I am a seller on eBay and been in the business for about 4 years now and have 100% feedback. I have been scammed on eBay many times by having buyers use tricks on both me and eBay but to have this kind of treatment on PayPal was something I thought will not happen.
Recently, a buyer opened a return case because the item was not as described. PayPal ruled the case into his favor, of course, like they always do. The guy claimed he got a not as described item (the item was EXACTLY as described). Not to get into details but let us say that he bought a shirt from me that I auctioned as a blue shirt and then he returned it because it was not green. Total nonsense.
But that is not the only problem. Before they ruled the case into his favor and told him to send the watch back to me, their case system failed and froze on my end, so all I could see when I checked the case was that it is still under PayPal investigation. After some time, the buyer contacts me and tells me that he sent the item back to me. I knew nothing about the return being approved so I contacted PayPal. After checking the buyer's claim with PayPal and also reporting that the case details still show on my end that the case is STILL under investigation, they confirm that it was them who told the buyer to send the watch back. I thought that this was all fine, but the problem was that they never made ANY kind of contact with me regarding the whole 2 or 3 weeks and sent the item to the wrong address.
I have addresses in two different countries. But what does that have to do with PayPal, the fact that I live where I want to and move where I want to? Well, on PayPal, your address is the return address and if for any reason you might want to change it and have the package sent to another one of your locations, that will not work. Or maybe it will, but since the case was not updated on time I never knew that the item was being shipped to the wrong location.
I contact the carrier and tell them to return the item to the buyer. Then, I contact the buyer and explain him the situation, which is that he will have to take the package back and send it to me to another location, and of course, the location itself. I also contact PayPal and let them know what happened. They apologize for the trouble with the case updates and tell me that I should not worry, that they already contacted the buyer and let him know the new address he should ship the item to. I am thinking great, all worked out.
Then, one day, I open my PayPal and see that the money being held from the case is now refunded to the buyer before he even got to ship the item back to me. I call PayPal to ask WTF, but now they change the story. They tell me now that the address I have in my account is the address that must be used for returns (after they already said that they informed the buyer about the new address). A bunch of amateurs working as their "agents" are not helpful at all and every time you contact PayPal you get a different piece of information from the agents, even if the last time you spoke to them they told the opposite of what they are telling you know. Same like eBay, they will make you run around thinking that everything is fine and then just play dumb one day when you actually already lost.
And what can you do? Nothing.
They will not help with this and constantly make stupid excuses. The item cost 600 USD and the buyer is holding both the money and the item now and will not return it to me. I am not selling stamps or pencils and PayPal has seen a lot of money from my sales over the years. But still they treat me as I am a low level seller
This kind of treatment is unfair and all those seller protection stories and other stuff is not true. They work on the same system as eBay, the buyer is ALWAYS right for them. But can a buyer steal the item? With the help of eBay and PayPal, they can! PayPal as a middle man should have to make sure that both sides get what is theirs, but, for some reason, PayPal does not care about you as a seller.
I will also say that this is not the first time that something like this happened. At least 4 or 5 more times it happened on eBay but I never had the time to write all of this, but now it has gone too far.
PayPal has showed how reckless, unprofessional and careless they can be when it comes to your money and safety.
