Comments on: What has been your experience with filing a claim with PayPal?

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

sjvilla79 — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 19:59:22 -0800

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?

By: sjvilla79

sjvilla79 — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 19:59:51 -0800

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.

By: persona non grata

persona non grata — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:00:46 -0800

My expeerience has been that Pay Pal taxes with the iron fist. They are robbers.

By: boaz

boaz — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:05:13 -0800

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.

By: sian

sian — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:05:17 -0800

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.

By: nelvana

nelvana — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:08:59 -0800

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.

By: themadjuggler

themadjuggler — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:10:55 -0800

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.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:11:42 -0800

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.

By: misterbrandt

misterbrandt — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:16:43 -0800

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.

By: adipocere

adipocere — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:25:16 -0800

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.

By: Johnny Assay

Johnny Assay — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:33:18 -0800

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.

By: drstein

drstein — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:32:28 -0800

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.

By: oaf

oaf — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 22:09:27 -0800

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.

By: ostranenie

ostranenie — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 22:26:31 -0800

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.

By: ostranenie

ostranenie — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 22:32:11 -0800

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."

By: fenriq

fenriq — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 22:35:44 -0800

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.

By: boaz

boaz — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 22:36:08 -0800

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.

By: Freaky

Freaky — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 23:04:54 -0800

"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".

By: k8t

k8t — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 04:55:45 -0800

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.

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 06:35:42 -0800

If you get nowhere with e-mail, you can always try calling someone: Paypal Phone Numbers.

By: fishfucker

fishfucker — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:36:09 -0800

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.

By: sjvilla79

sjvilla79 — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 14:15:51 -0800

I got my refund. That was a quick response from PayPal though. Seller wasn't very happy.