uncollected.

PayPal may then rinse and repeat with a different collector, or, since they became FCA regulated last November, sell your debt to a 3rd party company.

I`m uncertain whether their "PayPal credit" product comes under FCA regulation or not.

My advice would be to formulate an official written complaint to them, include as much detail as possible and why you think this was a scam, I assume no goods ever materialised from this transaction?

At the same time go to the FOS website and enquire if PayPal credit comes under their remit or not.