And the PayPal Nightmare Continues…
A quick break from the usual political commentary for me to vent about my experiences, and to warn others…
Since I’m currently a poor college student, I sold some items on eBay to earn some money for Christmas presents. All went well until the buyer of my old GameBoy Advance Classic sent me a nice and tidy dispute email around December 21 from PayPal saying he’d never received the package that I’d shipped on November 30 and that USPS.com said he’d received December 9th.
My first thought was, great, this guy’s trying to take me for a ride. Not gonna happen. I sent him a response, and referenced the USPS site where it mentioned that the mail delivery person had tried to leave the package at his house, but couldn’t for some reason, probably because he hadn’t been home at the time. I told him he should check with his local Post Office, and then I didn’t hear from him for about six days, at which point he mentioned again that he hadn’t received anything – “Please Advise”.
So I proceeded to once again mention the Post Office and then heard nothing until New Year’s Eve when he told me he’d “finally” located the package and that they’d charged him because I’d used the wrong shipping method. Oops. After checking with a mail worker to see if his claim about my shipping preference was correct, I agreed to refund him the difference, a whopping US$4.00.
But, PayPal wouldn’t let me send him any money, I guess so I couldn’t “pay him off” or something of the sort. There was no option to offer anything but a full refund from within the dispute; I’d checked there first. I then called Customer Service, the first of many calls I would be making. They said that they’d have to change the type of dispute, since the buyer had obviously received the package (they, too, used the tracking number! novel!). Now our dispute said he’d received an item that was significantly different than described. Not accurate in the least, but I went with it, figuring if we could just get the refund to go through, all this would be behind us.
After trying three times over the course of thirty-six hours and failing to get the refund to process using PayPal’s web-based system, I called Customer Service again. The representative apologized and assured me he’d sent an offer of a US$4.00 refund to my buyer and that all “we” had to do was wait for him to accept it.
The problem was, on my end at least, that “offer” showed up as a whopping $0.00 refund… what a deal! So last night, I emailed PayPal’s Customer Service since their offices were closed by the time I realized the problem. I never received a response. Granted, it is the weekend, but I’m already in deep trouble with this buyer for things that are not even my fault. Time is of the essence.
So tonight, I called PayPal yet again, and the representative told me of course they’d offered four dollars! When told her “not so fast!” she seemed taken aback that their system might not be working properly… and proceeded to offer my buyer another refund, this time supposedly for $4.00. We’ll see how that actually works out.
When I asked what PayPal was going to do about costing me feedback for all of their blunders, she told me I was on my own, that PayPal couldn’t tell the buyer that its system had failed, that it was my responsibility, only. I emailed my buyer, as I had tried to before, through PayPal, but you know the story there. I chronicled for him all of my communication with PayPal and once again reiterated my hopes for a successful resolution of our problem.
I can only hope the time limit runs out before he can leave me negative feedback. This is ridiculous. Don’t say you haven’t been warned… PayPal is NOT seller friendly!
