We sold a large amount of t-shirts during the World Cup 2010. Because most of our t-shirts were personalized with Name and Number the orders took up to 7 days to finish as stated on our auctions. Of course lots of people wanted their items more or less straight away because they payed with PayPal. Basically those persons that didn’t receive their T-shirt before the next game simply made complaints to Paypal. Whether it was just one day later after ordering or in one case they complained 2 hours later!

Paypal has 2 zones in the Resolution Center, ‘Open cases’ and ‘requiring your action’ which I call the ‘Redzone’. After 5 regular complaints have been made every following complaint can go straight in to the ‘Redzone’! Handling the cases in the redzone is quite simple all you have to do is put your shipping number in there… That’s if you have a shipping number. However…

Being forced to sell everything as cheap as possible in Ebay we also send all our t-shirts with the regular postal service, without tracking numbers! So what do you do? Nothing because there is nothing you can do except call PayPal and mention the problem, and that’s exactly what we did and we were told not to worry and everything would be alright. In fact I called daily just to let them know what our status was and remind them over and over again that we are contacting our customers through email.

The complaints were mainly to do with t-shirts not being received, so to make all my customers happy I decided to send everyone that complained a second t-shirt free! Even this was told numerous times to Paypal. They then told us to make an Excel table with all the resolutions made and even gave us a special email address. In the meantime PayPal froze our account, but even here we were told not to worry as we shall have access to our account soon. In fact, they claimed it was just being proofed. I even recieved a call from a ‘high roller’ at Paypal and we talked for 45minutes or so. Everything was friendly and she also assured me that there would be no problem and that I would be able to access my account very shortly.

In the meantime, some buyers were getting their money back even though we had sent out 2 t-shirts and they had ordered custom made t-shirts which have no moneyback guarantee. Even here Paypal told me not to worry because I still have 10 days time to claim my money back. The next time that I contacted PayPal I was told that I was made an offer of 300 Euros by one of the customers, and I declined because it was almost 1000 Euros that had wrongfully been sent back.

I’m guessing that lots of the buyers knew what to do and simply ripped us off through PAYPAL. The strategy used was to first claim not to have received anything, then as we sent them out a second shirt via’ registered Post they simply changed their status from “item not received” to “Item doesn’t match the description”. This way they simply got their money back straight away and we were done out of 2 t-shirts and any money for them!

Then, to make things better, you cant even send money back to genuine buyers through Paypal. So lots of those buyers gave us negative feedback in eBay!

We were still told not to worry and that everything would be resolved, at this point I was calling 3-4 times a day just to be safe. Then the games started, from one second to the next I was told that they needed papers of proof, we all know the stories. Of course I sent them everything they asked for. I was also told multiple times that the account would be made free and that employees were working on it as we spoke!

Then I was promised a call back from the highest department possible. This I was promised day for day, week for week. Till they finally closed my account without any notice.

With over 6000 Euros gone my life is practically over with. We are in the middle of moving and all my belongings are in the new rental house, and the new tenant is moving in to our current rental. Our problem is now, without the money for the down payment, we cant move in to the new house! All our money is in our frozen Paypal account! To make matters worse, when we told the bank the truth about the situation they removed our overdraft protection!

We’re basically screwed and have nowhere to go. We dont even have any relatives in Germany, and have no way to get anywhere else. We have a 12 year old son who we can no longer feed. I have never ever in my life thought that my life could change so fast!

Thanks PAYPAL for making me homeless!!!

Submitted By Marc M.