Refund when unable to return wrongly shipped item

[jamesvenning]

Hi all,

Been using PayPal for years and have had my first hiccup. I bought some new wiper blades for my car, value of $25 shipped. The seller posted the wrong item - as in, wipers that do not fit my car. He acknowledged that he sent the wrong thing. I requested the new ones, etc. and two months later I'm sitting here without my wipers.

I started a dispute with paypal, who found in my favour - and that to get a refund I had to send the wrong wipers back within about ten days and at my expense. So question 1, can someone explain why this is the rule? Why do I need to go to the trouble and expense of shipping something back when it was the seller's fault the wrong one was sent? Why aren't the shipping costs recuperated from the seller?

I was interstate when PayPal decided my case, so I replied straight away saying I wouldn't be able to return the items within the time limit. PayPal replied with a list of FAQs that were irrelevant to what I was saying. This happened three times. Then, today, I got an email saying my claim is denied for not supplying the tracking details for the refund! Question 2, how is there no way to contact PayPal for issues such as this? How can I contact them without just getting an automated reply? And what else was I supposed to do?

Thanks all,
James

[kernowlass]

@jamesvenning 

Paypal state this >>
PayPal is not obliged to reimburse you for any costs that you incur to comply with any of PayPal’s requests for cooperation for the purpose of resolving the problem (including, without limitation, costs that you incur to return a SNAD item to the Payment Recipient or another party as PayPal requests), although sometimes it may reimburse these costs.

Although they will compensate you for some of the cost if you have activated this at some point before you made that transaction .....
https://www.paypal.com/au/webapps/mpp/returns
You also have the option to do a chargeback via your card issuer instead of a Paypal dispute if you funded your Paypal payment via a credit card.