Hi Folks,
Here's the story. P.S.---This is really a story about Venmo, but since PayPal owns Venmo....here I am.
My partner and I hired someone to put a new roof on our house. Guy does terrible job. So bad that we had an inspector come over and he told us that he could not in good conscious certify our roof as safe. We tell our roof guy we want our money back and do not want him working to repair our roof. After some back and forth, roof guy agrees to give us back $4,000. We told him to Paypal it to us. He says that he uses Venmo. We don't have Venmo. So we asked our friend (let's call him Jim), if we could use his Venmo to receive the funds. He said yes.
Roof guy asks us for Jim's account info so he can send us the 4k. We give it to him. He sends us the money. Jim them gives us our money from roof guy. Crisis over right? WRONG.
Our friend Jim just contacted us today and said that Venmo has frozen his account because they removed $4k from his account to pay back roof guy because he claimed that he did not authorize that payment. He did. Venmo says that they tried to contact him (they did NOT) and because they never heard from him, decided to give Roof Guy back his money. By the way, Jim would know if Venmo contacted him as he checks his app often---he uses it receive money from people who rent his properties. I should also note that this is FIVE MONTHS LATER. Roof Guy is obviously in need of money and decided to lie and say he never agreed to give us back our money. But he did. We have proof. What boggles my mind is that he was able to get it back so easily.
I recently submitted a dispute through Paypal because I paid for something that was never delivered to me. They took their time, investigated the situation, contacted the seller (more than once) and eventually gave me my money back. PP was super helpful. Venmo just gave someone back $4,000 because Roof Guy "all of a sudden remembered that he did not authorize" a transaction from 5 months ago. Our friend is waiting to hear back from Venmo via email. Their phones lines are down because of Covid (no reps to receive the calls). Do you think there is anyway Paypal could step in and help here? This guy lied to Venmo and they bought it so easily. Thoughts?
