Accepted Paypal for vacation rental, now guests threatening to rescind payment. Am I **bleep**?

[KF_Florida]

So we have been renting our vacation rental for 15+ years. The daughter of a previous guest contacted me directly and asked to book. I rarely do direct bookings, I usually direct repeat guests to Airbnb or VRBO. But she seemed nice and I remembered her family, so I agreed. She and another couple were splitting the cost and each sent me their payment via Paypal. One person used seller protection, the other sent it as a friend.

Everything seemed fine with one hiccup that the AC wall unit in one of the five bedrooms stopped working. They told us at 9 p.m. one night and we had it repaired by the afternoon. The central air was totally fine, it was just a supplemental unit. They seemed happy and had no other comments.

However, the left the house in terrible shape. It was so bad we had to hire an extra cleaner for four hours. We had taken a $500 deposit, so I wrote them and advised we were keeping $100 for extra cleaning and I returned the rest via Paypal.

The woman's husband called and threatened me. He then sent a text saying they wanted $1,200 or they would be take it up with Paypal and/or their credit card companies unless we pay them by the end of the next day.

I have never run into this. As I did research, I keep finding conflicting info, but what most often comes up is that as a vacation rental host, I have no standing with Paypal because they don't support payments for that. I also read that since I accepted a friends and family payment for a service, I can lost my Paypal account. In either case, from what I understand, I won't be able to defend myself and they can rescind their entire payment and freeze my Paypal account for months.

I'm pretty freaked out about this. I cannot get through to Paypal to discuss. I went to the resolution center and got the message that my transaction was not eligible for dispute resolution.

Any advice? Not sure how to respond or proceed. Obviously, I will never use Paypal for the rental again.

[KF_Florida]

Worth noting: They paid for their stay more than 120 days ago.

[kernowlass]

@KF_Florida 

For the friends/family one......

Its against Paypal rules to accept a family / friends payment for selling goods and you risk your Paypal account being limited if you do so.

A buyer would not be able to open a Paypal dispute for non-receipt of item OR item not as described as they would have no Paypal buyer protection.

However they can still open a dispute for an unauthorised transaction OR do a chargeback (via their card issuer) and you may well lose as you would have no Paypal seller protection.

BUT Paypal would check their IP address and devices and if they thought that they were the ones that made the transaction they may well lose....its also against paypal rules for them to SEND their payment that way.

For the goods/services one, you equally have a good chance of winning BUT make sure you put as much information in the dispute stage message section in case your buyer escalates the dispute quickly to a claim. 

Finally if the buyer funded their paypal payment via a credit card then they may do a chargeback (they can only do that if they did fund it via a credit card thought) and then it would be up to the credit card issuer to make any decisions.

Finally, finally !! If you lose the cash then personally if you have proof ie photos etc of the state the place was left in then I would pursue them in the small claims court if you have that option in your country.