PayPal Buyer Proection Does Not Live Up to its Claim

[Shidakai]

I recently purchased an item from a seller on Etsy. The seller sent me an invoice and I paid with PayPal credit. The next day the seller entered a FedEC shipping number and FedEx said the item arrived. The item never arrived, the seller deleted their profile and never responded to my emails. I opened up a dispute and long story short PayPal denied my case because "the seller provided a tracking number." It seems to me that PayPal cannot protect customers at all from apparently a very easy type of fraud where sellers can enter fake tracking numbers. Furthermore I find the customer service team to be quite incompetent and unable to help customers. They seem to have little authority, expertise or resources available to proper investigate and determine such cases, which leads me to believe this type of fraud could easily continue to occur. I spoke to PayPal customer service about the issue of the case being incorrectly denied and they assured me the case would be resolved in my favor however that did not happen and to my surprise PayPal never investigates the suspicious activity beyond stating that the seller provided a tracking number. I have read numerous online forums where other people detail similar stories. It seems PayPal needs to right by customers, guarantee its promise of buyer protection and develop a system to investigate these cases more proficiently.

[kernowlass]

@Shidakai 

APPEAL

To submit an appeal on the dispute that was closed, PayPal asks that you obtain a detailed report from the shipper/courier (on their letterhead or some other form of official stationary) that includes the address the seller gave them for the shipment. Or one that includes a statement mentioning your address and saying the item was delivered to a different address.
Check tracking in below link to see where it went.
https://www.17track.net/en

When you have that, contact PayPal via phone (log on to your account and click Contact at the bottom of the page, however that may not be an option at the moment due to covid), or via Facebook (send a Private Message to PayPal) or via Twitter (send a Direct Message to @AskPayPal) and say you want to appeal the denial of the dispute based on the shipper saying the item was delivered to a different address. Once it's submitted (you will be provided with directions on how to do that), the dispute will be reviewed further and a determination will be made.

You also have the option to contact your card issuer if you funded your paypal payment that way and see if they will do a chargeback for you.

[Shidakai]

Thank you for detailing the solution. 

PayPal did eventually decide the case in my favor.  It was rather difficult to do and frustrating, given how PayPal customer service decided the case in the Sellers' favor two times already. What made it particularly frustrating was the first service representative explained the appeal process to me incorrectly.  Where PayPal requires uploading documents and evidence, it is not possible to obtain the information from FedEx that would be required. Eventually, the third time I called PayPal and spoke to them on the phone, they contacted FedEx and were able to easily sort it out by checking the sellers' shipping origin and delivery address.

All in all, it was a very confusing process and I am left feeling less confident in shopping with PayPal. Even though I did eventually get the case resolved in my favor, it took one month for the initial response and then I probably spent about ten hours on the phone looking for help. In the end it was as easy as PayPal contacting FedEx to prove the tracking number was fake.