Hi @Megankelsall,
Welcome to the community forum. I'm sorry to hear that you're having issues in getting your refund. As you probably know PayPal has a process that it follows and they need to stick to it let me tell you the full details of how non-receipt cases works.
You bought an item, after 7 days of making the payment and nothing arrives you can already open a dispute case with PayPal.
There are 2 phases of the case the dispute phase and the claim phase. The dispute phase PayPal won't take any action, it only allows you to converse with your merchant and to get an issue resolved amicably, what PayPal only does in that phase is to put a hold to the funds that were sent to the seller. Take note that a dispute phase only lasts for 20 days if it isn't resolve after 20 days it will expire and close.
You can escalate a dispute to a claim anytime from day 1 upon filing the claim till the 20th day but unfortunately if you didn't escalate the case after that PayPal can no longer help.
The claim phase starts with PayPal sending a message to your seller giving them 10 days to respond to the claim either to send the item by providing PayPal a tracking number or just refund the money. If no response has been receive PayPal takes the initiative in refunding the money by 'Force' even if the seller doesn't have any money left in their balance. What happens next? It's between the seller and PayPal.
I personally think that PayPal gives the 10 days window to give chance for the seller to do it and at the same time to minimize their loose. Because no matter what happens if PayPal sees you have not received your item PayPal will make sure that you'll be refunded. It's only fare to be patient and wait till that day happens.
Note: Auto refunds actually happens on the 11th day 24 hours after the 10 days window.
I hope this information helps.
Regards,
Paelavong
