Small Business Buyer Fraud (potential)

Stu65
New Community Member

So how is a small business seller protected?

We run a small independent retail business, with a small turnover website.
A customer buys an item, doesn't like it. Refuses to return the item yet insists on a refund. They continue to make wild claims about faults, bombarding you with emails with further claims and insisting on an immediate refund. Says they are contacting trading standards, raise a dispute on PayPal and so on.  They keep demanding a refund, going onto to claim an unseen fault, and refusing to send back the item.
As a business you have full 'Terms and Conditions' relevant to UK law. You have said upon receipt of the returned goods you will issue a refund through PayPal, no questions asked.  This is also the local law - so long as the item is in a re-saleable condition, unused and with the original packaging.
At the point of payment the customer is asked to check a box to say they have read the afore mentioned 'terms and conditions'.

One would assume that PayPal with any dispute of this nature would insist the customer complies with local laws and sellers Terms and Conditions, in so much that they are reasonable and appropriate to those local laws and guidelines (thinking Covid pandemic).

At this point should PayPal ignore local laws, website Terms and Conditions that apply to these laws then surely they themselves are in breach of the morality of such local laws and effectively taking the law into their own hands?

As a business we have such a dispute of this nature.  If the goods do not come back and PayPal issue a refund where does the business stand?
In fact it could be the case that a so called customer makes a habit of this to obtain effectively 'Free Goods'.  Which if this is the case then the matter should be reported to the Police by PayPal.

Having heard similar experiences from small businesses, I would be interested to hear of the experiences of other small business owners with bricks and mortar operations and have small website sales.  What have you found?
What do PayPal have to say? 

It's an interesting one...

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