What has been your experience with filing a claim with PayPal?

July 17, 2006 7:59 PM

What has been your experience with filing a claim with PayPal?

I purchased a CD on eBay and paid with PayPal. The total didn't amount to more than $10. The item never arrived at my postal address however and consequently I filed a claim with PayPal for reimbursement. What will be the likely outcome of this issue?

posted by sjvilla79 to shopping (21 comments total)

I should add that filing a claim with PayPal was only done after the person I bought the item from failed to acknowledge my contact requests.
posted by sjvilla79 at 7:59 PM on July 17, 2006

My expeerience has been that Pay Pal taxes with the iron fist. They are robbers.
posted by persona non grata at 8:00 PM on July 17, 2006

The likely outcome is that either the shipper will provide a delivery confirmation number to your registered shipping address, or you will get your money back. That's really all PayPal cares about on eBay auctions, that delivery confirmation number. If he's got one of those, then you're SOL; if he doesn't, then he's SOL.
posted by boaz at 8:05 PM on July 17, 2006

That's happened to me in the past with Ebay purchases and Paypal, each time, reimbursed me for the full price. I think that's because the seller up and left and didn't respond to Paypal's nagging, since they would never reply to me either.
posted by sian at 8:05 PM on July 17, 2006

What boaz said. Paypal tends to err on the side of the buyer. As well, if you paid with a credit card through Paypal, your credit card company will be quick to reverse the charge. I once disputed a charge with Mastercard as my eBay item never arrived and I waited too long to go through the Paypal dispute process. You simply fill out a form and the credit card company reverses the charge. You've done the right thing by starting with Paypal.
posted by nelvana at 8:08 PM on July 17, 2006

I bought a $250 hard drive and the seller dropped off the face of the earth. eBay gave me his phone number, it was disconnected. I filed claim with PayPal, they couldn't reached him either, I got my money back real quick.
posted by themadjuggler at 8:10 PM on July 17, 2006

If paypal does the whole black-mark-against-the-seller thing, the person will likely send the item and if not, issue a full refund.
posted by mathowie at 8:11 PM on July 17, 2006

I had a similar dispute (I can't remember what the item was, but paypal says it was ~$66) -- the seller sent me an email with a non-functional shipment tracking number, and after two weeks or so of no package and no response from the seller, I filed a claim with Paypal. Took a month to get it resolved in my favor.
posted by misterbrandt at 8:16 PM on July 17, 2006

I bought a music lot on eBay. I paid with PayPal and went for their satisfaction guaranteed extra charge. Well, I wasn't satisfied, and when I contacted PayPay, they basically said, "Oh, sorry, that doesn't apply to music, DVDs, etc." Never again.
posted by adipocere at 8:25 PM on July 17, 2006

I had a bad experience with PayPal a few months ago, using them to pay for a CD from a record label's website. The label sent me the wrong CD, and never returned my calls when I tried to contact them about it; when I tried to claim it with PayPal, they told me that they don't cover "items not as described" for purchases that aren't on eBay. I never did get my CD.
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:33 PM on July 17, 2006

PayPal will tell you to sod off because the amount isn't enough for them to bother with. Or they'll say that there's nothing that they can do.

eBay will say the same thing. My friend got ripped off on eBay before the PayPal purchase and they both told us "this isn't worth our time. sorry."

eBay sucks balls at actually helping customers. Here is the link to the story I'm referring to.

Oh, what the scammer didn't realize was that you can leave a URL in the feedback.

eBay did absolutely nothing, and the guy continued to scam other people for another 6 months before cancelling his account. The feedback page.

To answer your question, my experience with filing claims with PayPal has been a complete waste of time.
posted by drstein at 9:32 PM on July 17, 2006

As well, if you paid with a credit card through Paypal, your credit card company will be quick to reverse the charge.

Just beware that you will never be able to use that credit card with PayPal again, and you may no longer be able to use your PayPal account.
posted by oaf at 10:09 PM on July 17, 2006

PayPal's claim system works great, if you are patient and follow their rules.

The first thing you should do is read PayPal's policies on what they will and won't cover before signing up for an auction (especially a high-dollar auction). If you follow their policies and procedures (wait 'n' days before filing a claim, only items that you have not received are covered, etc.,), they will reimburse you for sure. I filed one claim about a month after I bought a cell phone and the seller stopped responding to my emails, and I presume they nagged him until he finally shipped it (with pictures of him flipping me the bird-ha!), so I withdrew the claim. His account was cancelled shortly after that, big surprise there.

A friend of a coworker of mine wasn't so lucky - he sold a laptop on eBay and the buyer arranged for local pickup (all through PayPal, appeared legitimate) and a few hours later the charges were reversed. Turns out the PayPal account that was used to pay for the laptop was hacked and PayPal refunded the money within hours to the hacked account holder. The seller was left out in the cold--because he didn't ship to a PayPal Guaranteed Address. Again, follow their rules (which are designed to keep you from having to file a claim, by preventing scams in the first place) and you will be okay.
posted by ostranenie at 10:26 PM on July 17, 2006

There's a certain amount of "buyer beware" policy you should always follow on eBay. Always, always, always check the feedback of sellers to make sure it's 95-100% positive. Don't buy from people who have new accounts or under 50 items sold unless it's an extremely hard-to-find item. You probably won't even have to worry about involving eBay or PayPal for a claim for a legitimate auction...it's the questionable sellers you have to worry about. Or as a pastor friend of mine used to say: "When in doubt, don't."
posted by ostranenie at 10:32 PM on July 17, 2006

I filed a successful claim against a guy who auctioned off a nicer GPS unit than I got. After I was contacted by someone else he did the same thing to and he never responded to my emails aside from one early on that read "Dude, you got a great deal, just be happy with it".

I didn't get all of my money back but I also got to keep my GPS unit so I was decently happy.

But I've been increasingly aggravated with Ebay's fees and then PayPal (owned by Ebay) getting their fees as well. Its lame and annoying.

Also, I'll echo ostranenie above, buy from reputable sellers and you will rarely get screwed.
posted by fenriq at 10:35 PM on July 17, 2006

PayPal's claim system works great, if you are patient and follow their rules.

PayPal's claim system works great, if you have exactly the problem that appears in one of their 3 checkboxes. The second you have to correspond with a human being, abandon all hope. they're, like eBay, a company whose service is useful and whose business practices vacillate between incompetent and odious. And since they've become part of eBay, that's only become more true.
posted by boaz at 10:36 PM on July 17, 2006

"filing a claim with PayPal was only done after the person I bought the item from failed to acknowledge my contact requests."

Yeah.. well, take that experience, and apply it directly to PayPal themselves. That's how they dealt with me, although only after closing my account for their usual vacuous reasons.

At least, I assume they were vacuous, like I said, "failed to acknowledge my contact requests".
posted by Freaky at 11:04 PM on July 17, 2006

PayPal has come through for me in these situations because it freezes the other user's account until the problem is resolved.

Just follow the rules and you'll be fine.
posted by k8t at 4:55 AM on July 18, 2006

If you get nowhere with e-mail, you can always try calling someone: Paypal Phone Numbers.
posted by Robot Johnny at 6:35 AM on July 18, 2006

Filed a claim with PayPal (via eBay) on an 11.25 item that I had purchased. They found that the seller had defrauded me, however, they do not make refunds under ... 25 dollars or something? So i got nothing.

My guess is that the same will happen to you.
posted by fishfucker at 12:36 PM on July 18, 2006

I got my refund. That was a quick response from PayPal though. Seller wasn't very happy.
posted by sjvilla79 at 2:15 PM on July 18, 2006