A totally misguided and unfair outcome ...

[washbush]

Dear Community, 

I am reaching out to you in hopes of having someone offer a way for me to re-open a case that was decided against me.  

The situation was simple ... I ordered an item online and paid for it at the time of ordering it with my PayPal account.  The item took over two months, and many attempts to contact the seller, before it arrived.  When it did it turned out to be entirely the wrong item and totally unusable.  It is unusuable because in the United States we have 120V60 cycle electricity.  The item that was sent to me was 240V50 cycle. It simply is unsuitable for use in the USA.  I filed for a refund and was told that I would receive the refund upon returning the item to the specific address that they supplied.  The address is in London, England.  Folks, the cost of shipping to send this item to England, is almost exactly twice the amount of the purchase.  It is simply moronic to think that I would spend $100 in order to get a refund of $50.  Would you do that?  I ordered honestly, paid in advance honestly, informed them that this was the wrong item honestly, yet that sell is going to enjoy the success of his sale, and I am paying a penalty of $50 for having been honest.  My case was found against me because, as the message said "there was no evidence that I returned the item".  That is correct.  Only an idiot would have done that.

Does anyone other than me consider this to be totally backwards?  Yes, I have the item but it can't be used.  And, I am out about $50.  Can anyone help me?  

[kernowlass]

@washbush 

In the event of a dispute you need to bear in mind possible return trackable costs before you buy from that seller / item / country because....

Paypal state this >>
PayPal is not obliged to reimburse you for any costs that you incur to comply with any of PayPal’s requests for cooperation for the purpose of resolving the problem (including, without limitation, costs that you incur to return a SNAD item to the Payment Recipient or another party as PayPal requests), although sometimes it may reimburse these costs.

Although they will compensate you for some of the cost if you have activated this at some point before you made that transaction.
https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/FAQ3544

You also have the option to do a chargeback via your card issuer instead of a Paypal dispute if you funded your Paypal payment via a credit card.

[washbush]

I believe your referenced solution refers to a customer requesting that he reimbursed for the cost of returning an item.  That is not the case here.  Had the shipping been $10, I would have paid it.  But, the shipping is $100 and that is twice the amount of the expected refund!

This case centers on the fact that at no time, and at no place in the offering, did the seller, or anyone else, even hint that if the product needed to be returned, it would have to be returned to England.  I can assure you that such a warning to me would have been a big red flag meaning don't order it.  There was no such warning.  

So, we have three points here ... 1.) the purchaser bought in good faith all the way through, 2.) the seller sent an entirely different item, which means that he failed in his promise to deliver and 3.) the seller specified a distant and highly unusual and expensive place for a return specifically meant to prevent the buyer from returning it. He concealed information from the buyer which would have been enough to keep the buyer safe from loss.  

To see it any other way is to give PayPal the option to tell any seller on any transaction, even if you do nothing wrong, you can still loose money just for doing what we suggested that you do.  You are defending a seller who concealed a condition of the sale that no reasonable adult purchaser would have accepted had he known in advance.