Question
I've had 3 disputes filed in the past 3 months.
1. Buyer gets a high dollar sterilizer. The sterilizer arrives and doesn't work. They don't e-mail me but immediately think to go to paypal and file a dispute. Boom, I'm down close to $800 in my paypal account and they got the machine which they claim not to be working. It ended with us both dropping the dispute and me refunding their money...still not sure if it wasn't really working but what am I gonna do, drive 500 miles to find out for sure?
2. Send a cheap item to France. After only 6 days I log into paypal and have a dispute filed because they haven't received their item. Thanks to ebay for their shipping estimates which are usually wrong but the bidders read and believe. This dispute is still going on.
3. Had a Bose system end last night for close to $700. This morning, not 14 hours after the auction ended, the winner is threatening me that they will file a paypal dispute if I don't get them the tracking information immediately. Hello!! The auction ended on a Sunday night and you're e-mailing me this on a Monday morning and the post office isn't even open!! I risked the negative on this and refunded their money.
I am so tired of this. I guess I'm willing to lose some bidders because I think I've had enough of Paypal. Any dishonest person could easily win something, pay with paypal, file a dispute, and as far as I can tell the seller is out the money. Am I missing something here? Is there some way for the seller to win in these situations? If there is, I'm certainly not seeing it.
Very frustrating....
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Its frustrating me, just reading it. Why didn't paypal require buyer no. 1 to return the "broken" item? After experiencing no. 2, I probably wouldn't ship overseas (maybe I should rethink that I will ship to Canada). With bidder no. 3, I'd probably wait until the very last minute literally (what is it, 90 days) to give feedback on the buyer, then rate him HONESTLY to warn other sellers that he's nuts. If you wait until the last minute, if he hasn't already dinged you, he won't realize in time to retaliate. But shrug, he probably will.
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I've bought and sold via PP since it's inception. I've never once had to file a complaint.. nor have I ever had one filed against me.
Guess it's luck of the draw.
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I paid for a Item 9/26 . emailed seller 10/9 I emailed seller asking about it , no reponse
10/16 filed with paypal
10/18 he shipped , I received it 10/20
second time Ive done that it does seem to shake sellers up a bit and get results .
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I was one of the first customers(seems like another lifetime ago lol) and I've not had a claim filed against me. I have, however, had to file against 2 sellers if I remember right(1 of them didn't have enough $ so I didn't get it all back) and the second responded with only the words F* off-don't think paypal liked that-got all of my $ back
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Originally Posted by mommygonecrazy
I was one of the first customers(seems like another lifetime ago lol) and I've not had a claim filed against me. I have, however, had to file against 2 sellers if I remember right(1 of them didn't have enough $ so I didn't get it all back) and the second responded with only the words F* off-don't think paypal liked that-got all of my $ back
Sounds like a very intelligent individual
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Oh, the sellers sometimes win. I won a large lot of supposedly like-new horse books from a seller with around 150 fb, all positive, for around $50. They arrived covered in black mold. Plus I'd paid $50 for Fedex shipping that was clearly stated in the ad. It was worth it to me to get have them sent via a trackable method and to arrive quickly. They arrived two weeks later by Media Mail for $7.
I emailed the seller and I was actually pretty calm. She offered me some empty ink cartridges in lieu of a refund. Seriously. She started flipping out in email and becoming quite profane. The email correspondence was going nowhere. So I filed a dispute with Paypal-I took detailed pictures of the books, how they differed from the pictures in the ad, and how some were even missing. I also took pictures of the postage sticker and label. I wrote a straight-forward case of how what I received was significantly different from what was in the ad. I also included her nasty emails, to which I'd not responded in kind. I thought it was pretty open-and-shut, particularly with black, fuzz covered books.
Wrong. They wanted me to take the books to a licensed appraiser, and they ignored the shipping issue completely. I'd spent a lot of time with the psychotic emails, taking pics and with the write-up already and had pretty much decided not to throw any more money at this, but thought I'd talk to an appraiser anyway. Did some calling around and there isn't a licensed book appraiser within a hundred miles from me. This was from a suburb of Seattle, not some remote area.
She won. I negged her, she negged me (my buying ID, big deal). That was it. I just looked and it appears she was NARU'D a few months after all this, so who knows what else happened. She could've really done some damage to someone with a mold allergy. I never even brought the things in the house.
Thanks for that buyer protection, Paypal.
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Boy, reading all this, makes me realize how blessed I've been (thus far, crosses fingers) both buying and selling on ebay. Even when I've been pissed off because the seller's paypal account was shut down when they said they took it or because a box arrived practically falling apart, it was nothing to these experiences.
But it seems to me like Paypal's decisions have been pretty consistent. The wrongdoer always wins.
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These experiences sound awful. You sure run into the crazy folks during the ebay experience - some work for ebay, some work for paypal and some are buyers! And it does sound like paypal hasn't much sense as to deciding these. I haven't had one yet - knock on wood. Maryanne
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PayPal usually sides with the person who is backed up by a Credit Card company or who is willing to make a complaint to a financial ombudsman (UK & several other countries). PayPal seldom investigate the merits of a case as it takes time and ties up valuable resources. As many have noticed PayPal has started putting up more obstacles for buyers trying to recover money from sellers (third party appraisals, police reports), and more recent, no longer allowing sellers to deny payments from high-risk buyers.
Traditional payment alternatives are starting to look very tempting and much safer!