Stephens Story

I was scammed (paypal transaction and local pickup followed by payment reversal less than 5 minutes after leaving my house) on Monday this week (18th) and paypal reversed the transaction on Wednesday even after I found out and told them that the scammers had done this to two other people the week before using the same account! Paypal must have known that this account had two previous fraudulent payment notices so why did they :

1 Continue to perform transactions on behalf of the account holder?

2 Reverse my transaction so quickly despite telling me that they would hold the money for up to a month whilst investigating my claim of fraud?

All paypal have done is check that they don’t have to pay under their seller protection policy and reversed the transaction. If I had ignored their mails they would have waited longer perhaps.

I find it strange that they assume that I (and the other two e-bayers) am guilty of fraud but not the other party. Presumably this is to preserve their own charge back rate with the banks. But then they will provide no help for me to try to trace the thieves either.

I find it strange that they don’t give me the choice when taking paypal not to allow visa or even a clear warning that the payment is unsafe? In fact a buyer of mine rang paypal and was told that once the payment was in his paypal account the money was safe, this was clearly untrue!

Has anyone ever managed to get Paypal to help in an investigation of this type?

NoPaypal says:
Hi Stephen, I know of one merchant who had his account suspended completely because a fraudster bought goods from him and used a stolen credit card. Although the seller was an honest legitimate business user, Paypals logic was that the goods he sells must be "attracting" the wrong sort of buyer (ie fraudsters) so he got booted out! Paypal are a law unto themselves.