PayPal eBay PayPal is knowingly aiding and abetting fraud by users, and fraudulently induces users to forfeit credit card merchant protections Nationwide

First, PayPal has —for years— fraudulently induced buyers to forgoe the protections accorded to buyers by credit card merchants by reasoning that buyers are protected by PayPal's spurious Buyer Protection Program, and therefore should use bank withdrawals with peace of mind.  The actual purpose is so that PayPal avoids the merchant fees.  To accomplish this, all settings on PayPal payment submission screens are automatically transferred from eBay and defaults, such as name and shipping address, are retained —except one: the payment means.  

This field always defaults to bank account withdrawal by default, and cannot be overridden by the user.  The intnent here is that the user must affirmatively and manually change the payment typie to credit card, and that some users will submit paymnet forgetting to do this, which saves PayPal numerous merchant fees.  In my case, I have 87 eBay purchases in the last three months, and all but one of them I remembered to change to credit card payment.  Only one did I inadvertently submit without changing, and it happened to be the purchase discussed hereinbelow, which will illustrate the illusory PayPal Buyer Protection fraud.

In this case, PayPal has allowed an eBay seller, Kyong Ja Lee (ktstore2011), who claims to be registered in Australia, but who is actually in South Korea, to keep both the money paid for an item, and the returned item itself.

Through eBay and PayPal, I purchased a suit advertised to have a substantial wool content. My tailor inspected the suit and confirmed my suspicion that it was 100% sythetic (polyester or rayon), very thin, shiny, of poor quality, and poor construction.

I contacted Kyong Ja Lee to initiate a return. Lee instructed me to return item to an address in South Korea. I used USPS for shipment, and paid $25 in return shipping costs.

After many weeks had passed we received no refund. USPS provides tracking information only up until the departure from the country (it provides no tracking services within South Korea). I initiated a dispute with PayPal (which subsequently foreclosed any dispute remedy with eBay). PayPal found in Kyong Ja Lee’s favor because USPS does not show delivery confirmation.

A few days later, Lee acknowledged receipt of the suit through the eBay emailing system: “received complete your return item, so you want refund money? thanks”

I responded “Yes!”

Later that day Lee wrote, ‘hi thanks a lot and we will refund money expect $20 ts shipping price so we will refund money $125 check please it, thanks’

I forwarded these e-mails to PayPal, reminding them that the Buyer Protection Program requires a full reimbursement,  and does not permit the seller to withhold any monies for original shipping.  After all, the item that was sent to me was fraudulently represented as wool.  Under the Uniform Commercial Code, I should also have been entitled to consequential and incidental damages, including reimbursement of my return shipping expense, but this is not recongized by PayPal.

Several days passed, and I received no refund, but did receive an e-mail from PayPal indicating that it was following up with the seller, Kyong Ja Lee.

Nevertheless, PayPal informed me, several days later:

“Unfortunately, we can’t grant your claim appeal because we were unable to track your shipment and no response from seller regarding item receipt”

I have filed several putative "appeals," and received the identical form message above from “Presten,” “Cippy,” and “Julie” all of the purported “Protection Services” department (actually, the Seller Protection Services department, or Fraud Facilitation Department).

During a phone call with PayPal representative, I was told that the seller must confirm directly to PayPal that he has received the returned item. I.e., his e-mail sent through the eBay system is insufficient evidence, even though only Lee could have sent those e-mails unless I or someone else had stolen his eBay credentials, an allegation that has yet to be claimed. By evading PayPal’s inquiries, Kyong Ja Lee precludes any action against him. Because Lee will not respond to PayPal’s inquiries, PayPal claims it must therefore find in his favor.

As a result, Kyong Ja Lee (eBay user ktstore2011), who is selling polyester or rayon suits as wool with eBay's knowledge, now has both the money AND also the item, and I have spent $25 to return to the item to him for a total loss of $175, and neither eBay nor PayPal will take any action to enjoin Lee from perpetrating his continuing fraud.

This is my reward for being an eBay registered customer (both buyer and seller) since 1999.