The End to the Paypal Drama

After a two in a half month battle I finally received my refund.  I had to be persistent and it also helped that my seller was a legit company.  Barnes and Noble communicated with me throughout the entire process.  They provided me with enough materials just in case I needed to take Paypal to court.  I was finally able to delete my account and say goodbye to Paypal forever.  Before I dismiss the Paypal discussion entirely I’m including some links for those deciding whether or not to use Paypal as well as some tips for those who find themselves in a situation similar to mine.

 

Paypal Tips:

File a complaint with the bbb.org right away

Always ask for the employee’s name and their id number

Try to get a reference number from both the seller and Paypal 

Force the seller to email you the credited transaction by staying on the phone line

After a couple phone calls have been made, start asking for a manager

Be polite (Yelling gets you nowhere)

Don’t start pointing fingers and begin participating in the blame game because everyone else is doing it and it gets you nowhere

Keep all records of your purchases until you receive your money

Record your conservations with both the seller and Paypal by using any software programs (that can record video and audio) or use some type of recording device

For those who are debating whether to use Paypal or not I recommend not to.  Paypal is good until you encounter a problem.  They do not take responsibility for most transactions and that is stated in their Legal Agreement.  If you encounter a problem with one of your orders Paypal feels you should deal with the seller directly.  If the seller is not a legit company you may be out of luck.

 

Here are some links you should take a look at when considering membership for the third party:

Understanding Paypal service agreement

I do not endorse the images and the name of the site.  However, this site provides a wealth of knowledge I could not find elsewhere.

http://www.screw-paypal.com/tos_exposed_section/tos_exposed.html

Highlights

http://www.screw-paypal.com/tos_exposed_section/tos_highlights.html

How Paypal works

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/emoney/emoney2.asp

http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/ebay101/ss/paypal101.htm

The History

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/paypal3.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal

Paypal Update

I last blogged about how frustrating it was to retrieve my refund from pay pal.  A lot of things went down over the past couple of weeks, and I had to cool off and focus on the election.  I had to think happy thoughts after dealing with Paypal for a while with no success. I will try to sum up my 2 week battle with the third party company.  Hopefully someone in the end will learn from my mistakes.

After I filed a complaint on bbb.org, I continued to make several calls to both Paypal and Barnes and Noble.  I had been dealing with Paypal for two and a half months and never received any direct emails about my situation.  However, one of their employees did contact me through the better business bureau.  I recommend if you are having difficulty with Paypal to take this step first.  It will save you some time.  Here is also a link where you can look at the companies history and rating.  

Right away the bbb emailed the next day:

Dear Mrs,

Thank you for contacting the Better Business Bureau. Your complaint was received by the BBB and has been assigned case# in our files. Please make a note of this number for future reference. Your complaint has been filed against the following company:

PayPal, Inc. (The company’s headquarters)
2211 N First St 
San Jose, CA 95131-2021

A copy of your complaint was sent to the company today and we have asked for a written reply within twenty days. As soon as a response is received a copy will be sent to you for your review. If your complaint is resolved we ask that you inform us immediately; otherwise, please wait until after November 13, 2008 to recontact our office about the status of your complaint.

We encourage you to use our online complaint system to check the status of your complaint. To view the details of your case please go to the following website address:

 

Below is what was sent to me on November 2, 2008 from Paypal:

Dear Debra,
Re: BBB Complaint#: 
I sincerely apologize for the difficulties you have encountered while using PayPal. The company values your business and I want to do everything possible to resolve this matter. I have reviewed your PayPal account and your recent inquiry to the Better Business Bureau. Please allow me to offer further explanation concerning your issue.

A review of your PayPal account, under the email address, indicates you authorized an order to Barnes and Nobles on August 23, 2008, for a total of  USD via Transaction ID . Unfortunately, PayPal is unable to process a refund without the merchant’s authorization or as a result of a Buyer Claim outcome. At this time, PayPal has not received authorization from the merchant and you have not filed any Non-Receipt Claim or Claims on the payment. 

You are able to file a Claim within the Resolution Center; however, the Claim will not have been filed within the 45 days timeframe outlined by the User Agreement. As such, we can not guarantee a refund. By filing a Claim on PayPal, an official notice will be sent to the merchant in effort to resolve the issue. If you do not want to file a Claim with PayPal, please work directly with the merchant to resolve this matter. 

Please keep in mind PayPal is merely a Payment Service Provider. PayPal acts as a payment service provider by creating, hosting, maintaining and providing our Service to you via the Internet. We do not have control over the products or services paid for using our Service. We cannot guarantee a buyer or a seller you are dealing with will complete the transaction.

Again, please accept my apology for any inconvenience that this situation may have caused. If you have any further questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to contact us at executiveoffice@paypal.com. 

Sincerely,

Executive Escalations
PayPal, an eBay Company

In her report, she regurgitated what the customer service reps were saying to me the whole time.  They kept blaming everyone else, they were not responsible, and I needed to file a claim which would not guarantee my refund.  

This does not make any sense!   Barnes and Noble did not directly have my credit information because I used Paypal to pay for a book.  How in the world  is Barnes and Noble going to send money to an account they do not have access to?  Why am I playing middle man? Why am I dealing with a company who is falsely advertising security when they careless about their customers’ transactions.  

This is how I responded to the executive of Paypal on the bbb website:

I never received my refund from Pay Pal. Barnes and Noble told me they sent various emails stating they gave me credit for canceling my item. Pay Pal claim they never receive any emails from Barnes and Noble. Two months went by and my husband notice Pay pal took out small amounts of money on various days which added up to the total cost of the cancelled item. Pay Pal want it to appear as if I bought other items at various times. Based on this, I concluded Pay Pal was going to take my money and run. Several calls were made to no avail and customer service is horrible.

I went further and emailed the executive directly.

Here is what I wrote:

Good morning ,

This email was sent to me by a manager named  who works in the BarnesandNoble customer service department. She usually works at 2:30 p.m.

The transaction number for the refund is .
One of your employees promised me a refund and his name is  and his id number is .  He would not give me a reference number for my refund.  He also would not give out an email so I could provide Paypal with this information.  (Employee’s name) and other staffers made it clear that Paypal was unwilling to contact BarnesandNoble to resolve the situation.

(Name of Executive) if you could be of any help I would greatly appreciate it.  Hope to hear from you soon!

Never heard from her.

To Be Continued….

Why I Am Never Using PayPal Again

The past two months has taught me a lot things about conducting online transactions.  In the month of August, I decided I wanted to purchase a book called, “Conditioning Agents for Hair and Skin.”  The price of the book was reduced tremendously because it was used.  In order for me to make the purchase, I had to use a third party financial source.  Without much thought I created an online account with Pay Pal.

I had heard of Pay Pal before so I did not hesitate to give them my information.  Everything was going alright until I got an email from Barnes and Noble stating the book I desired was no longer in stock.  I decided to cancel the order and get a refund.  

I waited a few days and decided to call the bookstore about the refund status.  Barnes and Noble proceeded to tell me I needed to wait two billing cycles before I could start asking questions.  A couple of days later I checked my refund status online again and the site claimed a refund was issued.  I thought to myself, “Okay, problem solved.” However my Pay Pal account showed the transaction was still in progress, and my banking account showed no history of a refund.

I called Barnes and Noble again and was informed again that I had to wait two billing cycles.  Two months passed by and I decided I had waited long enough. Several calls were made to both Barnes and Noble and Pay Pal.  The blame game began and I was caught in the middle with no sign of a solution.  Barnes and Noble offered to resend information to Pay Pal and send me an email with an update.  The bookstore disclosed the transaction number but I have yet to receive an email from Barnes and Noble.

Of course Pay Pal claimed they never received an email.  Various calls went out again, and the bookstore told me they sent Pay Pal an email in the morning.  I thought to myself, “I am glad this is finally over with.”  I immediately called Pay Pal on October 28 to finally get this aggravating monkey off me back.  This company had the nerve to say their employees were off due to a holiday.  The computer lady stated, “We want our employees to spend time with their families.”  The next thing you know the line disconnected.  I was left to deal with this situation another day.

I woke up the next day with the feeling that nothing was going to get done.  I checked my Pay Pal account again and they had changed the status of the refund to complete with a negative charge.  So I was charged for a book I never received.  Luckily, I documented my account information the day before.

My husband also checked our billing history for the past two months and noticed several transactions occurred from Pay Pal.  Basically, Pay Pal was trying to make things appear as if I bought several items and they magically totaled the one item I cancelled.  From this I concluded, “I am not getting my money back and there is little I could do about it.”

Here is what I have done so far.  I filed a complaint with www.bbb.org

Thank you for using the Better Business Bureau’s Online Complaint System.
Your complaint has been assigned case #. 
Correspondence regarding this complaint will be mailed to : 
Please print a copy of this for your records.

Filed on : October 29 2008

Filed by : 

Filed against : 
PayPal, Inc.
2211 N First St 
San Jose CA 95131-2021
url: www.paypal.com

Complaint Description:
I never received my refund from Pay Pal. Barnes and Noble told me they sent various emails stating they gave me credit for canceling my item. Pay Pal claim they never received any emails from Barnes and Noble. Two months went by and my husband noticed Pay pal took out small amounts of money on various days which added up to the total cost of the cancelled item. Pay Pal wanted it to appear as if I had bought several items at various times. Based on this, I concluded Pay Pal was going to take my money and run. Several calls were made to no avail and customer service is horrible.

Your Desired Resolution:
Give me my money back or we are going to take you to court.

This case will be reviewed by a complaint specialist at the Better Business Bureau, and then forwarded to the business for their response. It is our policy to allow the business 30 working days to respond to your complaint. You will be notified when the business has responded.