Hello all, I am in a really weird dispute with a seller that advertised PayPal as a payment type on its website (I never would have made a purchase otherwise!). Upon purchasing, I was emailed by their “Financial Department” that my purchase was “too large” and that my account would be “locked for security reasons”. Upon checking this out I saw that my login was in fact deactivated. The email went further and said two crazy things: 1. that I was supposed to send the same amount, $433, via Western Union so my order could be completed! This was a new one. The whole point of using PayPal is that you can recover your money if something goes wrong or if there’s a dispute. This company, then, “accepts PayPal” but wants to be sent redundant funds through Western Union, wired to a foreign country and completely unrecoverable! 2. They then said that my PayPal purchase funds would be redirected to my account wallet, and then they could be withdrawn (instead of just cancelling my purchase price). Upon looking at the wallet there were $422 instead of $433! I opened a billing dispute with PayPal, because it seemed clear to me that some kind of fraud is happening. At the very least I should be refunded my initial purchase in full. PayPal denied my request, saying that this “doesn’t qualify as a billing dispute.” Huh? If this doesn’t qualify, what does? Am I supposed to Mark this as a “didn’t receive my item” dispute instead? The seller emailed me stating that they would refund me, but only through the normal mechanism of their website after I canceled the PayPal dispute—that is, I am still locked out and will continue to be until my complaints to PayPal stop. It seems to me that I have no real assurance that I would be refunded if I closed this dispute. Can you dispute the same charge multiple times? Should I leave the dispute open and just change its type? I imagine that how this scam is supposed to work is that they 1. Dupe people into paying twice, the second method being through foreign bank transfer and unrecoverable and 2. Either refuse PayPal refunds for the round one payment or send less than was paid the first time. Does that sound about right? Your help would be very appreciated!
