Victim of very misleading advertising

[Jesse9237]

On February 17th this year after seeing a very slick advertisement showing just the items I was looking for I made an order. The items were Solar powered flame effect garden lights shown in a garden setting, they were clearly marked "Solar" even being shown being put together.  However what was actually delivered were 8 LED flame effect bulbs, no spikes or housing, solar panels etc. The bulbs were not solar, can only be used in a powered light socket and definitely not for external use.  Despite e mails back and forth I could not get these changed for correct items, I was told you ordered the items you received??  I offered to exchange the useless bulbs for correct items and pay any price difference, still no go.  This I explained to Paypal and raised a complaint against the company, Huang or lizcli as called at first.  Paypal have repeatedly ignored my explanations, they send the same message time after time.  Paypal expect me to accept 50% of the purchase price while returning 100% of the articles while at the same time paying for post and packing all the way to China.  They came to this decision in a no time at all so quite clearly did not investigate this cowboy operation.  When I complained that they were not listening to me at all and just finding for a very dubious seller they just sent the same message I had already received several times.  Very very disappointed with PayPal, not sure I will ever use them again.

[kernowlass]

@Jesse9237 

Paypal does not get involved with part-refunds so you must have agreed or offered to agree to that refund before you escalated to a claim.

Then if paypal find in your favour they will get you the part-refund you agreed to on return of the items back to the seller.

Paypal buyer protection can never be a 100% coverall, so in the event of a dispute you need to bear in mind possible return trackable costs before you buy from that seller / item / country.

Paypal state this >>
PayPal is not obliged to reimburse you for any costs that you incur to comply with any of PayPal’s requests for cooperation for the purpose of resolving the problem (including, without limitation, costs that you incur to return a SNAD item to the Payment Recipient or another party as PayPal requests), although sometimes it may reimburse these costs.

Although they will compensate you for some of the cost if you have activated this at some point before you made that transaction .....
https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/refunded-returns

If you buy from a business in the UK then you can normally recover those return costs via the small claims court although most UK businesses would reimburse you anyway. (BUT if you choose to buy from a private or international seller you may not have that option).
You also have the option to do a chargeback via your card issuer instead of a Paypal dispute if you funded your Paypal payment via a credit card.

[Jesse9237]

Hello again,

     I never expected Paypal to make a refund or indeed fund the return postage, although this would have been great.  What I did expect was Paypal to take my complaint against Huang seriously, they are it would seem a crooked outfit just out to scam innocent people.  I wanted Paypal to investigate this properly, stop taking payments and to warn other would be scamees (not sure if this is a word) but I'm sure you know what I mean.  The original cost to myself was $70.40 around £55 or so, where the idea that I would accept $35 as a refund came from I don't know, and even for this for this I had to return the goods to China?? this is quite beyond me. It was quite clearly never going to happen I would be hugely out of pocket while the crooks get their goods back to send to some other unsuspecting mug.  Words fail me, Get your act together Paypal.

                                                         a very upset Paypal member  Peter Witheridge