Bait an switch scam by Xingyao e-commerce Co., Limited, is not getting resolved.

[Netherviking]

Ordered what was supposed to be a lamp resembling a nuclear explosion back in April. (25 usd)

Fell victim to what is now undoubtedly the classic bait and switch scheme where they send you a worthless unrelated item instead.

Complained to the seller directly. (i was still ignorant to this scheme at this point)
Seller wants item back and will refund. Will not pay for shipping. Tracked shipping to China is 75 euro's or so for me so that is not happening. (seller's chinese location by the way wasn't clear untill after purchase, the webstore is a front implying you buy more locally) 
Seller "understood my predicament" offered partial refund instead. (50%)
Told him I want a full refund as this is not my "mistake".
Got offered slightly bigger partial refund. (60%)

So that wasn't going anywhere.

Opened claim with PayPal.

Opened the claim as item not received. Because essentially that's what this is. Went through the whole shebang only to have paypal change the claim type. 
Paypal changed the claim to "item not as described" which I think is greatly underselling what's actually going on here but whatever. I guess that is technically true. 

Seller again offers partial (50%) refund. Which again I declined.
Now again I'm at full refund if I ship the item back. 

My first gripe here is that the resolution center has no other way of handeling this other then inputting shipping data.
So it assumes that shipping the item back is the only possible outcome at this step in the claim, which is ofcourse not true.

My second gripe here is that i've now received two different adresses from this seller. Neither of which are complete or actually resolve to any actual location. At least not on Google maps. And what parts of the adress google does find is miles apart from eachother.
Paypal doesn't seem to check this or care so I'm supposed to ship to a non existing address.

My third gripe is I guess classic neglegence. Contacted Paypal. Got an answer that I am in fact supposed to ship the item back. But Paypal has a return shipping service that will cover a whopping 30% of the shipping costs in this case! (that's not how they sold it but I read the terms)

Obviously I replied I'm not shipping anything back, again explaining why I think i'm beeing duped, and that this isn't my problem to solve to begin with. And why paypal needs to just refund me and ideally reject this seller from their platform. Because this seller is definately doing this full scale. They've got their own topic.

I sent that message about a week ago and haven't had a reply since. Tried contacting them through twitter. Got an initial response but after supplying the case ID they are ghosting me as well. 
Tried calling but the de support desk is closed due to covid (Really guys? Still? I haven't lost a single day of work and I work in the same customer service sector) which is only something I got notified of after going through their horribly constructed phone menu for about 10 minutes.

At this point i'm more annoyed at PayPal then the scammer.

Are there any other avenues to be used to move people into doing something at this company?

The dispute itself is due to expire somewhere today I want to make more noise because trying to get this solved in some sort of civil manner is appearantly not happening.

[Netherviking]

For the last month or so i've beeing trying paypal to even actually look at this instead of giving me default answers. I've mailed them, i'v twittered them, i tried calling them (but their service desk is closed).

This issue is by no stretch of the imagination resolved.

[Netherviking]

PayPal isn't doing anything in my case. I have been trying to move them into action since April or May.

They insist on the garbage-value item beeing shipped back to china (tracked) to a non existent address.

Main problem here nobody at PayPal is actually looking into it. PayPal just sends around prefab e-mails with standard procedures. They don't actually deliver any kind of tailored support at any stage in this disagreement. They don't care you're beeing ripped off.

There's an overwhelming amount of evidence against this seller, even just in this topic, the amount of claims this account has in Paypals systems behind the proverbial curtains must be astronomical.

Yet they do nothing.

I'm getting a creditcard and phasing out paypal completely. 
Creditcard transactions are MUCH easier to dispute. Even if you continue to use Paypal with a creditcard.

[Annie132]

@Netherviking just testing

[Annie132]

Hmmm they aren't letting me say what I want to say **bleeped**!

[stevepe]

We are getting the same run around and resolution dates keep getting pushed back. Spent $52 on two "nice" dolls but received items that we will throw away as soon as our issue is resolved.  PayPal is really not doing anything for us.  It may be better just to pay with credit card.

[cg013]

Same here. So frustrated with PayPal at this point. 

[fastfixitmom]

Had a very similar experience to yours, the seller said i had to return it to an address written in Chinese, (even though the return address on the box was from Ontario California!) and  that once translated turned out to be a false address. had I been stupid and gullible enough to send the item back to that address, it would have been tracked to there and then sent back to China postal being undeliverable and I still wouldn't have gotten my money back since the seller could then claim he never received the item back. And paypal is as we now all know, absolutely no help.  They send you the same cover letter for every dispute and the same general form letter, they don't have any actual people you can talk to and even if they did, Im sure they would just be reading from a script. They make all these claims of taking care of their customers with 24/7 customer service and purchase protection, etc. Yeah right! They favor towards the fraudulent sellers and deny legitimate  refunds. The only customers they are taking care of are Chinese fraudsters. I feel like the whole promise of "purchase protection" itself is a scam by paypal to get buyers to use their service. And the "return shipping on us" IF paypal decides to agree to it, is only a small percentage of what you actually paid for shipping and it can take up to 60 days AFTER you sent the item back and paid out of pocket for shipping to get even that reimbursed. Judging by all the posts in paypals community forum, the Chinese bait and switch scam is so common and paypal just ignores it and continues to favor these fraudsters and side with them. Makes you wonder who REALLY owns paypal...