I recently purchased an item on Ebay and paid for it using PayPal. One day later, I received an email from Ebay reporting that my PayPal payment did not go through and that my payment needed to be re-sent. I complied, and re-sent the payment.
The second payment certainly was received, as I got an email from Ebay indicating that the purchase was confirmed and I received the tracking information related to the item purchased. However, my PayPal account has indeed been charged for both transactions (duplicate payment of a single item). In my PayPal history it shows both transactions as completed, and received by the Ebay seller.
I have been in contact with the Ebay seller who has been generally helpful regarding this matter. However, the seller claims to have received only the second payment which resulted in the completed sale of the requested item and the associated shipping/ tracking information. The seller has requested that I try and clear this matter with PayPal from my end, which is reasonable.
I have found myself caught in a circle of endless, unhelpful links amongst the PayPal 'Contact Us' and 'Resolution Center' menus, with no appropriate or pertinent links to follow, nor any method to contact PayPal directly to discuss and resolve this matter.
The only options for opening a dispute with the seller are regarding 1) the item was not received, or 2) the item received was not as advertised. My situation does not qualify for either of these solutions. I wish to open a dispute with PayPal, not the seller. Since I did indeed authorize both payments myself (believing that the first one did not proceed) I cannot dispute an unauthorized transaction via the PayPal Resolution Center.
If anyone has any insight or advice on how to contact PayPal through the correct methods/ channels to resolve this issue, I would be very grateful.
