My claim situation seems to not fit the expected process of the rejection forms etc. As a result of not being able to explain the situation properly my claim has been rejected and I'm pretty sure the end user is aware of that process and is abusing it to their advantage. I'd like to be able to discuss this with a real person, but can't find any method of doing so. Are there still humans working at PayPal? I know there were once.
To explain my situation i purchased a product from an online retailer that trades via vouchers, although this isn't particulary obvious when you shop with them until the point you've got right at the end of the checkout process. So they sell you a voucher that you redeem with a third party. So I ordered a product without my guard up and it was only just after the purchase that my wife pointed out to me that the reviews for this site and the product were horrendous. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best, but sure enough when the product was delivered it was in no fit state to work, just as the reviews had said. Also, the packaging was the worst I'd ever seen, it was a technology product and it basically arrived in not much more than a plastic bag with various components individually boxed but loose inside the bag. Anyway, I immediately went to the returns procedure for the company I bought the voucher from, and that gave me an address to send the product back to, which I printed out and sent the product back to with a tracked delivery. The company then agreed to give me a refund but gave it to me as a credit on their store, which also expires within a few months! So it was at that point that I returned to PayPal as I don't find that an acceptable alternative to a refund, as if I use that credit the likelyhood is I'll receive another broken, or bits missing piece of junk from the company, judging by the reviews I read on trustpilot (why oh why didn't I look at those first!).
And so we start on the PayPal dispute trail. I fill in the forms and pick best I can the description that matched my scenario (product was not as described). So there's a bit of back and forth using the dispute process, and eventually the retailer decided to honour the despute and could I send the product back to them. Wait what?! I'd already returned the product to them. They've already given me credit on their site. What games are they now playing? So in order to finalise the claim I have to provide tracking information of me sending the product back to them, however the address now given for me to return it is now different to the one that came from their own refund process. I go back onto my account with the retailer to check what the address I was told to send it to was, only now that dispute has been 'resolved' and that information is no longer there. So all I can do is provide to PayPal the tracking information I had from sending it back originally - which doesn't match. Paypal said it's reviewed this and it's not adequate! So I've lost out. And this scammy company lives on another day to laugh in the face of respectable online buyers as they scam them out of their money, using every legal loophole they can find. I guess I'll just have to try and use the credit on that store, but whether I'll actually get anything of any use is yet to be seen. I'm just surprised that these companies are allowed to operate schemes like this. I know it's not PayPal's fault, but I'm just dissapointed in the fact that at no point was I able to break out of the automation process and talk to someone about it. It seems my comments were all overlooked on the forms.
