Paypal Dispute Suggestions Needed

[Bill Howard]

Yes they will take it from your checking account, Remember you have to CERTIFY a Pay Pal account in order to get funds from it, When you certify your Pay Pal account they have ALL they need to get ALL of your funds you OK'd It in the FINE PRINT>> so example you sell someone a Sho Bud for 2000.00 you may have 800.00 in Checking account oK total 2800.00 The Guy doesn't LIKE the Sho Bud or Used it for a month long tour someplace then decides I will send it BACK"(Because HE CAN)
You get your road HARD (Rode Hard) Steel BACK you have spent your account down to 2100.00 Pay Pal will Nearly EMPTY your account you have 100.00 bucks left a steel with scratches on it, Maybe you wrote other checks,Now all at once You have Checks bouncing everywhere those $30 $50 and $90.00 Checks are costing you 28.00 a PIECE or MORE ...You have an OVERDRAWN Account and a Scratched up Steel Guitar or maybe it even got BROKEN in the deal like my banjo... NO BIG DEAL to PAY PAL
To BAD for your LUCK!, Empty Account Empty OVERDRAWN account because someone Scammed you VIA Pay Pal.
No Thanks Been there DONE that!.

[Robert Jette]

Same thing happened to me today. Fortunately the seller noticed the mistake and refunded me. Unfortunately, the money is not in my Paypal account or my bank (yet). I read the Paypal help page & found out that it may take up to 30 days to receive my refund. Wow...

[steve takacs]

Bill, if I have no money in my Paypal account and I have not authorized them to take money out for a transaction, I do not see how they can dip into my bank account. What exactly does Paypal's "fine print" say on this?

I do understand that if I make a purchase and my Paypal account is low that they can go into my bank account and make up the difference of money in my Paypal account and the balance I owe.
As a last resort, what if I tell my bank to stop any funds going to Paypal?

If what you say is true, I certainly will not be selling any instruments on EBAY. I rarely do now and only as a last resort.
Thanks for you input. stevet

[Brian Echenberg]

paypal or ebay can do whatever they want with impunity. If you dont like it, go sue them and good luck.

[Bruce Derr]

This thread has been eye-opening and will certainly affect if/how I do business with eBay and PayPal in the future.

This appears to me to be partially caused by eBay's change in feedback policy of a few years back. Sellers can no longer leave feedback for buyers unless it is positive.

[steve takacs]

Brian, well at least in one case, Paypal did not do what it wanted according to James Quakenbush:
I wish you luck getting your money back, and if they don't give it back , threaten them by telling them that you have contacted the Attorney General of your state ..... My money came back to me in a week !!.....But this was after going thru the due process of filing a LONG PROCESS with PayPal which they STILL denied ..... If you don't fight it , they just keep the money
I'm still curious to read this fine print that says Paypal can dip into a person's bank checking account without one's permission.
Thanks Bruce, I was not aware of this change by EBAY in feedback policy which protects buyers. Certainly looks like I will be using it less than I did in the past.
steve t

[Bruce Derr]

The change in eBay policy was designed to prevent retaliatory feedback from sellers, which is a good thing, but apparently this new type of theft is an unfortunate side effect.

[Paul Hokanson]

I agree with the people that think Pay Pal sucks. Some people swear by it some swear at it. One of my pet peaves is that their rules and agreement say's, The 3,5 or whatever the fee is, is the SELLERS responsability, not the BUYer's. Yet most sellers here and all other places charge the buyer. pay-pal doesn't do anything about it. If I purchase anything I send a Postal Money Order. The Fee for that is $1.10 and I'll gladly pay that and it is traceable. More and more formites are asking for money orders, and most of the time they have to go to the post office anyway and the P.O. will cash it, so will your bank etc. NO Waiting for your money. A money Order is paid for in cash only, and I do not know of anyone or at least have not heard of anyone trying to counterfit a Money Order. If the seller says Pay Pal only, then I just go elsewhere. Needless to say I do not use e-bay anymore.

[Stephen Cordingley]

I've had experiences with Paypal/Ebay damages/returns only as a buyer.

My thoughts:
1. The buyer doesn't get away scot free from a damaged item, as the buyer has to pay return shipping. This is money purely down the drain, as you end up with no item and only your original costs in return. (I'm assuming the buyer is doing a legit return of a genuinely damaged item.)

2. If the seller buys insurance (which is a pain to collect), doesn't the seller end up with the auction price (and shipping costs?); doesn't the broken item become property of the insurer?

3. The insurance option isn't great for the buyer, as the buyer is expected to get repair quotes, then send the item back. I've found some businesses are less than enthusiastic about doing estimates on repairs they will never get paid to do, and may even charge the buyer for the estimate. This is understandable, but makes it harder for the buyer to complete the process in a timely fashion.

4. Items DO get damaged in shipping. Sometimes this is due to poor packaging and shipping methods by the seller, and sometimes it is due to the shipper. Personally, I believe that the future value of vintage music gear is guaranteed to remain high, as UPS is steadily diminishing the supply, one broken piece at a time.

5. The Ebay/Paypal system is tilted in favour of the buyer, but it used to be risky to buy stuff on Ebay under the old system. I can understand people's discontentment with Ebay and criminals; I am much more reluctant to purchase this way than I used to be. Having stuff shown up broken sucks for the buyer, too.

[Dennis Saydak]

In case people aren't aware, here is a website of interest:

http://paypalsucks.com/

[David Biggers]

Paypal is no longer happy with me making paypal payments with my debt card they now want a direct link with all my passwords for my bank account.

HA!

I am never going to release my username and password to my bank account to anyone anywhere for any reason.

I won't even do this for a member of the bank!

I am not going to be allowed to buy anything from ebay again.

Their loss not mine.

[CrowBear Schmitt]

i've been hip to the link that Dennis has given us
check it out it's scary but purty darn truthful
paypal does blow !
they sure know how to drown the fish
paypal might be handy fer folks like me from overseas but they charge me when i sell & WHEN I BUY TOO !
Sooooo, i've cut back & use paypal as little as possible
guess i've been lucky i have'nt experienced any grief......yet

[Hal Braun]

Paypal is no longer happy with me making paypal payments with my debt card they now want a direct link with all my passwords for my bank account.

HA!

I am never going to release my username and password to my bank account to anyone anywhere for any reason.

I won't even do this for a member of the bank!

I am not going to be allowed to buy anything from ebay again.

Their loss not mine.

I set up a separate checking account just for Paypal and other online transactions.. and I have an "online" credit card attached to that account. Both have very low limits, so if they are exposed for some reason (hacked) they are firewalled from my primary accounts.. and they cannot get much.. The card and account are insured, and I know I will get the money back, it is just a question of being out the $$ for some period of time.. so I limit that exposure.

Anyone that pays bills online with a credit card should consider this. Remember to tell the bank you do NOT want it linked to your other accounts, you do not want overdraft and automatic limit updates (they will keep raising your credit line!)

That said, I have been using ebay and paypal for years, I had one dishonest seller on a transaction that did not refund my money after I returned the goods, and paypal refunded the money to my account. Took a few weeks, but it was handled.

My only real gripe with Paypal are the high fees they collect..

[Lee Cecil]

David Biggers,

What you describe sounds more like a "phishing" scam than a legitimate message from PayPal. I have a direct bank draft set up with PayPal, accomplished through routing and account numbers, and that is standard procedure, but what you describe sounds like a request for your online banking login information. That can't be legitimate. If you received that request in an email, you should check the message source code to verify that it originated from PayPal. Over the years, I have received several obviously fake emails from scammers purporting to be PayPal.

[Steve Ahola]

Once you have become "verified" by linking your PP account to a real checking account, I have heard that they can withdraw money from that checking account if there is a problem with a PP transaction.

I avoided verification until last December when I hit the $10,000 purchase limit for unverified accounts. I did not want to give them access to my checking account so the other option was to apply for a PayPal credit card which I did. Only they STILL needed to access my checking account. Damn, my plan didn't work.

They did not ask for a username or password(?!?), but just the account and routing number. They then deposited a small random amount of money into that account- I forget the rest of the details. I think I had to tell them what amount was deposited to confirm that it was my account.

BTW I recently learned that the eBay/PayPal "protection plan" can be completely worthless. I ordered an ebook cover which was sent via USPS. According to the tracking information it was delivered to my front door but I never received it. I assume it was either delivered to the wrong house or stolen from my front porch. In any case I did not get something I paid for using PayPal and figured that they would credit me the $14 towards a future purchase. (Hell they had already rec'd the processing fees for $10K of purchases I had made over the years.)
Nope. They never pay anything out of their own pocket- for them to refund the money to me they would have to get the seller to agree to cover it first.

FWIW I have dealt with Amazon in the same situation and they have sent me a second shipment no charge.

[Curt Langston]

After reading all the potential pitfalls, this has become my motto.




I'm closing my PayPal. Been burned once.

[Ron Page]

We like PayPal and use it a fair amount.

Steve, that's pretty interesting that they trusted you all the way until you'd spend 10-large. Suddenly, you became high-risk?

I second the suggestions of logging into your PP account and checking the transaction history.

[Steve Ahola]

Steve, that's pretty interesting that they trusted you all the way until you'd spend 10-large. Suddenly, you became high-risk?

I think that the limit was originally about $2k but they kept raising it before I finally hit it. Their definition of "verified" is totally whack. I used to deal with accounts in my job and once a customer paid their bill promptly a few times you would boost their limit (rather than starting off with a high limit and then getting burned). In other words their payment history verified that they would be a good customer. PayPal wants to sink their claws into everybody's checking account.

It took me quite awhile to find their phone number for customer service (they like to keep that on strictly a "need to know" basis ) but here it is:
1-888-221-1161

As long as everything is running smoothly their service makes it much easier to shop on-line. It is when you run into problems that your relationship with PayPal might start to get "complicated". I have no problem using a credit card on-line with an established business, but in many cases you really don't know anything about the seller. In that regard PayPal has been one of the reasons that the smaller internet sellers are doing a lot of business that they weren't getting 5 or 10 years ago.

BTW it is fairly safe to use a credit card anywhere- if stolen or hacked you are only responsible for the first $50 of unauthorized charges, and many banks will even waive that amount. If you use a debit card as a credit card you do not get that protection which is determined by the type of account it is and not the way the transaction was rung up. If someone hacks into the account associated with the debit card the bank has no obligation to cover the losses.

[D.C. Williams]

Steve wrote: "It is when you run into problems that your relationship with PayPal might start to get "complicated"."

That's exactly correct. If you get to a point where you need them to act fairly and responsibly, the chance that they will drops dramatically. Most users don't know that they can place a hold on any funds in your PP account for any reason whatsoever and hold them for up to SIX MONTHS. You have no recourse at all - logical reasoning, written proof, and even outright pleas to release your money fall on deaf ears. They have "policies" and they don't shive a git about anything else. Even if a problem arises with your buyer and a different seller, that can be sufficient for them to reverse YOUR completely unrelated transaction with that buyer and hold his payment funds (that would be your money) for up to six loooong months while the buyer gets to keep the item.

The thing to remember about PP is that they're in it for themselves above all else. If they have to inconvenience, abuse, or rape a customer to accomplish that goal, they will do so without hesitation. It's all about protecting their own interest. Some self-interest is necessary in any business, but when they feel their money is at risk, they will run you over without so much as a blink. No other "financial institution" or service can do what they do and get away with it.

I dealt with them many years ago (before they were owned by ebay) and left as a very dissatisfied customer. A number of years later, I thought I'd try it again under the new ownership. Stupid me. All they've done is consolidate power now that it's the mandatory payment method for ebay sellers. And like so many other things in our society these days, it's all done under the guise of being "safer" and "for your own good and protection" when it's really just to line their own pockets as much as possible.

After probably a thousand very successful net transactions over the past 16 years, I have never been violated, abused, scammed, and/or ripped off by all of the other buyers and sellers COMBINED (maybe 5 or 6 times) as I have been by PP.

Never, ever again. Not. Ever. Never.

There are only two kinds of PP users: 1) people like me who have been through this, and 2)people who haven't yet but will be if they use it long and often enough. When it happens to you, I hope you will remember reading this and that you had been warned.

[steve takacs]

I have heard enough in this thread to know I won't be using Paypal or EBAY unless I'm familiar with, and trust the buyer or seller. There comes a point when a business protecting one's own interest could end up harming it's interest if a business' increasingly gets a bad reputation. I still do not see how Paypal can dip into a person's bank account without permission of the person who owns the account. stevet

[b0b]

PayPal works well for my business. I've been using it every day for over a decade and have had only 2 problems, both of them very minor. One of them was my fault (I entered the wrong number for my own credit card), and the other would have been resolved quickly if I had shipped with a tracking number.

PayPal is a godsend for international payments. Before PayPal, customers had to get international money orders or bank drafts and mail them to me. Now the payment is instantaneous, and I can often ship items the same day.

PayPal has never taken money from my bank account without my involvement, but I can see how that could happen if 1) you have your bank account set up as your funding source, and 2) you don't enough money in your PayPal account to cover a purchase. If both of those things are true, PayPal would automatically use your bank account to fund your purchase. That's what you authorized when you set up your bank account as a funding source. Most people use a credit card as their funding source, and in those cases PayPal doesn't touch the bank account.

Mrs. Lee buys things via PayPal with her checking account as the funding source. She likes it because she doesn't have to give small, untrusted vendors her debit card number. If she plans to make several purchases, she transfers money from her bank account to her PayPal account in advance. She has had problems with vendors, but nothing that was "PayPal's fault". PayPal is predictable and reliable for this sort of activity.

I think that most of the problems that people have with PayPal involve 1-on-1 transactions between strangers, where neither person has a real good understanding of how PayPal works. Sometimes people's expectations exceed the system's working parameters. People make the same kinds of mistakes when they assume that a Postal Money Order is 100% safe, for example, or that a Cashier's Check is guaranteed to be good. Every system has its weak points. You have to understand that going into a any deal.

[Steve Ahola]

I still do not see how Paypal can dip into a person's bank account without permission of the person who owns the account.

To get verified I had to give them the routing number and account number of my checking account. Whenever I make a PP purchase the default funding source is that checking account, which I have to change manually each time. If I didn't change that it would be taking the money from my checking acct- just like is done when I do on-line payments for my bills (some of which are automatic). There is evidently an element of trust in there, since those payments are made only when I authorize them, although an unscrupulous company could dip in there anytime if they really wanted to.
With 20-20 hindsight I see that I should have set up a second checking account with a small balance at a different bank and used that to verify my PayPal account.

[Bill Moran]

Paypal is no longer happy with me making paypal payments with my debt card they now want a direct link with all my passwords for my bank account.

HA!

I am never going to release my username and password to my bank account to anyone anywhere for any reason.

I won't even do this for a member of the bank!

I am not going to be allowed to buy anything from ebay again.

Their loss not mine.

I have a account at my credit union I use only for Pay Pal. Only a few bucks in it.

[D.C. Williams]

I agree with b0b's comments above. As with computers, life is great in PP land when it works exactly as it's supposed to work and exactly as you experienced in many prior transactions. But when things go wrong, they can really go wrong in a very major way, and it's the seller who gets bloodied 99.99% of the time.

For small transactions (especially international payments), what PP usually delivers is more than acceptable, especially for small transactions. Their transaction scrutiny is lower for relatively small amounts. A ~$20 loss with PP wouldn't deter me from using the service simply because of the convenience. Unfortunately, they will not tell you in advance where a transaction amount or circumstance is likely to trip some internal security trigger and would be elevated to "full schizo nazi body cavity exam" mode. You find out after they've already impounded your funds or taken other unilateral action that you (as the seller) are powerless to reverse. Meanwhile, your item is likely out of your hands, too. I had to wait a long 6 months for almost $3K to be released despite USPS Express Mail proof of delivery and the happy buyer and I both pleading with them to release it. Their response? "Read the PP terms of service to which you agreed - we are entitled to do that". "Why?" was answered with "we can't disclose that for security reasons." It was eventually released, and that was the last I will ever have to do with them again.

What's most disturbing is the phenomenon that the larger the amount of the transaction and/or the more you need them to act normally and not start inventing reasons to deviate from their usual procedures, the less likely they are to do that in my experience. And to top it off, if you're dealing with some loose wingnut on the other end of the transaction (which you really can't control on ebay unless you knew the person was a toad from a previous deal and had blocked him from bidding in your auctions), you're obligated to complete the sale and take your chances. It's always a joy to get a post-auction e-mail from the winning bidder that starts with something like "Listen - before I pay, I forgot to ask you about that guitar . . . it comes with a lifetime supply of strings, right?" or some other hint the person is going to be a serious problem. PP can even impound funds sent to a seller before the item is shipped, demand that the seller ship the item, and hold the money pending delivery . . . or maybe for the rest of their self-allotted 6 month period if they feel like doing so. All this fun and you've got someone on the other end of the deal that you wouldn't allow to pick up your garbage on trash day with police supervision. In a world where people are stealing copper electrical wiring that has live voltage still applied, just imagine what could happen to your guitar or vintage Fender Twin.

And if you don't, won't, or can't back out of that rotten situation, you're the only one with skin in the game. Once he gets your item and damages it, guts it, plays it hard for a week and then decides to return it because wifey found out and is pissed, or makes up some other lie to PP to get a refund, the seller may have no recourse except in civil court. Good luck with that, and send me a postcard letting me know how much fun you're not having.

With PP, you're obligated to do things their way and they expect you to smile and like it. I'm one of those people whose normally-high threshold of pain was not only crossed but completely obliterated in the process. A little bit of sanity and equitable dispute resolution would go a long way toward providing a dependable and reliable service, but you won't find a trace of either of those things even remotely connected to PP.

[b0b]

I'd think twice about using PayPal for large transactions, mainly because their fee is pretty high. I'd much rather take or send a personal check if the deal is over $500.