PPC Submitter : Sunday, May 1, 2011, 17:38

PayPal Buyer Purposely Disputes Wrong Transaction

An important thing all Sellers need to know regarding PayPal’s Non-receipt Claim Process that recently happened to us. We were lucky it happened with a customer we’ve done business with for some time, so we trust that our customer is in fact telling the truth and never received delivery. We are happy to reship the items as USPS has taken responsibility for the missing packages and will reimburse us “eventually”, that helps too.

Our customer is located overseas which compounds this issue with a 30-45 day delivery via cheap regular First Class Parcel Mail the customer chooses to always use, but the circumstances and PayPal’s response to the issue would be the same regardless and that is the important thing to remember.

Long story short (as short as I can make it anyway), our customer waited the usual 30-45 days and when his parcels did not arrive he was understandably concerned. When he could not reach us via e-mail (we had to be out of town for a couple of weeks unexpectedly for family issues) he was understandably upset and chose to file a claim with PayPal. Since the transaction was beyond the 45 day grace period PayPal denied the claim according to their standard policy that claims have an “Expiration Date” and need to be filed before that date.

Now this is the interesting part, so be sure to pay close attention. Since we’ve done business with this customer multiple times, including recently. He chose to file the same exact claim “but against a more recent transaction (within the 45 days allowed) that had absolutely nothing to do with the packages he had not received” and he clearly explained in his complaint it was a claim against an older transaction invoiced and paid via PayPal over 45 days ago.

Now, one would think PayPal as sophisticated and diligent as they are, would say “Whoa”, you can’t file a claim for an “old transaction” against a totally different and unrelated “new transaction” and place the funds from the new transaction on hold to offset the funds for the older transaction that has gone past its expiration date for filing a claim. But nope, that’s not the way it works at PayPal!

Yes in fact, the funds from the more recent transaction, which is not even the same dollar amount, are now being held by PayPal until I can reship the packages that USPS lost. Which, as I mentioned earlier I’m more than happy to do for this customer. But that does not ease my concern about it happening with a customer I do not know as well, especially after getting PayPal’s response below.

After discussing this with PayPal both on the phone and via e-mail the “first” response I received said the following (note the comment I underlined):

“The buyer would need to drop the claim in order to place the funds back
into your account. There would be no tracking that you could provide on
the transaction in question due to being the wrong transaction. I
apologize for this situation and will add notes to the case that you
emailed today.”

My response back to PayPal was:

“Thanks for the quick response, much appreciated!

But just to clarify, it is ok for a customer to file a claim against an unrelated transaction and hold funds? Doesn’t seem quite right to me”.

PayPal’s Response back to me was:

“Thank you for contacting PayPal with your recent question.

Unfortunately the system does not know that the buyer is filing a
dispute on an unrelated transaction, so it will act as if the dispute is
regarding the transaction it was filed against. We would not know as
well until we are contacted by you and notes are made. The bummer is
that the case is now created and we need to work the case in order to
find the best resolution. I did see that the previous agent made the
notes in the case on your behalf.

Thanks for sharing your concerns with us. We value what you have to say,
and we know situations like this can be difficult. If you have more
questions, visit our Help Center by clicking “Help” in the top right
corner of any PayPal page”.

Attention Seller’s, it truly is “Seller Beware” when PayPal ignores its own policies because their “claim systems” which are suppose to be monitored, reviewed, and controlled by humans cannot either stop or “fix after the fact” someone from filing a claim against a transaction that not only has nothing at all to do with the original purchase. Again we were lucky, this was and still is a good customer that was concerned and we dropped the ball unfortunately communicating with him.

But, what if it wasn’t? Now we have to re-ship the missing parcels, which we are happy to do, and hope that PayPal considers the claim settle when we provide them “new tracking numbers” for the re-ship and releases the funds. Or, as stated above the customer must “drop the claim” to release the funds, which we hope he does and believe he will. In the meantime, the funds for the most recent transaction, that again had nothing to do with the older transaction, which should be available to pay for and ship the new product ordered are still on hold with PayPal’s blessing.

We have been a customer and fan of PayPal’s service and customer support for many years, and believe it or not still are even after this because we have to take some responsibility ourselves due to an unfortunate series of events and poor communication on our part for the problem to have gotten far enough along to warrant a Non-receipt Claim. But go figure, ya gotta love being an online seller don’t you. Could you imagine the same or similar scenario in a brick and mortar store and how it would play out?

Thanks for reading my “rant” and watch your back, someone has to!

Submitted By:: SMD

Location: Ranier, Minnesota

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