I hate PayPal, but am stuck with them

I sold something on eBay: Two transactions of $24 each from the same buyer.

The buyer confirmed receipt via e-mail to me, from his PP email address. No, I didn't use paypal's shipping service as I didn't want to pay $2 to ship a game key. Yes, it may have helped, but regardless I think this was handled like crap. The buyer also submitted positive feedback to the two items!!

The buyer initiated a chargeback weeks later. The buyer wins. This is BS... here is why:
- First and foremost, the buyer gave me positive feedback, and I showed a transcript of the email confirming the user received it, from his paypal email address!! Even if the PP account was hacked, the email may not have been
- Secondly, and I think this trumps all, and this is my major issue with PayPal... PAYPAL IS THE TRUST. PAYPAL IS THE MEDIUM, THE MEANS OF WHICH TO INITIATE A TRUSTED TRANSACTION. PayPal authorizes the credit card payments, not me. PayPal charges fees for all of this, so why must I be the one to lose $$? I think most, if not all of it, should be on them.
- Thirdly, and this is really screwed up on their part... they charged me a $20 fee for the dispute. $20 times 2 transactions is $40
- Fourth, I sent an email complaint to their complaint response team yesterday. I get an email back that there is a message in my message center, and it's blank

This company sucks. This company is a bunch of crooks. Disagree with me? I'm sure man would also agree. PayPal has monopolized the market and it's messed up. I hope there is a class action lawsuit against them someday b/c this isn't the first time this has happened to me, nor the last.

Why do I keep using PayPal? It's stupid that I still do, right? Not entirely... I still benefit more by using them b/c of how much more I can do with them. That's why I'm stuck with this piece of junk company.

I hate them, dearly. I have for a long time, but by leaving their service I'm only hurting myself more. Not giving them my business will have minimal affect on them, negligible actually.

Will I have better luck with Amazon? Selling on forums takes too long sometimes, and I want to just get rid of goods. I have too much stuff at home, so I resort to eBay when I want to move things quickly. Craiglist is hit or miss... I don't want to get into that either.

Here is my loss in a nutshell:
- Two items stolen, worth $24-25 each
- $40 fee charged by PayPal (2x $20)
- eBay fees
- Time
- Sanity

If PayPal was a person, I'd ask others to help me give it a blanket party.

AT WORST, PayPal shouldn't charge an added fee, and should also find out how to give my eBay funds back, but I bet PayPal and eBay separated as companies so they can screw people over even more.

Garo,

Welcome to the "Paypal Bend Over" club. They force you to use Paypal which Ebay owns as the
median for payments and then they charge their listing and additional Paypal fee to use it. I rarely sell on Ebay
anymore but I do buy from there on occasion and I always give due respect to sellers trying their best to please.

I have never gotten into any chargebacks like you have but with your sales volume you're bound to encounter
one which you have. There just is no explanation to me for the additional chargeback fees they put on you.

Did the key get revoked or something or is the buyer just trying to screw you over?

Bishoff said:

Did the key get revoked or something or is the buyer just trying to screw you over?

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Screwing me over. If you see his feedback, it's happened to others. I got it from Newegg brand new so I know it's legit.

My point really is that although I think the chargeback is PP's problem, there is no need to charge me the added $20 per transaction!!! That sounds nuts.

Imagine I bought something from a store with a stolen CC. Once the chargeback is done, should the store have to also pay fees to the CC company?

Im in this club also. I hate Paypal. Not going into my stories just know your not alone.

It's not just you, though I wasn't charged for the disputed transaction(I assume you were due to chargeback via credit card). In my case it was $100 and they simply initiated a dispute claiming they did not authorize payment, I sent Paypal the invoice I had sent the buyer as well as our chat logs showing an agreement with price, 2weeks later Paypal simply gave the $100 back stating "not enough evidence". Since I had used Ally bank as a linked account, I sent the information to Ally's fraud department along with all information I receive from Paypal, shortly after Ally credited my account $100 and told me they labeled the charge with "processing" as Fraudulent. And shortly after that, I received notification from a Paypal rep. that they were flagged for fraud due to a transaction on my PP account. I explained the situation and what steps I took, showed him the information I gathered (at this point it's like the 3rd time I've shown PP the same information), and he overturned the dispute and returned $100 into my PP so long as I contacted my bank to change the fraud case. So I contacted Ally again and told them to take back out the $100 they gave me since I got $100 back from PP (I'm not petty...) and explained to the Fraud rep's manager what PP had told me, and they said they would put it through in their system, but will still have it flagged on their end in the instance of further issue(s).

In the end it was only $100, but still... I could have put that $100 towards my school books, towards coffee (don't ask...), towards anything really. I use Paypal very often, and it sucks because PP is good at what it is, but once an issue arises and you are a seller, there is a 90% chance you are going to get boned.

This is why you never leave money in you paypal account and never give paypal more info then you need to use it. I had stuff like this pulled on me, but I always won even if paypal said I lost the case. Worst case I open a new paypal account. Funny that they let me use the same debit card etch time. haha

Anyway you don't have to use paypal on ebay.

Just today I began my journey on probs with fleabay.
I had made an offer on a motherboard that was of course less than the "Buy it now" price and the seller accepted the offer.
They were paid in full through PayPal and I have my receipt of payment of course.
Got a message the other day saying it would be Tuesday before they could ship it out, I replied and said "No prob" since I'm in no hurry for it.

Today they messaged me again indicating the cost of shipping was now over twice what it was - Shipping as part of the transaction was agreed upon and paid for was $11.55 and now they are saying it's going to be $28.00 - They actually wanted to know if I still wanted it!

I messaged them back saying I expect them to honor the deal as it was made and that I was already archiving every detail about the transaction. I looked to see if there was a way to report it but it's like chasing one's tail around in circles. No phone number or direct E-Mail addy to use. It was said if it didn't arrive after the 21st I could then do something and may have to, esp if I get a reply I don't like.

No prob to get my $$ back or even absorb the loss, to me it's about honoring a deal that was made in good faith.
Will let you guys know how things wash out.

UPDATE:
Got a reply saying they would give me the tracking number tomorrow - We'll see.

saturn said:

This is why you never leave money in you paypal account and never give paypal more info then you need to use it. I had stuff like this pulled on me, but I always won even if paypal said I lost the case. Worst case I open a new paypal account. Funny that they let me use the same debit card etch time. haha

Anyway you don't have to use paypal on ebay.

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See, I used to empty my account, but when I'm very active, it's harder... not to mention that if I decide to buy several things with paypal and paypal has $0 in it, I'd be making several bank transactions, which I'm limited to how many I can use.

I guess that's the whole point of linking a credit card, right?

Too bad there wasn't some way to get the keys de-activated.

I won't even know if they've been used... it's possible they aren't yet. If I activate them, I can't even sell them, so what's the point...

Johan45 said:

Too bad there wasn't some way to get the keys de-activated.

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g0dM@n said:

See, I used to empty my account, but when I'm very active, it's harder... not to mention that if I decide to buy several things with paypal and paypal has $0 in it, I'd be making several bank transactions, which I'm limited to how many I can use.

I guess that's the whole point of linking a credit card, right?

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Or a debit card. Like a prepay one.

FYI, I called PP b/c their message center is garbage and shows nothing in it (even though I've gotten 2 emails from them that there are messages waiting). Btw, the message center is HARD to find (unless it does come up for some of you in 'notifications', which for me it doesn't).

They're going to waive the two $20 fees. My time lost is worth much more, but finally after complaining I got something back that should never have been taken to begin with. I still lose out on the product, but whatever.

I also spoke with eBay and they said they're going to reverse the fees. Now I'll have to see if the keys were unused... who knows, but they're useless to me anyway.

I would just try and active the keys, screw the buyer out of screwing you so to say.
Or try calling the software maker or sorting and tell them what happened and see if they can revoke the key.

*slight necro bump*

Sorry to hear that PP and ebay screws another seller here. In a dispute they side with the buyer(crooked or not) and stab the seller in the back.

I am done with both ebay and Paypal.

I've passed on some nice deals in the OC classifieds due to the seller only accepting PP. I won't use them for anything.

I have to give you the "silver lining" speech here. At the end of the day, it sucks a LOT, but at least it was a relatively small amount of money.

I ran a kinda quasi home business doing some buying and selling of guitars. Some months, I made a killing. It was literally "free" money for me at the time. The problem was when I started doing international orders. Ironically, people in australia and england pay dramatically more than americans, so I opened business to overseas in certain markets. My first international sale was to a gentleman in norway (Ibanez RG2120x, bought for ~700, sold it for 1800). It went fabulous. My next sale was a pink 1992 EBMM EVH (bought it for 300$... which was absurd. Right place right time. Sold it for 2700$). A few more small ones here and there... and then... I had a wonderful, honest, fantastic buyer from australia hit me up about shipping, as he was planning on buying multiple guitars from me... So I said "yeah, i will combine shipping".

He bought and paid for them all.

He bought->
Ibanez J- Custom RG8570
EBMM Petrucci 7 BFR
Fender Deluxe Strat
Ibanez JS1
Ibanez JEM777VSK
Ibanez JEM77GMC

Now, I didn't buy these for personal use. These were out of pocket expenses to resell and make a profit. The REAL fun part was when i shipped them, australia doesn't have tracking like we do over here. So I Shipped them (~400$...)... and shipping showed them reaching australia. From there, they have their own system, and thats how it goes. About a week after I ship them, I check out the shipping info, and it shows it reaching australia pretty quickly. I was pretty happy. Until this wonderful man puts in a paypal claim immediately claiming to never have received them. He didn't even message me. I checked, triple checked. I took pictures of EVERYTHING, including my receipts and our chat messages, and immediately uploaded them. Paypal took almost no time in locking my account. About a week later, and lots of angry phone calls, they refunded him his money. That... was a lot of money. The kicker here... I STILL had to pay the ebay fees (10% lol), the paypal fees (5%), lost shipping, because the shipping manifests showed country of origin receipt, USPS would not reimburse me for the insurance claim, out the guitars, and out the sale money.

So yeah. I don't use paypal too much anymore (minus small or convenient payments[ thanks dad! lol]). I will not give paypal a dime until the day I die.

I sent an email complaint to their complaint response team yesterday. I get an email back that there is a message in my message center, and it's blank

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Any time I have an issue with PayPal, I Call them. The person on the line unwilling to help gets asked for a supervisor. If it don't work out my way the first time, I call back a day later. Be persistent, but be sure you talk to someone on the phone. Never write them. Call. Oh and same goes for e-bay, call them too. I'd call ebay first to make sure you have transactions worked out and they can tell paypal the mistakes.

Also, the buyer should have contacted you.

The buyer initiated a chargeback weeks later.

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It is BS. This is where your firepower comes in. The buyer didn't contact you and submitted an action that was unnecessary.

Curious! ebay and or paypal did not notify you of this charge back? Generally you get a notification before they push it through.

ShrimpBrime said:

Any time I have an issue with PayPal, I Call them. The person on the line unwilling to help gets asked for a supervisor. If it don't work out my way the first time, I call back a day later. Be persistent, but be sure you talk to someone on the phone. Never write them. Call. Oh and same goes for e-bay, call them too. I'd call ebay first to make sure you have transactions worked out and they can tell paypal the mistakes.

Also, the buyer should have contacted you.



It is BS. This is where your firepower comes in. The buyer didn't contact you and submitted an action that was unnecessary.

Curious! ebay and or paypal did not notify you of this charge back? Generally you get a notification before they push it through.

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Its absolutely **** poor how much buyer bias paypal has. For my case, the dude literally had no evidence other than "I didn't receive it". These guys ultimately know what they are doing, and they are scam artists at best.

What can you use instead of PayPal?