Seller Can't Issue Refund, Funds Held Due to Dispute

[DavidLaw]

Bought what was advertised as unique content on a popular forum, made 18 transactions for content, totaling a little over $200.

Turns out the content wasn't unique (not owned by the seller) so asked for a refund via PayPal disputes which the seller refused. Proved to the seller the content wasn't his to sell and by email he has agreed to issue a refund, but his PayPal account is a few dollars in the negative.

As I understand things when I started the disputes (I escalated one dispute so far) the funds were put on hold and the seller can't refund me via the held funds. Is that right?

I've told the seller to post something on each dispute to indicate he is willing to refund the money when funds permit, waiting for him to make those comments.

The seller says he has no money, gave me a sob story about being in a third world country etc... How do I get my money back?

Here's a few case IDs incase a PayPal employee can look into this and speed things along.

PP-002-017-494-338
PP-002-017-492-853
PP-002-017-483-753

David

[kernowlass · Accepted solution]

He can still refund even if funds are on hold, all he has to do is contact customer services via contact us bottom of paypal pages and give them the transaction numbers and authorise a refund for you from the held funds.

If he doesn't then escalate the dispute to a claim. BUT if it was a "virtual" item there is no guarantee you will get a refund as buyer protection does not cover virtual or intangible items.

No-one here has access to your account even the mods that post on here do not as its a community forum. 

[DavidLaw]

Got my refunds yesterday, the one I escalated was refunded I think by PayPal yesterday evening. The ones I hadn't escalated were refunded in the early hours of the morning. I was logged into PayPal at the time as was about to escalate all the disputes. Was a case of had the text for the escalations ready to paste, clicked the view dispute and it was resolved. The remaining payments were refunded within 20 mins.

I was a little worried about the items being content (electronic goods), I sell website themes and get the odd customer wanting a refund after they have the theme (so they get it for free) and PayPal always sides with the seller (me). Fortunately I bought the content from a popular forum (DigitalPoint) that has a trader rating system so was able to hold negative ratings over the seller. Now I have my money he gets the negative ratings anyway as was a clear case of ripping people off: was copying content from websites where the content was new so not indexed by Google or CopyScape (a service to check if content is unique) so in the short term passed the checks content buyers make.

David