Question
This is a new one for me. Bought some gas on the PayPal debit no probs. Transaction shows up on PayPal. About a week later, the transaction is reversed with the item marked expired. Whoo hoo free gas!! Or is it? Will this transaction be resubmitted by the merchant or am I scott free? (Tried to insert party smilie here but it isn't working)
I keep my PayPal acount balance quite low so I don't want to be stung by this transaction coming back at me a couple of weeks later when I'm on vacation (spending my 40 bucks out of PayPal) and not watching. Thanks for your experienced retorts.
Answer
I think you'd better keep the cash in there until the bookkeepers and accountants and auditors get done with the gas stations records. They'll resubmit it whenever they figure out where the shortage is....
At least that's what I'd do...
Answer
had that happen once with a charge from the PO They resubmited about 2 weeks later.
Answer
This happened once to the DH (I don't keep any money in my PP acct ever). Our banker told us the regulation is 24 hrs to resubmit ... however, PP claims not to be under ETF regs. Sorry, I guess this really doesn't help. He never heard another word about it and got the groceries for "free".
Answer
Thanks guys. I guess I'll keep the funds in there just in case. I don't usually get gas from that station and I only got 10 bucks because I wasn't sure if my DW had gone shopping on ebay so I didn't want to test the card. Now I wish I had filled er up and I will make sure I do next time I go there.
Answer
Sometimes a retailer's system will submit an 'initial amount' to your debit/credit card, pending later verification or correction. If the amount is corrected or otherwise resubmitted, the initial amount submitted is allowed to expire.
(This is often used by hotels, etc where they submit a pending charge to your account, but then submit a different final amount when you check out including room service charges added, etc)
Check your PayPal account history to see if there was a later amount submitted by this same retailer for this same purchase.
Answer
Thanks Summerbee! Your suggestion prompted me to download my history and do some analysis. I now understand the PayPal process much more completely, and in fact, the refund was owed to me and looks like a PayPal error!
In detail:
Usually when I make a purchase my PayPal shows a debit right away for the purchase amount (converted from $CDN to $US). It turns out after looking at the details that this initial purchase amount is always creditted back after a few days and a new, somewhat greater amount, is immediately debitted from the account.
Example:
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In this particular transaction the credit back to the acount of the initial amount happened a few days after the account was debitted the second time instead of immediately.
Example:
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So I was all excited about getting something for free when in fact they owed it to me all along. Oh well. Shows how much attention I'm paying!