PAYPAL Users Beware

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RJ Guitars
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by RJ Guitars »

telentubes wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 2:53 am...
PayPal has tens of thousands of complaints just like these. Not the kind of business I can support.
This is the part that I found to be shocking. How can they possibly expect to be considered as a legitimate business with this kind of poor customer service... not just bad customer service but it's not that much of a stretch to consider it as criminal behavior.

For this particular transaction in my life, the buyer had his credit card take over the resolution process with PAYPAL and he covered the costs to me in a different manner. It is too bizarre that you can have two sources in a misunderstanding that use modern communications to figure it out in a few days while the official mediator robs funds from both parties and sits on them while posting a cryptic message that they literally need months to resolve this. Meanwhile they make no effort to assure either party they are working on it.

It begs the question, is PAYPAL in a chaotic death spiral with millions of dollars in frozen assets that belong to their trusting users?
Last edited by RJ Guitars on Fri Sep 22, 2017 3:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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RJ Guitars
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by RJ Guitars »

:?:
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M Fowler
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by M Fowler »

Sounds like I'm done with Paypal, so don't ask me to pay you rj with paypal in future transactions. I'll mail you a check and wait for it to clear before you send my goods just like old days.

Mark
newking70
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by newking70 »

good grief, tell him to use that $400 and go buy a pair of balls. :evil:
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67plexi
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by 67plexi »

Now I only use PayPal for chump change items now,this summer I had 3 transactions The seller's canceled the order's and they held my funds for week's.

If you shake hand's with the devil you better count your fingers.
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NickC
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by NickC »

telentubes wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 2:53 am ....... Here is how it went down in my situation. The way it was explained to me by one of their "supervisors" was that they have a rating system for all sales, and only have protection for the highest rated. So if your transaction is sketchy in any way, it has a low rating and it is NOT protected. So my question to them was, "Why don't you indicate to the seller when you think a sale may be sketchy"? (I throw in here the amazing amount of personal information I had to give to PayPal to get an account. All the stuff your parents tell you not to give out. All the information they needed to keep me "safe") .Their answer was... "Oh, we rate the sales AFTER they go through, and if they go south, we lower the rating to one that has no protection or recourse, and we don't tell you what the original rating was". PayPal's whole marketing shtick is "safety", and sorry folks, but it's nothing more than a marketing ploy, a scam.
PayPal has tens of thousands of complaints just like these. Not the kind of business I can support.

There is a book by Joseph Heller about that particular way of thinking .............. Catch 22. Great book; recommended reading to any and all!

There is also a passage in George Orwell's Animal Farm that displays the same warped thought process: All animals are created equal, but some are MORE equal than others.

Yes, my experience is that eBay and PayPal are entirely slanted towards whatever is most profitable for them; buyers and sellers exist to enrich them and there is NO protection unless it somehow benefits them.
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RJ Guitars
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by RJ Guitars »

So finally, I got my money although the buyer eventually had to have American Express battle with PAYPAL to just cancel the payment and I got a check directly from him for the amount robbed from my account. So in PAYPAL's perspective it was indeed an unauthorized charge. I guess I finally raised enough trouble with them that a rep started to email me back every time I sent them a message indicating they had the worst customer service support on the planet. He said he had been trying to call me but yet didn't mention which phone number he was calling or leave me his number... not sure I believe him.

Verse two
: two days ago I get hit for $9.99 charge from Google Play. I look at the transaction details and there is no info and I had not initiated any transaction with anybody at Google for as long as I can remember. I dunno what it is why it is or anything else, it just says Google Play. So I an curious what this Dispute process looks like from the other side of the fence and go to the dispute window and I dispute it... they hold the money and put it into the dispute system. Here it is two days later and I get a message saying "Dispute Denied"... only took two days.

I'm still not sure what that charge is, I saw some message on my phone that I was signed off of the Google account on my phone. So I am beginning to suspect it is an annual charge for Google Play services on my phone. I don't recall asking for any update on those services but it's not impossible I missed some annual fee User agreement thing in the past. It could be my bad, I just don't recall the transaction. At any rate, it only took two days to get Google their money and meanwhile I'll see if I can undo whatever is screwed up on my phone... but it still works at least.

So as soon as I can figure out an alternative, I am going to go forward with my plans to kill PAYPAL. Apparently they can do whatever they want to and don't have to explain anything and it's starting to feel a little bit scary allowing them to have any access to my finances. Now, what is the best alternative and how hard it will be to kill all connections with PAYPAL?

I did find a website for PAYPAL alternatives: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-online-p ... te-paypal/
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pompeiisneaks
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by pompeiisneaks »

Google doesn't charge anything for their phone services directly. A google play charge usually means you bought a book, or you bought a movie, or you bought an album through the system (or someone took over your account if you got signed out). You should be able to get google to tell you what the purchase was, even if they won't refund it, they have to have an audit in their system showing what it was. That way at least you know what the hell they charged you for.

Another thing they launched recently was YouTube TV which may be another thing you 'demoed' and if you didn't cancel it, they charge you after the first two weeks of use. Any variant of things like that would be likely.

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rooster
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by rooster »

eBay owns PayPal, that I know. With Reverb, both you and the buyer are signed up and Reverb becomes the deciding voice as to who gets what money returned.

Case in point, I purchased a new item, $439, and the store contacted me and said they had oversold and would be refunding my money. I wanted to contest this because it was a good price and I was not sure I would find an identical one. But I waited a day. The next day I was notified that the refund was issued, it was, and the whole thing was back to zero in 48 hours.

Throughout this process I felt very comfortable that there would not be any problems - because - as a buyer and seller you are vetted really well by Reverb.

The thing about PayPal that can be a problem is that a 'newbee' can sign in as a guest and use their CC to make a PP payment, no reference or signup required. This has to be what happened to you RJ. I have to believe this because typically PP will tell you to contact the buyer and try to work out the problem on your own BEFORE they get involved. This never happened in your case, you were never notified. The woman must have accused you of fraud and the CC company acted accordingly.

So, my advice, confirm that the customer has a PayPal account before making the sale. End of story.
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Phil_S
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by Phil_S »

Respectfully, the info about PayPal ownership is out of date. eBay used to own PayPal. It is still relevant information as there is a relationship between the two companies. Here is the wiki entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal (I know Wikipedia is not considered authoritative, but I am about 99.9% sure this is accurate.)

[quote]PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American company operating a worldwide online payments system that supports online money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites, and other commercial users, for which it charges a small fee in exchange for benefits such as one-click transactions and password memory.

Established in 1998 as Confinity,[7] PayPal had its initial public offering in 2002, and became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay later that year.[8][9]

In 2014, eBay announced plans to spin-off PayPal into an independent company by mid-2015 and this was completed on July 18, 2015.[10]

In 2018, eBay announced that after the existing eBay-PayPal agreement ends in 2020, PayPal will remain a payment option for shoppers on eBay, but it won’t be prominently featured ahead of debit and credit card options as it is today. PayPal will cease to process card payments for eBay at that time.
[/quote]
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Reeltarded
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by Reeltarded »

A CBS producer purchased an expensive guitar from me off Reverb and 24 hours after the 48 hour approval sent a message they were sending it back..

They wanted only to use it for background in an interview with a mockstar..

Reverb told them to go eat hats and I got my money. That is the only transaction I have ever done with any stranger unknown to friends through an online market using PayPal and I will never ever ever do it again. Never. Never.

I know it's a pain for you guys who do any volume of sales. There has to be a better way.
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by NYC_Blues »

FWIW, I had an issue with PayPal. Long story short, I had to file a BBB claim and I got my money.

Long story long:

I used my Paypal balance plus a credit card to pay for something. My PP balance was most of the payment amount. They took a 2.9% fee from the total amount.

I called and the rep wasn’t helpful. Said there was nothing they could do. I argued the language in their terms made it seem only the credit card portion would be assessed a 2.9% fee.

Wasn’t a small fee either...

I buy/sell a lot on TGP. Rather not keep using PayPal. The few times I’ve called they haven’t really been helpful. They make a lot of money off me for doing nothing.
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RJ Guitars
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by RJ Guitars »

In my case the buyer was an established paypal customer and a friend...however his wife thought something was wrong and snagged up the transaction. Once the PayPal got scrambled, they never could get it sorted out. Mostly because you are not able to talk to a real person and rationally work through a problem because the middle man only speaks in machine language.

PayPal is not really people working with customers but rather seem to be a bunch of computer nerds interfaced to some business geeks that aren't familiar with the fundamentals of customer service and can only solve problems through a web portal...

The guy ultimately sent me his personal check and I got my money the old fashioned way. His check was good and he and I are good.

Bottom line -- PayPal works when the automated machine is working... But if it gets off track, it's hopeless.
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M Fowler
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Re: PAYPAL Users Beware

Post by M Fowler »

Bob glad you got that all sorted out.

Check your bank statements and paypal acount frequently because I have been getting hit on my credit cards and debit card account for $500+ $1500+ etc. All have been refunded while under investigation.

Mark
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