Fraudulent activity of $5,500 with no help from PayPal since 9/1/18

pwgerhardt
Contributor
Contributor

PayPal,

I have been trying to work with PayPal customer service and collections departments over the last eight to ten weeks, but have been unsuccessful in resolving my problem thus far.  I asked the last representative I spoke with if I could just write in and explain the situation, instead of having to explain it as a new story every time someone from the company contacted me or vice versa.  I was given this contact information and I will be mailing a hard copy and faxing a copy to PayPal.  I received no response the first time.  This is my second attempt.  I will be emailing, faxing and mailing this letter.  I will also be posting this online in hope for a response.

                My PayPal account was compromised at the beginning of September (I now have control of the account back).  Roughly $5,500 was transferred from a credit card and my bank account to two other PayPal accounts.  I have no idea who the people are that received the funds.  They even had the nerve to try and fight the disputed charges with my credit card provider, which they were unsuccessful in doing.  I have never purchased goods or services for that amount of money using PayPal.

                As soon as I noticed the fraudulent activity I called PayPal to voice my concerns.  I was told by the customer service representative that I should just go through my bank and credit card provider to resolve the situation.  I was not given the option, at the time, to open a dispute directly through PayPal.  At this point my efforts were successful.  I got my money back, recovered my PayPal account and removed my forms of payment from the website to prevent more fraudulent activity.

                A short time later I noticed another transaction on my bank statement.  Only this time the charge came from PayPal and was directly withdrawn from my bank.  I called in again, waiting on hold for at least an hour, only to be told I called the wrong department.  I called in several times and had to hang up half the time because of hour or more wait times.  I also signed up to receive a call back, which never happened.  Once I finally got ahold of the correct department, which is still unclear if I did, a manager named Mike listened to my whole story and told me he would take care of everything.

                Mike opened up some dispute cases on my behalf and notated the account.  Nonetheless, whatever he did for my account failed.  I ended up, once again, having to contact my bank to report the charge (letter included).  Again, all other charges were resolved by PayPal and my banks, except for the initial $800 fraudulent charge.

I had a PayPal dispute case with all the fraudulent transactions rolled up into one, except for one that was separated into a 2nd dispute case.  The weird thing is I was not awarded favor in the first case, but I was awarded favor in the 2nd dispute case.  The results of the two cases directly contradicted each other.  These fraudulent charges were all over a 2-3 day period, using the same two payment methods and funds were sent to the same two individuals.  How can I “win” one case and “lose” the other?  According to PayPal, the first case was not awarded in my favor because, “The charges are similar to my prior PayPal use.”  This is also false because I have never sent anyone that amount of money through PayPal, let alone to an individual’s account with no description or documentation of what the funds were being sent for.  How this blatant fraudulent activity can be ignored is astonishing to me.

                As far as I know, everything has been resolved except for the very first fraudulent charge of $800 that was sent to another PayPal user via my bank account.  The $800 is now with collections who are harassing not only me, but my parents as well since my dad and I share the same name. 

                I would like this $800 to be cleared off my record, as the charges were most certainly fraudulent.  I am growing more frustrated each day with the way PayPal is handling this situation.  I have never even paid a bill late in my life, so to receive 5-10 calls every day of the week is absurd and borderline harassment, especially when I have clearly told several people about the situation.  If a single PayPal employee would just review the situation this could all be resolved.  It honestly isn’t rocket science to figure out the charges are fraudulent and PayPal’s resolution process has failed due to the way the case was handled at the beginning.  If I knew I could have just filed 1 dispute case with PayPal, which is the first thing I should have been told, then this could have been avoided.  Instead, due to the account/case being mishandled, I am now having to write this letter.  I can only hope someone takes the time to read it. 

This is by far the worst customer experience I have had with a company of your size.  If someone would just take a minute to listen to me and review my account/case then it is clear as day I should not be responsible to pay the $800.

                Also, for the record, I do not give you permission to keep attempting to withdraw $800 from my bank account without my knowledge and consent.

                Please advise as to a resolution for this case via mail or email.  My contact information is listed below.  I am happy to discuss a solution, thank you.

 

Regards,

Paul Gerhardt

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