So I'm on another forum and there's always a new "PAYPAL SUCKS" thread every week about how so and so got scammed for $XXX dollars despite doing everything by the book.  This latest thread is an "old" scam but I'm not sure how you'd beat it.  Is there anyone here with experience on the issue?

You can read about the thread here if you're bored, but I'm posting cliffs:

http://www.honda-tech.com/showthr...

Cliffs:
Seller sells a header to an international buyer for $531.35 shipped
Buyer claims it doesn't fit and wants a full refund (despite seller having VERY CLEAR fitment instructions in the auction)
Seller refuses a refund since item was sold "NEW" and is now opened and was attempted to install on car.
Paypal tells buyer to send item back for a full refund from the paypal claim.
Seller receives and empty box (well actually contained a shirt and tissues) with signature confirmation and buyer is issued a full refund.
Buyer now has part installed on his car without spending a penny.

Even better, the seller claims to do about 20k worth of transactions with paypal on a monthly basis and paypal still screwed him over.  He's trying to orchestrate some class action lawsuit, but I'm a bit skeptical as he's probably just extremely pissed right now.  I told him if he went through with it I'd contribute $20 to the cause.

I told him that he may have been able to beat the claim if he opened it at the Post Office and had a notarized letter from an employee stating the contents.  Seller should have known since the sent package was 32 lbs. and the received package was about 1lb.  Paypal still did not consider this sufficent to win the claim.

Am I crazy here or could this happen to anyone?

I have heard of it happening before. The main problem for him is it is international. I would never ship something that expensive overseas. (to someone unknown)

It would be different if it was a us buyer

^ But how? Why would that have any bearing on the situation? I'd like to think that it does too, but I can't really support that argument.

Here's a great Paypal story for you. I've only told Erik this one before.

So, I made a deal to buy some games from a guy. Great. He sends me his PayPal email address. Great. I fire open PayPal and type his address in manually and send money. Great.

So I ask him to confirm that he got my payment. Hmmm... It didn't arrive. Well... okay, we'll give it another hour just in case. So... an hour later... nothing.

I check the transaction details again... I got a receipt for the money sent... What is going on??? So I look at the details CAREFULLY this time... SON OF A .... I typed the email address wrong and sent it to a SIMILAR address (example - If you were nationalgamezdepot with a Z, and I sent payment to nationalgamesdepot with an S, because that's how NORMAL people spell...)

Anyways, So I immediately filed a dispute, and resent the money to the correct address. However, I call PayPal so I can get my money back on the original transaction.

They tell me that they have to contact the "seller" to open the dispute. WAIT... WHAT? What seller? There is no seller? So, they can't get him on the phone, so they place a "HOLD" on the money... Okay fair enough... He can't take the money and run when he sees it in his account.

So, Paypal says that the "seller" who may or may not even be alive or checking his PayPal balance has to manually send me a refund because I accidentally sent him money... Uhhh sure??

So... a week goes by... NOTHING. I call up again. SAME STORY...

I wait until I can escalate into a claim and immediately do. NO RESPONSE FROM "SELLER". I call PayPal AGAIN. They ask me why I am looking for a refund. SERIOUSLY??? DID YOU EVEN READ THE CASE NOTES??? The lady had the nerve to ask me if I had sent the item back. WHAT ITEM??????

The call was ended and I still didn't have my money back. Fine, I'll just wait until the claim expires and PayPal will decide in my favor and I'll get it back. So I wait another week / 10 days or whatever.

YOU HAVE BEEN REFUNDED. GREAT! I open the email up. WE WERE NOT ABLE TO RECOVER ALL OF YOUR FUNDS. WAIT... WHHHHAAAAAAATTTT? How is that even possible?

And another phone call begins. The lady tried to tell me that they couldn't get all of the money because of the exchange rate. Uhhh... No lady, you are an idiot. Give me the money back, seriously. Get a manager, get his boss, get Mr. PayPal. I don't care. So I go on hold for about 25 minutes. Finally, they come back and FULLY refund me.

So, lesson learned. It took almost 5 weeks to get my money back on something so simple.

Hooray!

Moral of the story is, if someone is returning something videotape you opening the package.

That JUST happened to me recently - moral of the story is to make sure your are EXACTLY right when typing in who you send $$ to - that was horrible - and it took me weeks to get my money back

Man, you guys are just giving me more and more reasons NOT to sign up for paypal. I am sure there are hundreds of thousands of people that have zero problems with them everyday, but still not going to do it.

I don't think the problem lies with paypal, it lies with eBay monopolizing the check out system and forcing Paypal down your throats. If they accepted Google checkout (among others) then Paypal would actually have to step up their customer service due to competition.

However, eBay owns paypal so paypal fees = more money for eBay. They won't give that up until there is some sort of class action lawsuit which is inevitable at this point.

I think these issues are more symptomatic of 'eBayers'. I've done thousands of transactions through PayPal and only had 1 bogus claim, and PayPal refunded their money without retracting the payment from me.

Honestly don't let these horror stories give you a bad perspective on paypal. I've had three problems with paypal, 2 were claims (won both), and other one I sent CAN funds rather US, the seller cancelled and now the money is in a "hold account" for ~8 business days.

Most of the bad stories though paypal usually endup the same way, that is we (the users on the forum etc) end up getting back what they put in, the only annoying thing is these things take time.

Use paypal, its great for online transactions, just be careful what you type in lol. Look at the topic creators problem could have been diverted by typing the write address as well as with me the right currency.

The problem from the first post is no big deal, the buyer can still receive money back. Just requires more leg work. In cases like these, Paypal will send the seller an affidavit that the seller must sign, stating that they did not receive the item they shipped. In some cases, probably like this one, Paypal requires that the seller file a report with police. In numerous phone conversations with them it has been explained to me that these steps are in place because in most cases a seller who is lying will not sign his name to the affidavit or file the police report, so if seller does comply, he will in almost every case receive the money back.


PS- I found this out because of a lot DKOldies bought from me under my liquidation account on ebay. When he got it and alot of the good titles were not in terrific shape, he filed a claim and shipped most of the 200+ games back, but kept the ones he wanted. He was pretty desperate right before he left ebay for good.

hey joney! capt. pats is right. for one thing, unless you are shipping via express mail ,ups ,or fed ex, there is no way to track packages shipped overseas ( even to or neighbors in canada for whom i must say their postal service has stepped it up since my early days of online selling and buying). the buyer could have easiiy said he did not get the package;placing the burden of proof on the seller. you can fax all of the receipts in the world to show that the item was shipped. if ther is no confirmation of delivery, 9.9 times out of ten, pay pal will rule in favor of the buyer.

 we roll the pay pal death dice each time something is shipped overseas. even if an item is shipped to someone we trust or with a good rep, we run the risk of someone getting their hands on the package ; other than the person it was sent to. alot of ebay newbies(who got in the game during the buy the ps3 and flip it for big money) got burnt because they were too cheap to kick in the extra .75 cents for delivery confirmation.then again, alot of buyers have fallen victim to the same scam in reverse(someone shipping a dud in the box matching the same weight as the item purchased proof of delivery was confirmed and pay pal ruled in either direction depending on the mood mr. pay pal(i just had to use it battymo) was in.alot of vets learned the hard way by telling individuals they are responsible for footing the extra money for tracking; not knowing that pay pal loves to ask the magic question; what is the tracking #?

 the dude is pulling 20k a month via paypal and sleazy bay. he needs to think twice as the mighty pay pal gods can ice all of his money for an indefinite period of time with no way or no one to stop them. moreover, if ebay can suspend one of best buds with flawless feedback for selling two megadrive games and crying about not endorsing the sales of software for import or modded systems, i am sure they can find someway to shut down an international auto parts dealer. even thought its the principality of thangs,he needs to consider it a loss, suck it up and move on. don't kill your cow in the effort to get the bottle of milk little johnny stole from the dairy.

one problem remains pedro; pay pal looks to dip into the buyer's account to get the dough back. if the buyer/scammer closes his account and bank account, pay pal will shoot you some half ass story about funds not being available to grant a full refund.

And whats weird about this is if you go into ebay and select the type of bidders you want to block, you can block bidders who do not have paypal accounts. WTF? If ebay is making you accept paypal for every transactions, then WTF let a buyer sign up and not have a paypal account???

This is why everything I sell states "returns NOT accepted". Not because I am scamming but just to protect myself and I never ship anything w/out dc even on trading sites.

Heres a good story. My ebay account is 8 years old yes 8!!!!! A few months ago I sold a snes. The system was yellowed and had mario all stars and mario world. Buyer send me a message stating.

"I received the system the other day and upon opening it was not satisfied with the contents. The picture you placed on your page did not have any cracks or broken pieces and did not show the true color of the system (clean in picture, yellow and aged upon receipt). The damage done, including cracks and broken pieces, was not done during shipping as nothing was within the box that showed this to be the case. I made the bid solely based upon the picture as your listing did not describe the condition of the items.

The item was listed with a no return policy, but as the picture was completely misleading, I would either like a refund or get an item that accurately matches the picture. I took some pictures of the system and can send them if you would like to see how the system looks."

I replied that the system was the one in pic and and it was yellow. He argued w/me that my pic was not yellowed, untill i said he was blind if he couldn't see the gray section in the middle was different than the outer casing.

He then got mad and gave me a negative. Ebay removed his comment but left the negative. Thanks ebay for the support. 8 years positive feedback and this is how you repay us. 

You can say returns not accepted, but so long as you use Paypal, you must accept returns that they arbitrate. Just because you say something in an auction listing, doesn't make it so. Your agreement to accept PP overrides anything you put in your listing.

Also I've got to say, they do look an awful lot alike, and it seems the SNES just got bashed in shipment. I'm looking at the nick just to the right-front corner of the eject button that shows up in both pics. Also just over the player-2 port I see the same flaw in both pics.

Yeah, it looks like the flash may have brightened up the pic but you can tell the system is disolored. I can see where some of the cracks were on the system even before the system was shipped but not sure I would have noticed them had the other picture not been brought to my attention. I use a stock photo of the worst system I have and tell in the description that they will get the best condition system I have and not necessarily the same one in the pic.

I noticed the chip in the second playe control port as well.  If you ask me, that looks like it's the same system.

I know what you are saying I thought it was mine as well. I however believe he changed my top porion out as mine had a small chip in middle top there bewtween control ports (the white spot show the chip) in his it is not there.

The fact he said it could not have been done in shipping was the reason I didn't offer anything as mine had a few chips in it. If he actually thought I was selling a system that looked like that thats just rediculous. If he received that it definitely happened in shipping.

He made it sound like he was more so upset over the color in the addition emails where if he had received a system like that He should not be complaining about the color that thing is shot!

Onto the topic about PP as long as you ship w/dc you are covered so they can't file a dispute.

edit: also want to point out he never sent me that pic. He posted it after i refused a refund based on his argument. I grabbed it from the link he posted on my negative feedback.

They certainly can, they just cannot file "item not received." They can file "significantly not as described" and force a return/exchange situation.

I was under impression as long as dc was used you are covered.

DC isn't a panacea for sending crappy stuff. Not saying that's what you did, but it would be easy for people selling high-end ipods to just ship sweet potatoes with a DC# on it and scam the living fuck out of everyone. You probably want to review your seller protection policy on Paypal's site.

Plus if the postal worker forgets to scan the package upon delivery (it happens (not as much as it used to)) You can get screwed as well. Some buyers check out that stuff

Hoesntly I've had my fair share of paypal problems too, but I've managed to solve all of them by simply calling paypal over and over until I get some help. The best is when they tell you that they can't help you, and you tell them that your just going to call right back, talk to another rep, and inevitably come across someone who WILL help you. Then you mention you know this, because you've done it hundreds of times.

I remember telling this to a woman over the phone who was being super-stubborn over a minor issue, and she gave a disgruntled sigh and told me to hold. I thought I might be in trouble, but when she came back but a minute or two later she said, "Your refund has been issued, is there anything else I can help you with?"

I don't sell alot on ebay anymore anyhow. Everything annoys me about them and paypal. I prefer selling on sites such as this where I don't have to pay to send people multiple pics and huge pics showing detail. It also keeps games cheaper for everyone avoiding fees.