PayPal are used by many, they are in fact run by eBay.....but like many web sites......they are not always what they seem to be.
PayPal are money movers mainly handling finance for deals brokered on the e-bay site and others where goods are bought online, web premiums, host payments and much more, they are to many a kind of bank that will pay the seller on your behalf while you subscribe to them the use of your bank account to pay them, usually on a monthly basis. They have your bank details and take care of what looks like to be a good service. But that's not the entire picture, even though they have a policy to put things right when a seller doesn't deal fairly, they have a major flaw of failing to support the buyer when it comes to tech giants and big commercial concerns, and the use of 'sorry' and 'apologies' along with misunderstanding and errors is so often used that they become meaningless....but they don't somehow see this......there are many tales of how they've gone wrong and have had to be pushed to own up to their complete lack of customer integrity......and for a start we will feature Seven of these.........so read on.
'TRANSACTION I HAD NOT MADE' PayPal allow payout £271.99 for something not ordered
Stephen Hobson was shocked to see that PayPal had done a transaction to the House of Fraser without his knowledge, and nor had he ordered anything. Apparently they looked into his claim when he put in an official complaint ....and they turned it down!
He made an appeal against this decision and was told there had been an 'inconsistency' and that a full refund would be made?.......only to find shortly after that PayPal had gone against this and denied him a refund.
It was only after someone more notable contacted PayPal that they 'reconsidered' the matter and agreed to credit Mr Hobson's account with all the money he had lost.
They finally arrived at the conclusion that Mr Hobson's account was subject to an unauthorised transaction!
'PAYPAL TAKES £797.99 FROM MY ACCOUNT WITHOUT TELLING ME' Yes it is very similar to the above especially as the recipient of the transaction was yet again House of Fraser? which raises some questions....Mr Terry Wall got an e-mail from PayPal saying they had paid out £797.99 for items from the shop.....he naturally suspected fraud and PayPal.....and pointed out to them it was not authorised to pay out this sum.....they arrogantly denied this and said that he had. Which sadly is not amazing or a one off, there are other PayPal horror stories of account misuse by this lot. Luckily for Mr Wall someone acted for him and they reconsidered their former decision and did a U-turn and refunded him the full amount.....they said the claim from him was 'mistakenly denied' another one of those glib remarks that these companies use all too frequently.
It was noticeable that they made no mention of The House of Fraser....where the money went on both occasions!
'PAYPAL GO TO UNUSUAL LENGTHS TO IGNORE CLAIMANT' This account is quite shocking in that PayPal 'barred' a complainant by barring her telephone number.....The woman who made a transaction through her PayPal account in regard to ordering and paying for flight tickets, suffered four months of 'harassment' from PayPal when she tried to get her money back after she was tricked by the flight bookers...and staff at PayPal responded by ignoring her calls and letters, and on the one occasion they did reply they said the matter was up to her and she should sort this out.........obviously the caring Company really do know how to treat customers concerns?
'PAYPAL HELP HOST COMPANY TO STEAL £77.28' Facilitated comes to mind here as the PayPal company fail yet again in customer care. This concerned GO DADDY the web host company that merely invoiced paypal for a subscription they were not entitled to. In fact the customer had closed an account with them 2 years earlier and they received a notification by e-mail saying that they owed no more money as the man had chosen to leave and cancel. Yet through a system they generated an automatic renewal and seized £77.28 they were not entitled to, and Paypal merely 'rubber-stamped' the transaction and paid without notifying the customer. When the matter was brought to their attention they declined being responsible and said that the transaction 'looked okay'.....hence they 'facilitated' a fraud by GO DADDY.
'PAYPAL DECLINE TO HELP IN E-BAY PURCHASE' Strange that, because E-bay own PayPal, so there could be villainy afoot here. Hannah Firth bought a shed on E-bay for £227.....a metal shed that almost fell to bits because it had missing parts, and was poor quality too. Apparently after contact E-bay offered a refund, but failed to meet this obligation....and stopped all contact with the purchaser. They raised the issue with PayPal who didn't seem to have anybody qualified enough to understand the problem, and could not recognise it as a problem. Despite telling PayPal it was an 8 foot shed, they insisted it should be sent back, and only in those circumstances could they authorise a refund. The customer now being caught in the 'loop' was told to go to E-Bay who agreed a refund, but followed this with go to PayPal, But PayPal tiresomely said -- return the shed....even the customer's bank, LLOYDS failed miserably (not for the first time in a PayPal case)......PayPal had washed their hands over the issue.........in the end, both PayPal and E-Bay failed the customer and the bank being named and shamed, stumped up the refund saying it was a good will gesture.....RUBBISH!
'SCAMMED AND PAYPAL LET IT HAPPEN' Yes, they facilitated a sort of robbery even though they didn't do it visually, they just let someone rob it from a customer. The customer woke up to find she had a warning about a suspicious transaction. it was for £170.94....paid to Zalando SE. The customer had never heard of this company nor had they purchased anything. They immediately contacted PayPal and told them it was an unauthorised transaction. Considering this day was August the 6th, the customer's bank account showed the payment pending, and the money was deducted from the customer's account on the 7th. PayPal went onto decided that in its opinion, the payment to this company was not unauthorised and therefore would not provide a refund. The customer actually contacted 'Action Fraud' the unit set up by the police, but as we have already discovered in our research, they are pretty useless. Being fobbed off and brushed aside by PayPal whilst being a customer is bad enough....and after consulting a customer watchdog, PayPal was forced to relook at the case, and agreed that the customer had been a victim of fraud and refunded the money.
'£680 TAKEN FROM CUSTOMER'S ACCOUNT' in yet another PayPal case, John Dalgliesh of Dumfries suddenly became another victim when he received an e-mail from PayPal saying he had made a £679.99 purchase from a fashion firm. Of course he hadn't, so he contacted PayPal immediately telling them he had not placed any order with the firm or bought anything. He put in a claim for his money to be refunded....heard nothing for a while, and was then denied his money back with PayPal saying they had investigated it and found nothing unusual and had deducted the money. Mr Dalgliesh was not happy at this reply or their attitude. Contacting a Consumer specialist, PayPal finally admitted the customer was not at fault and refunded the whole amount they had deducted. They actually claimed that his claim for a refund had been 'mistakenly denied'
whilst we are on about domains and web hosts, we also discovered that these web companies had full access to a person's paypal account and password without most people's knowledge!
SO AS YOU CAN SEE, THEY TREAT SECURITY WITH A CERTAIN DEGREE OF CONTEMPT.
We shall return soon with some more tales of PayPal horror stories they don't like us to show......but that won't stop us from putting them up here.