CHARGEBACK SCAM.....SELLERS BEWARE!!!!!!

[Millstone]

Sellers Beware of the latest scam!!! 'Chargebacks', the buyer purchases your item, then files a chargeback against the credit card company. The money is then taken out of your pay-pal account, plus pay-pal fees and you have NO recourse!!! The buyer will come up with a lame excuse, item significantly not as described, not received, etc. Pay-pal (pretends) to be your support and will guide you thru all the steps. Trust me, I am very organized and provided ALL the documentation to prove my item was "AS DESCRIBED', but they found in favor of the credit card company, deducted the money from my pay-pal account, plus fees (for time involved). I have not received the merchandise from the buyer (part of the scam), AMEX has refunded her money and all in all I lost about $420. Pay-pal comment: Its all part of doing business, you have your profits and losses. You take chances when you accept credit cards. What they don't tell you is it is happening more and more. BEWARE!!!!! We will start to see a trend...

[Marie1236]

I was a victum of this scam about two years ago.  A customer bought 4 14K gold rings then had them charged back as "not as described. When I asked Paypal for help they told me that they couldn't do a thing because the scammer simply waits until their time limit to open a dispute is passed. As a former investigations correspondence representitive for Citibank (Hello I've handled thousands of despute cases) I advised the Paypal rep that they needed to return the chargeback to the source and see if it was represented.  THEY WERE UNWILLING. I then told them that there is arbitration by the associations (VISA, MC etc) available in case of a dispute.  PayPal was totally unwilling to go to bat. I believe they probably have no one familiar with chargeback procedure, reason codes, the arbitration process, none of it. Either that or they simply refuse to bear the cost of managing disputes.  I was given the "High Hat" as though I didn't know a thing, my years at Citibank aside, the rep swore up and down that there was no recourse after I'd educated him in the LAWFUL PROCEDURE IAW THE UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) Their failure to manage these complaints creates a gaping vulnerability for sellers and is in itself in violation of statute law.  But what did I know? I'd only been trained at Citibank for months then been given continual refresher training, I'd only handled about a hundred such cases a week. Dummy me. I gave up on talking to a brick wall and wrote off the $$$s to experience. By the way, visit me on Ebay, Rikkimarie as I sell off my business equipment and stock. Happy days, at least shortly I'll never deal with this outfit again

[jasonwentcrazy]

I'm on board to do whatever I need to do to help. It doesn't seem like PayPal is going to do anything and they should send the charges back in response. Automatically. They should stick up for their clients in some way that is real and valid and not gestural and loophole-laden.

Wanna start a site about this? Or file a complaint? Let me know and send an email anytime. I'd love to have a dialogue about this with other sellers who got legally scammed and stolen from. We need to do something for sure.

[brsbaubles]

Hello to all,

This is not good . I have just started with pay pal now I don't think this is a good ideal Has any one found another way of selling your items and not use pay pal ? I really don't want to use my home address for money orders .

                                Thank you for all of the info......

[docmagi]

Google has their own service I think like PayPal. I was suprised when I had to use it to make a purchase and when I asked the company they said they use it because PayPal is a hastle. In India it appears PayPal is not allowing them to get payments on commissions now unless it is coded incorrectly as merchandise.

I can not even get in touch with them now because of 8 charges on my account that the company did not even deliver the service and they do not return emails these days as well.

I will probably be looking to move my company accounts now to other services because PayPal just is becoming too big for them to provide good service these days. This is after I think 10 years now of having my account. That is amazing I have stood behind this company for that long till just now.

[bugman]

We are new to using PayPal for our payment processor and honestly, you are scaring me.

If what you are saying is all true and there aren't any other reasons for the chrgeback and PayPal is not working with you in a responsible, ethical manner, then you need it to go public.

As individuals, you/we have no leverage.  Find a few news agencies and begin funneling 'factual', 'focused' examples to them, followed up with phone calls asking for action, and asking what else they need to expose the problem.  ie: Good Morning America, The Today Show, The View???

The examples have to be factual, or they will tag you as spam and they all have to be about the same 'exact' problem or they will again tag it as spam. 

I would also copy PayPal on each submittal and keep excellent notes going forward.  I would also word it in regards to asking for help.

This will get their attention and motivate them to find a solution.  Credit cards and their past abuse in current news and it should get some traction.

Note, I'm not an attorney, but this approach has helped me in the past when trying to get an elephant to move in what I thought was the right direction.  In the end, both the trainer and the elephant are better off.

Good Luck and I 'hope' we never have the problem(smile).

[gearsmithy]

It is absolutely true.  I just got hit with the chargeback scam.  I can't believe paypal allows this to happen.