Filing a dispute as a guest

[kcarel]

Hi,

I have a paypal account but made a payment for something on ebay through the guest user option because my payment source was different from my linked account on paypal. Paid for an item won on ebay on 11/15. The only time the guy responded was when I asked to verify his paypal account. After making payment, I asked the seller numerous times if the item was shipped or what his plans were. no response. His terms on ebay says item should be delivered by 11/22 and that time frame has expired. More emails, no reply. Tried filing a dispute with ebay. They said since I paid as a guest, I have to take it up directly with paypal. I go through paypal dispute center and it asks for a transaction ID# on my account. Well since I paid as a guest, it's not linked to my account. I feel like I fell into a crack here. surely paypal has buyer protections for every payment option they provide including a guest user. right?

I have my emailed receipt from paypal:

Ebay Item#: 180750866654

Seller info: ******

Seller paypal account: ******

Paypal Receipt # *****

Amount paid: $29.14

Please help looking into this transaction to file a dispute or encouraging the seller to at the very least to respond. I want the item but the guy is ignoring me and has not met his part of the deal as he stated on his ebay listing. he appears to be a dead beat and I have left negative feedback. So at the very least please help me open a dispute for this transaction.

Thank you.

Kevin

[kcarel]

Please note that receipt number is in a credit card # format xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx so I think your programming interpreted that as CC info...this is the receipt number and that is all I have. I can email you my receipt if you would like. Please help me with filing a dispute. Thanks.

[PayPal_Olivia · Accepted solution]

Hi kcarel, and welcome to the community forums!

I've had to remove some information from your post to comply with the Community Guidelines. These forums are a venue for member-to-member communication. The folks here can give general assistance based on their experience as customers using PayPal. For account or transaction-specific assistance, please contact Customer Solutions. If you click "Contact Us" at the bottom of any PayPal.com page, you will see options to contact CS.

I'd be happy to shed some light on the situation you're in. The details of the payment are unnecessary for those answers, but hang on to them for when you call or email!

When you check out using PayPal, you have a couple of options. You can enter your Credit Card information and make the payment without logging in, or you can sign into a PayPal account. Signing in grants you access to a lot of features that are not available when using guest checkout:

• One feature signing in affords you is security. You're not entering your card information and therefore avoiding the security risks of shoulder-surfers seeing your number or malware keyloggers capturing your information.
• Another feature is reporting. Transactions not made through your account are not listed and recorded in a manner that you can refer to in a safe place. This is also a feature that relates to security because you can remove your reliance on emails to tell you what's going on. It's always much safer to log into your account to see your transaction history than it is to take every email received at face value. That way fraudsters don't have a chance to try to fool you!
• Lastly, the convenience of online dispute management is only available on transactions made through your account. That is not to say that you can't file - you absolutely can! The difference is that you have to communicate with Customer Solutions by phone or email to do so, and communicate by phone or email by the deadlines provided if further information or action is required during the investigation.

I'd recommend contacting Customer Solutions by phone. There will be less back-and-forth if a representative can ask you follow-up questions in real-time. Once the claim is established, keep an eye on your email and watch for any further instructions.

I hope this helps!

Olivia

[kcarel]

Olivia,

thanks for the timely response. Ironically, the seller has finally contacted me and I think this is going to work out just fine without the need for an intervention.

Apologies for providing too much information. I thought the email rule was to protect from spammers and the receipt # was in credit card format. I saw a few threads on here where they were helped through this forum and on top of that I am hearing impaired and if I get a guy from Taiwan on the phone, good luck in having me dissect his accent. 🙂

But anyway, communication has re-started with the seller and I appreciate his/her efforts. if a need for dispute arises, I will refer to your original reply here. Thanks again.

-Kevin

[kcarel]

Also, Olivia, Just a suggestion, but the hoops to jump through include payment accounts are a bit extreme especially when the payment source is short-termed. In my situation, I had a card with x-amount of money on it and wanted to use that to make payment. If I transfered money from that source to my linked bank account on paypal, the card would have charged me an outrageous fee. How difficult is it to link a payment to one's account after that person has safely logged into paypal? If protections are not offered through a guest user, why is it a payment option? Paypal should feel obligated to protections to any buyer using paypal system. You are, afterall, taking a royalty percentage from the seller off the top of my payment first, correct?

Just friendly feedback. Something is most certainly missing in the dispute center for this guest payment option. Could reduce overhead at paypal from taking simple calls that could have otherwise been handled online like other transactions.

Thanks for listening.

Kevin

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi kcarel,

Thank you for your feedback!

The exclusion of personal information is for everyone's protection, for several reasons. One reason is that if a spammer/spoofer/phisher/fraudster gets a hold of your email address somewhere else, they can guess you might have a PayPal account and take a stab fooling you with any information they can scrape from public forums. If they find your info here, they know you have a PayPal account, and every bit of personally identifiable information you provide puts them that much closer to being able to scam you. Give someone your email address, your full name, and your transaction info, and suddenly they have enough information to put together a pretty convincing phishing email that could fool even the most savvy users. The best way to prevent this is to prevent the information from being where they're looking for it.

Transactions made outside of a PayPal account are an option that sellers can decide to offer or not offer for their buyers. The feature can be turned off so a customer would have to use a PayPal account to pay, or left on to offer an option for buyers who may not have a PayPal account. After the payment, it is possible to use the email receipt to create a new account with that email address which will have that payment on record, but it is not possible to merge the payment with an already existent account, or to make a new account if one already exists with that email address.

You said that you wanted to make a payment with a card that had a certain amount of money on it. Please make sure that you hold on to that card. If a refund occurs, it will go directly back to that card, and you'll want to make sure you can access the funds!

Please note that stored value cards like gift cards and prepaid cards are not designed for use with PayPal. The financial instruments on your account need to be able to be associated with your name and address to ensure the security of our services. Sometimes the system will not detect that it is a prepaid card and allow it to be added, and the funding source will later will fail validation. Sometimes it will not fail validation, but then problems arise in the event of a refund or dispute, where the funds would automatically go back to a card that is likely no longer in your possession, presenting problems in retrieval of funds. If you're looking for a prepaid option that can be used with PayPal, I would recommend Green Dot MoneyPak.

I hope this helps!

Olivia

[jlsalinas3]

I'm going through the same thing. Thanks for all the details.