PPC Submitter : Monday, May 23, 2011, 16:22

PayPal told me that a fraudulent transaction was safe

As a seller of virtual goods for games I have to be heavy on the precautions without any real protection for my “intangible goods” from PayPal and one $200 sale was my biggest sale. It was big enough that in addition to my normal precautions of having both a security key and all game account details in the payment note I also decided to call PayPal once the money was in my account before I delivered my product, in order to confirm that the transaction was normal with nothing suspicious about it.

On calling PayPal and talking to the fraud people, I asked about my transaction to see if I could get more information about where it came from. I wanted to see if it matched up to what I already knew. Of course, I expected that they wouldn’t give me the IP address, but I asked if the location the transaction was made from was fine and in line with where the account was normally used and the answer was yes. PayPal also wouldn’t provide me with the phone number to call the owner of the account in question. I would have called since the registered address on the account was close, and a cheap local call would have been worth my peace of mind.

With the assurances from PayPal’s staff that it was a legitimate transaction, I went ahead and made delivery of the product (while still going through the rest of my precautions by recording the whole thing, only delivering the product to the account detailed by the payment note I write up, and refuse the transaction if they don’t attach it).

Two days later I notice my account is down $200, so I go to disputes and see that a chargeback has been opened against me for an “Unauthorised use” transaction. For me this was a big setback, since I resell and couldn’t move forward with no money left. I contacted PayPal and provided my extended video of the whole transaction, from first contact to generating the security key to put in the note.

I then call PayPal and explain to them the situation, how I called PayPal and who the operator was that I talked to before who told me the transaction was fine- and they even told me that that they had the recording of the call in question. So I was pretty satisfied that it would be resolved in my favour quickly.

I then look elsewhere for more information that might be useful to me. After a while I managed to find out from an admin on the site I used that the person I’d been in contact with had accessed the non PayPal site from New York; shock. I mulled over that.

When I saw that the dispute had been closed against me I called again; this time I was told that the staff member who’d told me it was a safe transaction had been reprimanded, and this time they were willing to confirm that the payment had been made from someone accessing the account from New York (this was one of the things they wouldn’t talk about the first time, claiming privacy laws).

None of them could explain to me how it could be considered that someone using an Australian account from New York was safe and even though it was their fault.  I went ahead with it they would accept no responsibility. Being told that the first phone recording no longer existed was like the final sucker punch.

You’d think inter-continental access would have counted as a red flag or something. Why can’t we be provided with some more information, like “Payment access location” in addition to the delivery address so we can see if they match up, a simple red flag for hacked accounts.

Submitted By:: Technophite

Location: Queensland – Australia

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