I purchased a device from an online phone dealer in South Africa (https://www.oukitelstore.co.za/). The way I understood it is I pay for the device including shipping, customs, and delivery and they will take care of everything. On checkout on their site, they PayPal option didn't work well and I had this error show up: "Receiving country does not support the transaction currency." I contacted the store's help via Whatsapp and I was told that they would create an invoice and send it to me for payment on PayPal. I got the invoice, I paid the money and everything seemed set to go.
The device was shipped from China (apparently) and it is en route to South Africa.
This morning I had a message on Whatsapp from them:
"Morning, can you help us releasing funds from hold we need to start preparing pre-clearance of shipment with custom."
This stuck a bit odd to me cos as far as I know there is no mechanism in PayPal to withhold any funds from being sent to the seller. I even read up on how this works and I see on PayPal that the status "Completed" means "The transaction was successful and the money is in the recipient's account." My PayPal clearly shows transaction completed.
I relayed this to their customer support and they come back with this message: "Your payment passes our threshold of $1200, and with that case sender has to release funds for us." I reiterated to them that there is no such option on my end and as far as I am aware the payment has gone through. Then he sends me a screenshot of the invoice that shows on their side that they have a "Get Funds" option and he says I need to release it by clicking on "Confirm Shipment Received".
This set off some alarm bells for me and I said that that doesn't make any sense. Why would I confirm shipment received when I haven't received it yet? Makes no sense to me. But he kept insisting that I need to do it or they will not get paid and that the shipment will be held up at Customs waiting for release.
What makes matters worse is I have been given two completely different tracking numbers, one listed on the PayPal invoice itself and another on the message from their support. They are both with different couriers - one with Aramex and one with DHL - and one of them actually shows a local courier listing that was already delivered to and from within South Africa.
I am not sure how to go about this now and would like some advice.
I tried contacting PayPal but couldn't get through to them. Should I open a case in the Resolution Center?
Any help is appreciated.
