PayPal - Ebay Sellers Beware PayPal Allows Customers to be Fraudulent ripoff Omaha Nebraska, Mountain View and Palo Alto California

Hello Rip-Off Report and Fellow Ebay and Paypal Users. I am reporting this to let you know what happened to me with Paypal and Ebay's response to it.

On January 17, 2004 I sold a sofa on ebay and it was listed as pick-up only, buyer pays all shipping, or arrange for your own shipping. The winning bidder of this particular auction paid via Paypal almost immediately and I emailed customer requesting they contact me so that transaction could be completed, and received a mailer daemon not long after first email was sent, I sent her an invoice thru Ebay, and every other way possible and eventually the customer got back with me and immediately started complaining about the picking up of sofa.

I had listed this sofa as regional in Virginia, and she was not happy with my location, we went back and forth over how to get sofa to her, and I eventually caved and offered to pay for truck to deliver sofa to her if she would meet me in Richmond, Virginia which is a long expensive drive for me, and she turned that down, refused all offers and info sent to her for shipping, she eventually requested her money back and I sent her an email indicating auction was listed as all sales final and I deleted her bill she sent me thru Paypal.

A few days later she went to Paypal and reported me for non-receipt of sofa, when all along she was refusing to pay for shipping. At this point Paypal froze my account and stole all subsequent payments from me to pay her back.

In the meantime I am on the phone with Paypal and being told to pay her back or send a tracking # for proof of shipping. They told me they were not interested in any evidence that I held that this customer was a fraud and refusing to pay for shipping. I was told also by Paypal that I should choose my customers more carefully. I reminded them of the Ebay rule that I cannot be a non-selling (seller) meaning I cannot run auctions and selectively chose who I accept payment from. And as a side note they told me that even though account was frozen, that I could still use it, to send payments.

A few days later I had a payment I needed to send and I sent it to be pulled from my personal checking account in town. At that point they decided to steal the $232.35 that was still due on this complaint. Just by dumb luck, I had been on the phone with them about this complaint and then signed on to paypal to check the status when I discovered they had a pending transaction for the remainder of the disputed money and the payment I had made to someone else, thereby prompting me to go immediately to the bank to sign an affadavit stating I did not authorize the transaction to Paypal which I had not.

As could be expected the bank blocked the transaction but not without Paypal trying to slam there way into my checking account causing fees and a negative balance, which effectively left me with two accounts with negative balances and no money. About two days after the customer filed the complaint with Paypal, she emailed me indicating she had changed her mind and she wanted the sofa, and offered me a heart warming offer of I will meet you in Richmond, but I will not pay for your gasoline or the truck. Or she would pay $100 toward the cost of shipping which had been quoted between, $250-$500.

At this point I felt I had some leverage and called Paypal about this and they asked if I would email them this email which I did. In later phone conversations with them, it was indicated to me that they cannot and do not have a system of reporting fraud against a buyer, only the seller. And insisted on me paying the money back again.

At this point the buyer was emailing me a lot about getting arrangements made to meet in Richmond, when Paypal indicated to me that she was an unconfirmed buyer, and told me not to meet her with the sofa, that she could still hold me to the complaint and make me pay money back and then she would have the merchandise as well. I then did some investigating of my own and discovered the customer was signed up with Ebay with a dead email address, was showing two addresses one in Virginia Beach area, and one in South Carolina, and was operating under an email address that you only got if she emailed you.

So I reported all of this to Ebay and their final response was that I did not have to go outside of the boundaries set in the auction, but that they could not force her to complete the transaction, and that I would be considered fraudulent if I did not handle the situation.

Ebay owns Paypal, they eat and sleep together, but cannot work together. Which negates any rules set in my auction, which in my opinion means you are beholden to Paypal when paid by Paypal and noboby can help you when a situation hits the fan. They are in ultimate control of your business and finances, and there arm has pretty good reach, when it comes to your checking account, and Paypal loves to quote the (TOS) Terms of Service agreement and blame you from one end to the other.

Eventually I had to borrow the money to send back to Paypal to get account unfrozen and to get this situation out of my life, in the meantime, while waiting for funds to clear from my bank to Paypal account they sent me an email, indicating that they had ruled against me and had paid the customer back, and ended the email with This matter has been resolved amicably.

If I wasn't so broke financially I would have laughed at the final line in the email. However, when I checked the Paypal account to see if the money had cleared I was still showing a $9 negative balance, of which I called Paypal and asked why, and what the $9 was for, which I already knew. They had initially charged me $9 for being sent $300. So they charged me another $9 to send back money I did not authorize. Of course this occurs after they see that I have sent the money and it is pending, however they did not want to admit it was another fee. And had quoted me $208.08 as the amount owed to resolve the complaint, then they charged me the $9.

So I had to give the entire situation a rest and then one day in last month I got mad again and called them about the $9 negative and got very angry with first agent when she indicated I needed to pay the $9, and I requested another agent or higher authority, or supervisor, initially refused and then switched me over to another so called team leader which is not a supervisor, and went thru the same thing again and requested someone in management again. She kept asking me if she had answered all of my questions and I would say no, and it went round and round. She finally went dead silent and did not say anything but I knew she was still on the line so I went silent and this went on for about 10 minutes when all of a sudden I was switched over to another line with music playing for about another 10 minutes when all of a sudden someone answered and stated Ms.-- we are going to remove the $9 and your account will be at zero balance. In turn I stated that is fine, and he advised me on how to be safe with online payment transaction.

At this time, I am trying to find someone interested in hearing this story, I have contacted the FTC, Commonwealth Attorney here in Va. and Consumer Affairs which told me they cannot do anything about it, but had fowarded a copy of my complaint to Paypal and that I would have to sue in a court of law. I know that $300 is not a lot in comparison to what they have done to people that deal with much higher balances, but it is the principal of it all, and I had to sell the sofa to try and even survive in the month of January.

I am not a rich ebayer or a big player in the online auction world, but $300 is like $300,000 to me at this time. I would like to move on from this and say forget it, but this is wrong, they operate like a bank but do not have to adhere to banking laws. I also feel like that if they want to leave this open portal of fraud and they want these fraudulent customers paid back then they can do it with their own money not mine, my auction was final, which is normally the case in live or online auctions.

It turned out this customer was trying to get the sofa and the money back and was trying to get free shipping to boot. Very evil, Paypal is every fraudulent buyers dream, buy, or order online, receive the item and then report to Paypal they did not receive it.

Anyone interested in this case, or anybody have an idea how to sue without having any money upfront would be great. And please take this seriously if you are a seller online that uses Paypal, it is only a matter of time before they find some way to freeze your account and hold you liable. This also happens to sellers that are paid with a stolen credit card, which is not your fault but Paypal will decide that it is. Thank you Rip-Off report for this great way to report these cases. Also I have all emails and proof of this printed out.

Sandra
Roanoke, Virginia
U.S.A.

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