1) The seller cancels first payment in error. Paypal still took the payment.
2) Before I knew this was the case, PayPal had taken my payment, the one the seller had cancelled. I paid again as arranged with the seller, Paypal also took this payment.
3) I found out what was going on and phoned my bank (as advised on here) to cancel the second payment and attempted (as advised by the bank) to remove my secondary credit card from PayPal, not able to do so.
4) PayPal realises I've cancelled one of the payments and takes it from my credit card account.
5) At this point, PayPal have £500 of my money and haven't allowed the seller to withdraw his payment as he'd cancelled the first (in error).
6) We all have to wait for +17 days until PayPal thinks it's earned enough interest on the £500 before the money is able to be withdrawn by either party, I am £250 overdrawn for 14 days.
You remind me of that bloke outside Picadilly Tube station with his 3 plastic cups and the pound coin.
No! You persist in imagining that the vendor got paid twice whereas he had to wait even longer than me to get the money from his sale. NEITHER of us had access to the funds until PayPal allowed us to have it.
7 transactions actually on one sale? Wow how very efficient.
Whatever. Perhaps confidence trickery is your forte it's not mine.
In message , at 17:42:52 on Sun, 30 Dec 2007, magwitch remarked:
About £1. Nah, I don't think that's their motive. It would have cost them an order of magnitude more than that to sort this lot out (over the
17 days).
It's actually waiting to see what other payments you cancel (or not) so it doesn't refund you any money that you've already grabbed back. Perhaps you should have waited the original 4 days you mentioned when this first happened, rather than starting a sequence of events that caused even more delay.
Not the £500 you claimed a couple of days ago, and you were actually only overdrawn by £250 from your bank account between *you* asking [1] to send the money the second time, and you getting the DD reversed (how many days was that?). Plus a second £250 on your credit card [2] for a fortnight. Annoying, perhaps, but not what most people would call an "overdraft".
You had a bad time, but over-egging it doesn't help.
[1] Not as claimed an unauthorised withdrawal. [2] Again, not unauthorised, it was a replacement for money you'd asked to be sent, then pulled the rug on, money already on the way to the vendor.
In message , at 17:13:47 on Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Tim Ward remarked:
I know that it's quite difficult and that not every e-commerce site (indeed probably not even a majority of them) are even close to getting it right; yet.
However, the concepts involved in eBay and PayPal are quite complex - just look at the faffing about in this thread about "Recorded Signed For", that you'd have thought was a no-brainer.
It's possible to do a lot of things, but trying [eg] to explain [1] that PayPal isn't an escrow service, when people have never heard of escrow service (but nevertheless think PayPal works like an escrow service) is quite a challenge.
[1] At the point that people are about to click something, not in some FAQ or T&C.
The concepts are difficult, aren't they. Perhaps there should be a "PayPal lite" where like a proper bank account the funds aren't available for use until several days after you've paid them in, and similar simpler to understand, but less useful, ideas are used.
I don't think I've ever said the vendor got paid twice.
What you did was attempt to pay him twice.
And then start mucking about so that things got handled manually (I expect).
Yes, because there were £250 quids flying left right and centre, and PayPal wanted to make sure they knew where they all where when the music stopped. Music you'd atarted.
If you'd waited four days at the start, it would have been three. (Two by you and one by the vendor, whose finger trouble we seem to keep ignoring as the original culprit in all this).
I'm simply explaining to you what happened, and why. But you don't seem interested in that.
Part of the problem is that when Paypal started, the early adopters were mostly geeks who understood pretty well how it worked and were keen to investigate new forms of money handling (just as they were enthusiastic about trying new technology and new methods of obtaining recorded music, for example). Like a lot of things which have their genesis in the geek community (heck, the Internet itself is a prime example), when it took off in the mass market there's a significant conflict between those who don't really understand is, but think it ought to work they way they want it to, and those who think it's obvious how it works and that people who don't understand it shouldn't be complaining.
I tried contacting them for almost 3 days trying to resolve the situation, sent about 10 e-mails, tried to find a phone number etc etc. as did the vendor, without success.
I was at one stage £500 overdrawn. I'd wanted PayPal to use my credit card so, before I bought the computer, made my credit card the primary card. They disregarded this and took the money from my ordinary debit card twice, thus making me £500 overdrawn on my current account for a few days until I got the bank to cancel the DD, when I was £250 overdrawn.
It was only after I'd done this they took a further payment from my credit card as I'd originally intended, but without my authorisation.
I'm not over-egging anything, and btw this is not a small claims court and i trust you are not a defence lawyer for PayPal, but if you are, I'd like you to publish your address on here so people can complain directly to you. There's f*ck all anything else they can do.
The vendor was still unable to withdraw his money for a month after the sale as his e-mail to me says below:
"I am so sorry that you are still having problems with Paypal. This situation is totally ludicrous!!! I am afraid to say that I am also still having problems getting hold of the £250, because I have a un-verified paypal account I need to give Paypal my bank details so the money can go into my bank account. This is where the problems start ? I have a joint bank account and Paypal requires a first name and Surname to be entered. As we have a joint bank account this has caused confusion and I have to go to my bank now and try and sort out the naming problem. Paypal will charge me for any error!!!! Seems like Paypal try to squeeze as much money out of customers as possible.
I hope you finally get this problem resolved!
As soon as the money goes into my bank account I will be cancelling my Paypal account.
The nightmare continues!!!"
If he'd actually been paid twice we would have sorted out a cheque for £250 to be sent to me enclosed with the computer.
Neutral, with text explanation, and use the anonymous star ratings.
Ebay's worked for me.
I checked with the CC company that it would be considered a direct transaction before making sure that any payment more than £100 was funded by that CC. I have a separate bank account, with bugger all money in it, to fund the paypal transactions. I read feedback comments, and a few vindictive negatives worry me far less than a faint praise positive and neutrals, and consider the risk. The time I've bought from a seller who didn't supply the goods, Paypal refunded the payment.
I'm buying; I'm balancing getting it cheaper, or getting it at all, against possibly loosing all my payment
Ebay's no different to any market place. I bought a Christmas gift, in the high street (Regent Street actually) an external hard drive with the PC spec Windows vista, XP and 2000 on the outside of the box. The software only works with Vista and Xp. Technical support tell me it says so on their website. I haven't gone back to the shop yet and I don't see it's their fault. You can get stung anywhere.
It might not be the shop's "fault" but it is their responsibility. They will give you your money back. The law says that if a retailer chooses to do business with a crooked supplier that's the retailer's problem, not the punter's.
Once upon a time I had a server called Tigger and a couple of other machines with related names.
When I hired someone to fulfil the team earth mother role it was *so* difficult to stop myself calling her machine Kanga when I configured it the day before she arrived.
Separate reply for the machines at home. In 1990 we acquired a very old cat, who we'd known for years - her name was Tavi (as in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi); her owners (staff) were moving to Crete and she was
17 years old. She died a year later, but her name is commemorated in our trading name and first domain name (tavi.co.uk).
When we came to name machines, we stuck to names from the Jungle Book, at least loosely. You may see that the machine I am using right now is called Rikki...some others have vaguly meaningful names (e.g. the firewall is Baloo and the PBX machine is Copper).
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