School class scammed and learning hard facts of life

[RuSa]

My son (17) is currently attending a class at his school with entrepenaurship as main topic. Long story short, they came up with a business idea involving car emergency hammers and purchased a couple of houndred such hammers from a vendor on AliBaba. Unfortunately outside Alibaba framework, but safely paid with PayPal (because of the buyer protection). The hammers they got did not look like the one in sellers photo or a sample identical to sellers photo they had purchased earlier from another vendor. The main problem was that it actually did not work. The metal in the hammer was neither pointy enough or hard enough to smash a car window. Hence it failed in fulfilling its basic purpose.

Enter Buyer Protection. After raising a claim and documenting the scam, also with a video clearly showing that the hammer did in fact not smash a car window, PayPal representatives voted in the sellers favor, stating that (quote)

"We've completed our review and unfortunately are not able to decide this case in your favor.

During our review, we found that your seller had sufficiently described the merchandise."

The seller sold a hammer and described it as a tool with the purpose of smashing car glass. The hammer failed in doing exactly that. Where's the logic in this? 

After taking on the role as adult claim manager for  the class, I will now need to teach them a valuable lesson:

For your business:

Don't trust any sellers or any descriptions on Alibaba, eBay or anywhere.

Buy a sample from the seller and test it before purchasing identical items for the stock from the same seller.

And above all, because this applies both in business and in personal life:

Do not ever trust PayPal or believe that they have any sense of what is right and what is wrong.  PayPal decided that it was OK to scam you and now you are left without money to start your business and houndreds of useless hammers. Buyer protection is absolutely worthless.

Spread the word  to all those you meet on your way, both online in social media and in person if anyone ever mention "PayPal" and "trustworthy" in the same sentence.

and BTW: I hope the poor person trapped within a crashed car and trying to get out with a useless emergency hammer from Soolu-Autoparts  don't think that he will ever get a refund if he paid for it with PayPal.

[kernowlass]

@RuSa

Paypal gives 'some' buyer and 'some' seller protection but its up to you to read up on it and then risk assess your transactions.

For you to win a dispute for item received but not as described it has to be 'significantly' not as described and that is always a grey area.

Personally if you are teaching 'business' then the first rule in my opinion (and is what I do) is buy x1 of the items first and test it thoroughly and if it does not work I would not waste my money with buying anymore.

Secondly again as a business I always FUND any Paypal payments via a credit card so that I have a second layer of protection and if a Paypal dispute fails then I can do a chargeback.

I would think those basics would be essential to any budding entrepenaur.

Also as your son is underage to open a paypal account then I guess the 'adult' opened and used one and as such could have advised accordingly.

Paypal is a payment processor so they are trustworthy in passing money from one person to another, anything over that is a benefit that you may or may not qualify for, but as a business that is for you to risk assess.