AliExpress Purchase Coded as Cash Advance

[orrly]

RESOLVED/// 

I reached out to AliExpress, and they say they didn't change their payment methods on the backend so to take it up with PayPal, who is also not taking ownership. I called my credit card's affiliated bank (Chase) again, and the rep waived the fee for me this time--I have good credit history and have been a customer for 10 yrs so YMMV. Also, my previous call to Chase was unsuccessful so you might need to call a few times and hope to catch a nice rep. Good luck to everyone except PayPal, who NEEDS TO STEP UP WITH THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE.

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I'm in the US and recently purchased an item off of AliExpress for the first time. I couldn't find the item I was looking for elsewhere on the web, and since they had a PayPal payment option, I thought maybe it would be safe enough. I paid just shy of USD 7 for the item.

Fast forward a few days later, I noticed that the credit card affiliated my this PayPal purchase had a USD 10 transaction fee--I called my bank, and they said it's because it was coded as a Cash Advance.

I reached out to AliExpress and they said to talk to PayPal who processed it. I filed a dispute with PayPal under "billing issue" because none of the other choices seem any better--I included a copy of my purchase receipt and a screenshot of my credit card statement showing the extraneous fee. Today PayPal just denied my name because it's "not a billing issue". Could someone advise what I should do? Out of principle, I do not this it's right for me to be charged this fine because some weird billing on the back end.

[vj2050]

As of Dec 29, 2020 this has NOT been resolved - at least NOT with TD Visa.    In fact, it gets crazier.     I received a refund for incorrect Aliexpress merchandise and the refund transaction via Paypal was also treated as a cash advance which is nuts.    In this case, there is no authorization process - simply a refund transaction initiated by Aliexpress.    Money is being credited to my account - yet I am being  charged a fee!    Madness!    TD have reversed the fee plus interest - but it is time-consuming and extremely frustrating to have to deal with this nonsense.        Avoid Paypal and Aliexpress.  

[leggatmagmaca]

After canceling and replacing credit card in an attempt to avoid cash advance charges, Paypal has frozen my account TWICE in dealing with the complaints made about three separate charges.

The last time was Feb02, after processing other transactions with non-aliexp vendors, without issue.

In each case, Paypal advised that they were unable to resolve the issue.

When will this stop?

Will I get the same 'we are unable to resolve this issue' messages a month from now, and another freeze?

[leggatmagmaca]

A TD Visa credit card statement for February showed four separate

'front-end fee adjustment' entries, refunding $5 each, with no explanation.

Free money is always nice - but the 'cash advance' fee was charged nine times,

according to previous statements, along with ~$15 'retail' or 'cash' interest, when

the charges were not paid in one billing cycle.  My understanding was that the 

charges were being retracted in that cycle - apparently not, nor in the next three.

AliExpress doesn't show up in my Hardware/Sales bookmark links folder any more.

They're still sending me quite cheerful spam.

TD Visa and PayPal ? Hmmm.