Need advice over legal issue with Paypal

I recieved a letter from a debt collection agency this morning threatening to take action over a dispute I've had with Paypal.
I sold a copy of the Ring cycle to a buyer in Spain, and it took forever and a day to arrive. He took out an item not arrived dispute, that unfortunately co-incided with me being unable to access my email. A holiday and IT failure IIRC this was nearly 12 months ago. Paypal awarded the dispute and were about to take money from me so I stopped my card. They now want the value of the payment the buyer made back, despite the fact the buyer has the goods, and some money I had in my paypal account!!!
I know the goods arrived he emailed me telling me they had, but wouldn't email paypal to set the record straight! I sent Paypal the emails he sent me but they wouldn't accept them.
If I just pay up I lose the value of the item about £50+30 postage, plus another £80 back to paypal.
If I fight it with the Debt collection agency and I lose I get a CCJ, no good because we're going to need a loan soon.
So I reckon my only option is to pay up and I lose a packet.
Do I have any grounds to sue Paypal via the small claims court for my losses in return?
Any ideas guys

 

I would go for it at the small claims court. The website also gives and alternative dispute resolution which involves claiming money. Even if you are unlikely to win, the cost to paypal of defending a small claims may make them back off. The other thing to do is fight the ccj in person. You are entilted to do this and the County Court can give you advice.

However, if the loan is important you may have to let the bastards win.

Try paypalsucks.com there may be some advice that helps.

Rod

 

I really dont fancy your chances to be honest. Id pay it and take it from there, its a hard pill to swallow I know but it could cost you alot more in the long run. Once settled you could take it further and see what happens.

 

Sounds a nasty combination of events. The fact the dude wont ackowledge to PayPal that he received the goods leaves you on a sticky wicket.

I quite like PayPal because it is so simple to do certain things that are otherwise costly and expensive. However pretty much all the "bad" things I've read about centred around PayPal's heavy handed treatment of sellers and their accounts.

TBH I'd probably settle it to avoid the possibility of a CCJ. Having said that a bit of research on t'internet might throw up a few good examples of people who bucked the trend?

 

I'd fight it. Just try to amass as much evidence as you possibly can, i.e. send repeated emails to the buyer asking them to confirm their original conformation of delivery / copies of emails to both PayPal and eBay (they are the same company) and a copy of the original eBay advert (to prove that there was no time of delivery specified).

Is the eBay buyer still a current eBay member? If so it might be worth bugging them a bit – contact him again through eBay in case he has changed his email address. If no response and he is a seller try reporting all sale items to eBay stating that they are from a seller that is currently attempting to defraud PayPal, i.e. not paying for goods they have already received. Keep hard copies of all emails and replies.

The stance to take is that you are the injured party, i.e. the purchaser of your goods is attempting to use a legal loophole in PayPal to deliberately defraud both you and them. It might even be worth threatening to counter sue for damages.

I hate PayPal buyer protection and would question it's legality as it is open to exactly this kind of fraud.

Tony.

 

My experiences with PayPal suggest that there is an underlying unpleasantness to their way of doing business. One of the problems they put your way is that it is virtually impossible to contact a human being, and even more difficult to contact one who can do anything apart from read from a script.

If it had been me I would certainly have contested it.

Something that surprises me is that eBay and PayPal have been able to build their monopolies so easily - I tried an alternative early this year and they were incredibly hard to deal with (paranoid about anti-fraud moves). It does seem that it suits big business (and governments) to make it as hard as they can to stop people spending their own money wherever and however they want.

After my experiences I won't touch PayPal (or eBay) at all.

T-Bone's suggestion of "settling and see what happens" (apologies if I've paraphrased that badly) doesn't sound like a route that will do anything aside from put money into PayPal's wallet.

 

I would fight it. I find it highly unlikely with all the evidence you'd lose. I'm not 100% sure on this but AFAIK you only get a CCJ against you if you simply refuse to pay without making a case or cannot pay. If you put forward your case etc then even if you lose I think you're alright as long as you pay up.

I tend to agree with Dick Bowman about PayPal and eBay but unfortunately they do have the monopoly so there's little can do about it. Simply refusing to use either is often not a viable option.

Michael.

 

I seriously question the legality of PayPal's so called buyer protection. Richard's case is a perfect example of what is wrong with it. Looking at it logically there is a huge loophole: in this case the initial dispute is about alleged non-delivery, and postal insurance is an add-on extra, if it is offered at all by the seller (offering insured delivery or not is entirely at the sellers discretion, it is a paramiter that is set when producing the invoice). If insurance was offered then the correct process is to make a claim against the postal service used, if it was not offered, then tough shit, buyer looses out. PayPal, by allowing this kind of bogus “protection†open a loophole for a fraudulent buyer to have their cake and eat it, i.e. they get the goods, then file a Buyer Protection claim to get their cash back. This being exactly what has happened in this case.

How are PayPal allowed to seize funds (or attempt to) from sellers when a buyer complains about a non-delivery of an item that may not have had any postal insurance specified? Even if it did have insurance, what business of PayPal's is it?

As far as I can see:

The buyer has lied and attempted to defraud eBay / PayPal, i.e. they have committed an obvious criminal offence.

PayPal has attempted to offer insurance or “protection†for a service that was neither implied nor agreed to by either buyer or seller at any point during the sale. They have based their case on the lies of a fraudulent buyer, and even worse they are attempting to underwrite this bogus service with funds that they have no right to (i.e. the sellers own personal finances).

Are there any lawyers here? Surely this can not possibly be legal?

Tony.

 

Tony - some solid points there.

Does anyone know how credit card companies handle similar scenarios? Do retailers suffer similar treatment if a delivery item is reported as having not arrived?

If the anwser is no then PayPal appear to be setting an industry precedent - and an unpleasant one to say the least. There must be some standing in law to protect the seller??

 

No offence to Lordsummit, but it does sound like the circumstances (ie. not seeing critical emails at the time and letting the issue lapse) might be as much to blame as the facts of the matter. What i mean is it may have turned out very differently had LS responded properly and promptly. As such PayPal's resultant actions might be somewhat mitigated. Just a thought.

 

I've done a bit of searching and it is actually possible to opt out of PayPal buyer protection – phone them on 08707 307 191, negotiate a complex call tree with no relevant options (I chose dispute resolution), give them, proof of ID (phone no, last 4 digits of credit card) and simply tell them you wish to opt out. The phone monkey puts you on hold for about 3 minutes to get management approval, and apparently you will then be notified by email once the process is complete within 24 hours or so. I'll report back!

Tony.

 

Sadly, that means I won't be able to buy anthing from you anymore since the only reason someone would opt out of the buyer protection must be that the person intends to fleece buyers. After all, I'm an honest buyer, so nobody needs to protect himself from me.

 

Tony
Will your e-bay ads say you've opted out of buyer protection?

Bob

 

That remains to be seen. If they do I'll just add a suitably pithy comment explaining how a friend has been defrauded with it and I refuse to go the same way. My eBay feedback speaks for itself.

To be honest I do very little with eBay these days as pfm is a far nicer place to do business - my record and CD business over there is growing nicely as more hear about it. By contrast I'd say about 1 in 10 of my sales on eBay over the past year has gone to a non-paying bidder, so why pay fees to sell in a less pleasurable environment and deal with all the hassle. I just need to get just a few more regular customers on pfm and eBay is no longer of use to me. I do still use PayPal, though any notion of buyer protection is irrelevant as my record business relies entirely on trust and resulting repeat business, i.e. if something is wrong I will sort it out, and I'll sort it out a damn site quicker than bloody PayPal!

Tony.

 

With credit card companies I think they pay in the event of a dispute but if it keeps happening they will pull the plug on the merchant account. I am pretty certain they don't try and claim the money of the seller like paypall does but I am not sure.

 

Just to be clear, I will, of course, continue to buy records off Tony. All my experiences with him have been nothing but positive.

 

Tony's record shop is a wonder to behold. TBH I'm having a really crap day, and the last thing on my mind now is money. I'm just going to pay the damn thing off and lose out.
Greg might well be right, it was the 3rd reminder I responded to, but their response was that it was my duty to provide proof of posting.
I won't ever offer paypal or pay via them again

 

Whether or not you ever use paypal again you must get proof of posting every time. Its a free receipt when you send the item! You're also then insured for up to about £28 I believe.

Bob

 

I know I did, but mangaged to wash it. A bloody expensive cycle that's proved to be.

 

I think people confuse paypal with a credit card company. They are not. Barclaycard told me that paypal simply act as a conduit for money in and out for a fee. Because they are not a credit card company there is no protection apart from when it suits them. IMO, paypal are a bit vague about the security of their service. Money paid into to paypal and then your bank account is no more secure than a cheque. They can reclaim the money if one party was committing a fraud and they are out of pocket. I personally think the government should do something to make them and similar outfits more accountable.

Rod

Rod