Customer Service Hell - Can anyone help?!?!?!?!

[JoelMole]

Hi all.

I originally wrote this as an email to PayPal to act as both a complaint and also an enquiry into what on earth is going on with my account, however was once again thwarted by PayPal's 2500 character limit on their "Contact Us" email form. So instead, I have decided to post it here as I can't find anywhere else to contact PayPal in greater than 2500 characters...

Pretty sure everything is fairly self explanatory from the letter, so I haven't bothered to restructure it as a forum posting. If anyone can help me in any way it would be very much appreciated. Been receiving constant harassing phone calls for months now and it's getting pretty tiresome. Also it would be nice to have use of my account back. Here is the letter:

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Hi there,

I am writing because after a long time of waiting for any kind of updates from PayPal, I am beginning to give up hope. Last year in October or perhaps November 2017 – it’s hard to recall as it has been such a long time – I was the victim of a fraud scam and was left with -£300 or so in my PayPal wallet (case ID: PP-D-5098025). Needless to say, my PayPal account has been unusable since then, which alone has caused me significant hassle. However, what has caused me even more hassle is the incessant phone calls I have been receiving – first from PayPal and now from a debt collector to whom you have presumably sold the debt off to. All of this has happened whilst my case has supposedly still been under appeal – however I find it pretty difficult to believe that this is true after hearing nothing for 3 months.

Originally, I was defrauded of approximately £300 by someone who had hacked into my friend’s Facebook account and messaged me on Facebook asking me to help them withdraw their money from PayPal to their bank. Given the circumstances surrounding this situation, it did not seem suspicious at the time and so I obliged. They transferred me the money on PayPal which I withdrew to my bank account and then bank transferred back to their bank account. I did this as they said that they did not know how to get the funds from their PayPal account into their bank. However, soon afterwards I received notice that the PayPal transaction had been reversed by whoever had sent me the funds – claiming it was a fraudulent transaction. There was no transaction at all – only the perceived transfer of money between friends. I was not offering any product or service for this money.

I submitted my case to the resolution centre as requested – including screenshots of the Facebook message conversation with my friend’s account that I now know had been hacked. It wasn’t until well over a month later that PayPal came back with a verdict. I was informed that I had not been successful in retaining my money as I was not covered by “Buyer’s protection insurance”. Firstly, I don’t think this is even relevant as no one was even buying anything. Secondly – surely this information should have been patently obvious, and should not have taken months to ascertain?

In any case, I replied to the verdict via the message centre at the time explaining how I was very disappointed in the result and wanted to appeal further etc. To which I received a reply stating that an appeal had been filed for my case and that I should await further updates. Shortly after receiving this message from PayPal, I began receiving automated phone calls – typically 5-10 EVERY SINGLE DAY – telling me that I needed to deposit funds to my account in order to clear the debt. As it was Christmas time I had rather more pressing things to be dealing with and thus ignored these endless voicemails for the first few days. After Christmas was over but before the new year, I made a phone call to PayPal’s customer service team to try and understand what on earth was going on with my case. I spoke to someone who told me that my case was indeed still being appealed, but that there was nothing they could do to stop me receiving these phone calls. I was told that if I just kept ignoring them – nothing bad would happen and I would not incur any further charges. So, that is exactly what I have been doing. However, at some point along the way the phone number and voicemail messages began to change. No longer were they from PayPal themselves but from a 3rd party debt collecting company. Given this change and the fact that I have received no correspondence whatsoever in almost 3 months now – I thought I should probably try to get in touch again.

I have no intention of paying off the negative balance on my PayPal account at the moment, as I do not believe it would be at all fair to further punish someone who has already been a victim of fraud.

In the past, I have always been a huge fan of PayPal, and have constantly recommended it to friends and family alike. However, to be perfectly honest, I think the way I have been treated by PayPal throughout this entire saga has been utterly and absolutely appalling. As far as I can see, I have just been being continually fed a string of lies about my case being appealed, whilst also perpetually receiving harassing phone calls from debt collectors every hour!

Unless there is some kind of resolution to this issue, I will be forced to forever view PayPal as a terrible company, and will be compelled to strongly discourage anyone and everyone I know from using the service at every opportunity. I have honestly never had a worse experience dealing with any organisation of any kind in my life.

So… what now?

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Any advice would be greatly appreciated. This has been burdening me for almost half a year now...

[kernowlass]

@JoelMole

Sorry but yes you were scammed.

You accepted a Paypal payment and withdrew it to your bank account.

That person then filed an unauthorised transaction dispute, you were NOT covered by any of Paypals protection as this was not a transaction for a sale.

So you were responsible in paying that money back, you didn't so Paypal had to reimburse that person and now they want their money back.

You allowed the scam to happen innocently or not, Paypal didn't allow it to happen so they want reimbursing.