A warning about PayPal.

[AFemaleProdigy]

We are pretty fed up with PayPal. People have discovered that PayPal has a loop hole in their terms allowing pretty much anyone to get their money back no matter what you say or evidence you produce. We have had three instances in the last 30 days where users made purchases over a months time. We tracked the ip addresses and communication with them. They dispute the charges with PP, claiming that someone else accessed their account and made the charges without their knowledge.

 

We tried to submit our information to PP showing the ip address and other information. We require that customers sign up with our site using the same email account that they use for their PayPal account. So that would mean the fraudulent person would of had to access the email account AND the paypal account. Not only that, but the ip address geolocation matched their address. It didn't matter what we said or did. They refunded all customers, costing us a total of $700.

 

I also want to warn everyone selling intangible goods. PP states that the buyers have no protection for purchases of intangible goods. What they don't say is that neither do the sellers. We sell online game items that do not physically exist. We have no protection.

 

PP put a hold on another purchase of ours this month, stating that PayPal randomly decided to do a review of a purchase made by a customer and that THEY feel it was not made with the owners consent. There was no complaint and no dispute from the customer. This customer has bought from us several times. They took the funds from ALL of his transactions to us. PP just decided on their own that they wanted to put a hold on these funds. They then tell us that the only way we would get the money back is if they are able to reach the PayPal customer by phone and get them to fax in a document confirming their identity and that they made those purchases. I am not holding my breath that that will happen. Now the customer knows they are getting all that money back for nothing!

 

Then last night, they put a complete limitation on our account stating that they thought WE had someone fraudulently accessing our account! That WE had to verify OUR identity. Let me say, we have multiple verified bank accounts, addresses, phone numbers, and credit cards. The account has been open for years and we have always had a lot of money flowing through it. Nothing has changed. We had to jump through all kinds of hoops last night to get the Limitation removed.

 

Needless to say, we are looking for a new method of accepting payments. This is ridiculous. I also noticed that if you Google information about PayPal's behavior, it is scary how many complaints there are about them freezing people's money and closing accounts that they shouldn't. I don't trust them anymore.

[Mike Kranzler]

Hi AFemaleProdigy,

I have reached out to our PayPal moderators and asked them to come on here to help you address your concerns. Hopefully we can get this taken care of!

 

-Mike

[AFemaleProdigy]

Thanks, Mike. I don't think this is really a problem on your end, but more a problem with PayPal's practices and terms. And trust me, we have tried to reason with them to no avail.