PayPal

[vomit]

In January 2006 I sold some items on E-Bay and received payment for them via PayPal.

After approximately 21 days I was contacted by PayPal notifying me that a payment for an item was reversed due to the buyer using “Unauthorized Funds”.

To this day PayPal will not disclose what exactly the meant by Unauthorized, nor will they give me any personal details of the buyer. They will not report any act of fraud to the authorities or make any attempt to recover the money from the buyer.

They have pursued me by E-Mail for the money to be repaid to them and they have now got a debt collecting agency to pursue me for the money on their behalf.

I have recently spoken to PayPal by phone to discus my case with them and attempt to resolve this situation amicably.

During the call a few things about PayPal you should ALL be aware off came to light.

1) no seller protection until you have 50 feed back points with 98% positive

2) if you have been paid by fraudulent means, then YOU are liable to repay PayPal the money involved unless you have seller protection.

3) PayPal will leave you to recover your losses with no help from them at all unless YOU report it to the police and then they will only discus it with the police.

4) Payments received through PayPal cannot be considered safe until 180 days after the transaction took place.

5) Certain risks you accept in their terms and conditions are not prominently displayed due to marketing reasons. (including unauthorised payments)

Basically if you buy through PayPal you are fairly safe, if you receive payment by PayPal then you will be risking YOUR MONEY and ultimately trusting the buyer to be honest. PayPal is quick and easy but far from risk free, risks they don’t like to advertise.

Personal checks, banker’s draughts and postal orders are a far safer option when selling on E-Bay.

[Shindo_Hikaru]

All the above is true, When Seller's protection first came avaiable, i read its fine print and knew that i needed it, The point of this is that Paypal is far from risk free, BUT IT IS UP TO YOU THE BUY AND/OR SELLER TO THINK AND UNDERSTAND ANY ALL POSSIABLE RISKS.

So the next time you Paypal, stop, think, then act.

[prx984]

thats why my parents and i dont buy stuff online. too risky.

[Maleko]

thnks for the tips!

[kris123]

Hi,

I am using Paypal for the last 3 yrs. Except on a few occasions (two or three), Paypal has been good to us.

Basically, I think it is a risk every consumer and vendor faces.

Regards

Kris

http://www.vkinfotek.com

[oioldman]

thanks for those titbits, though thankfully only purchased stuff and not had issues with that

[mark]

I think ebay's philosophy is that most people are honest and they base their practices on that. Sometimes you get pinched. I don't think that recovering their money at the cost of the honest/victim is very honerable.

DL

[vomit]

I think their attitude towards victims of fraud is very poor and I think its disgusting that they blatantly do their best to protect

The criminal element from any repercussions. As it was their system that was and is still used to defraud people you would think they would do everything possible to pursue criminals to ensure PayPal has a good name and reputation.

[Incroyable HULK]

Here is my story:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...paypal&st=0

The bottom line is that I can't beleive there is no investigation from the government relating to eBay and Paypal. They do wathever they want, sole judge, jury and advocate and you don't have any rights. They won't tell anything unless you open a case with your local police dept.

I Trully hate them

[XPerties]

For every 1000 clients you will only hear the 100 bad stories. Although I have heard horror stories about paypal I have been doing business using paypal for the past 4 years and make thousands of transactions per month (personal and business) and have never had any issues with them.

Guess I'm lucky, or am I?

[stickzilla]

don't forget back after Katrina hit, and the members of the Something Awful forums had about 30,000 in donations....then the account was frozen. Paypal pretty much accused the guy running the account of being a possibly fraudulent party, and wouldn't let him have any control of the account. He tried telling them that they can be in control of donating it to the charity themselves if they don't trust him.

I don't remember the full outcome - if they refunded all the funds to people who donated, or if they actually did take the money from the frozen account and send it to the red cross or whomever.

But to me it screamed out even more reason to dislike paypal. I avoid it as much as possible. They can legally get away with pulling things like this thread speaks of, and they yield ridiculous profits in the end. Not being a bank they aren't under regulations....so your money has no security in your paypal account. If something happened to the company, good luck.

And while millions of people keep funds in their paypal accounts, sending it back and forth so that portions never get transferred to our personal accounts, Paypal invests that money and makes more profits off of it.

[vomit]

For every 1000 clients you will only hear the 100 bad stories. Although I have heard horror stories about paypal I have been doing business using paypal for the past 4 years and make thousands of transactions per month (personal and business) and have never had any issues with them.

Guess I'm lucky, or am I?

It was the second sale i made through e-bay and was unlucky, when your luck does run out I hope its

not a large sum of money.

the debt colecting agency they have got chasing me is caled NCO after a short search on google it seems they send a letter than a few cards stating they will visit on tuesday (but never say what tuesday or even turn up). after six months or so they will offer to settle for a fraction of the amount in question.

a card arived on monday and no visits on tuesday.

[FthrJACK]

Contact the police vomit, and make sure they dont do anything to your credit record also, if they do go to citizens advice. and as for any EULA they quote, a EULa isnt law, so they can go jump. Also you dont just go demanding money from people and making threats, thats extortion.

Edited August 19, 2006 by FthrJACK

[steev]

These things like paypal, ebay etc etc are too anonymous. Stickzilla said very well - they are outside the laws of banking so can get away with bad practises. fortunately most people don't get problems but when you do then it's big time!!!

I only ever put in the exact amount for the article I'm buying - that way they never have any of my money.

[CoffeeFiend]

Yes. I've been on ebay for quite some time, and I'm starting to get away from it. I wasn't scammed yet, but just yesterday I just thought it had hapenned. The seller started telling me weird things about why I didn't receive the item yet (contradictory) and other odd things, only then to find out his paypal acct isn't verified either and such (finally got the tracking # and it's underway - some customs clearance issue delaying things). But for a short amount of time I was getting pretty worried - especially after I found out that paying with paypal isn't always quite as safe as I thought it was. I thought you were protected for 1250$ CDN automatically - but that's not the case (seller must have at least 50 feedback, have a verified paypal acct, etc).

But regardless, it's getting pretty ugly on ebay lately. So much scams! I was browsing thru mp3 players the other day looking for a case, and it was totally cluttered with ipods below half price (cheaper than refurbs for new ones - impossible!), mainly coming from china, from a bunch of sellers with a feedback of 10 (all being from 99 cents purchases). And mp3 players is hardly the only category where you see things like this. And then there's countless counterfeit (or plain illegal) things like dirt cheap DVDs straight from china, warez, game consoles that come with like 200 game "backups" and a modchip installed and such - just goes to show how much they aren't policed or watched (they don't care, as long as can rake in the seller fees)

It's far too easy for sellers to ripoff buyers, and there's very little one can do when it happens (paypal will mostly ignore you, and your CC company will be no help as money went to paypal and that's not the actualy problem)

But there's way more problems with ebay:

-people listing tons of junk in unrelated categories sometimes making it a PITA to find what you're looking for

-overly inflated shipping prices - somewhat due to sellers wanting to pay lowe ebay fees, but some sellers seemingly just love to overcharge for shipping (and they don't have to reimburse that part if you'd return it or something)

-ebay being known by too much people - including newbies who seemingly don't know how much things cost, often outbidding me by ridiculous amounts, often paying more than full retail price of an item for a 2nd hand one with no warranty (not uncommon at all!)

-service being non-existant

-scammers buying positive feedback(! like anyone cares for that mp3...) and such, often from private auctions

-countless scam items for sale (get rich quick ebooks, high priced electronics for free, weight loss/herbal junk, etc)

-sellers that use it as a normal storefront for everything at everyday prices. People go there for DEALS or hard to find stuff - not for stuff you can find elsewhere (including locally), often cheaper...

-people bidding on their own items, overbidding you, just to drive your bid to its maximum, then give you a 2nd chance offer (they pay more seller fees, but you're likely paying a LOT more, and they get more feedback), often using private listings to hide their own bids

-a fair amount of rather disgusting stuff I'd rather not see (frilly sissy underwear? WTF?)

-bait-and-switch sellers (camera stores namely)... Either "we don't have it in stock but for 100$ more...", or you must buy overpriced accessories (was offered some accessories by a seller last week, the same 4$ cables from his website, but for 13$ each... Gee, thanks for the offer!)

-TOTALLY broken feedback system. So many things wrong with it it's not even funny: sellers that won't leave positive feedback before you leave them positive feedback, and will retaliate if you leave negative feedback to them for good reasons (a huge portion of sellers, that is), why should someone buying 100 items @ 0.01$ each have more feedback than me (~60) even though I've spent over 1000$ on ebay this month alone? Or why should someone with 200 transactions, 150 being positive, and 50 negative (eek!) still have a higher number? (percentage is shown besides # in smaller letters, but still!), or oner person selling/buying 100 1$ items (positive) and then scamming someone out of 500$+ (-1 feedback) can still have a 99% feedback (it ought to be money weighted)? And negative feedbacks are almost being replaced by "no feedback" in fear of reprisal by seller (leaving neg feeback too), so their "negative" feedback is artifically low. And the feedback system also ignores how long the account has been opened for.

-All the horror stories about paypal out there (some are quite scary)

Anyways. I'm not giving up completely on eBay as it's a good place to find some hard to find stuff sometimes, but I'd rather pay a little more to buy from a reputable source.