Unauthorised payment made on my account.

[paulmillar1967]

I looked at my account today to see if there had been any progress on an open dispute i have but instead seen that £518 has been withdrawn from my account (£479 from my bank account). I did not do this. The detail says that it happened on the 4th sept at around 11:30 (i dont have the exzact details to hand). During this time i was at work and had no access to paypal. Furthermore i had not signed in to paypal at all yesterday and only found out about it today. I have opend an unauthorised transaction dispute and would like to know if;

1. will the £479 be withdrawn from my bank account while the dispute is open? (i get paid £500 on wednesday and if the money is withdrawn then i have no money for 3 weeks.)

2. this has been a case of someone hacking my account in some way and sending £518 to their own paypal account. How likely am i to get my money back?

3. Every time i have used  paypal it has been to buy things on ebay (at least 98% of my transaction are for ebay i think) i have never just sent someone money before. Will this irregularity help my claim?

Just to clarify i have not bought anything, i have not clicked a button and agreed to anything, i am not trying to scam paypal. someone has taken £518 from my account, 479 will be charged from my bank account and the rest will be taken from the money i had in my paypal account at the time.

I have changed my passwords and opened a dispute and have read about what paypal will do in their investigation.

Does anyone have any advice, similar inccidents or even opinions about what will happen next?

[BlueDove]

The same thing happened to me on September 3. I received a notification that I had made a payment of $49 to Richard Vincent, then another one that said a third-party had accessed my account. My account overview says that a dispute is open and Paypal is inquiring into the situation. I clicked on the Help button in Paypal, but it takes me to a page that says I'm using an outdated version of Paypal.

I'm wondering if I should just request the money from the person, using the email it was supposedly sent to. But Paypal says in the Resolution Center to contact them  immediately, not do anything else.

[paulmillar1967]

paypal contacted me saying that my case had been "accepted" and told me to log into my account. i was then askd to answer questions that only i could answer like bank account number, card number address ect. After this i found that my account had been refunded and i had £519 in my account but the investigation is still open. my account was limited but i answered some more questions and now it is no longer limited...however i dont know if i can access the money....

Surprised at the fast response from paypal though. Providing that the case is ultimately decided in my favour then it has been an excellent service.

[surplusdealdude]

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@BlueDove wrote:

The same thing happened to me on September 3. I received a notification that I had made a payment of $49 to Richard Vincent, then another one that said a third-party had accessed my account. My account overview says that a dispute is open and Paypal is inquiring into the situation. I clicked on the Help button in Paypal, but it takes me to a page that says I'm using an outdated version of Paypal.

I'm wondering if I should just request the money from the person, using the email it was supposedly sent to. But Paypal says in the Resolution Center to contact them  immediately, not do anything else.

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Do what Paypal says - this is a criminal investigation, not a dispute.

[BlueDove]

I contacted them the same day I made the post and have received emails that the case will be investigated.

Also, I went through my spam folder just now (where I found the reply notifications for this topic) and saw this email address: something with echosurvey at the end and paypal.feedback at the beginning. Is it really from Paypal and is it safe to click on the survey link? It says:

We understand that your PayPal account may have been temporarily limited due to questions or concerns by our Account Review team.  Thank you very much for your cooperation during this process.  We are pleased that your account has now been reinstated.

As part of PayPal's Commitment to excellence, we would like to ask you to take just a few minutes to answer questions about PayPal's account limitation process. 

To respond to our survey, please click on the web address below.  If that does not work, please cut and paste the entire web address into the address field of your browser.

NOTE: Please respond within five days. After 5 days, this invitation will expire.

I don't think it safe, but if anyone knows differently I'd be glad to hear about it.

[surplusdealdude]

Yeah, I think that's safe.  Just don't provide any personal data.