What happened to my refund?

[pianoman]

Greetiongs,

I made a PayPal purchase that was charged to my MasterCard. The merchant ended up refunding me. I see the refund in my PayPal history but my PayPal account balance is $0.00. Is that because PayPal would have credited the money back to the MasterCard I used for the initial purchase?

Thanks to any and all who can answer this for me and prevent me from sitting on hold on the phone with PayPal

[sleepy1904]

The same thing happened to me and I didn't get my money in my bank account neither. Did you end up getting it back after all?

[pianoman]

This refund just occured today so I'm not sure yet. All I know is I can see the refund in my history but account balance is zero. I'm hoping someone out there can tell me what PayPal's policy is on this. In all likelihood they credit back to the original source. That's how most financial institutions operate. If I don't see the credit on my credit card by Monday, I'l. call PayPal and find out what's what. If you've been waiting morre than a couple of days to get your money bacck I would encourage you to cal them right away. If you do call them, please ask them what their policy is on refunds and let me know.

thanks for your reply. Sorry I couldn't answer your question but I just posted my question like 15 minutes ago.

[sleepy1904]

Oh I didn't see the date posted sorry. I asked for a refund on Thursday, I will also call monday if I haven't got anything back. Thank you.

[pianoman · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I just spoke to PayPal. I only had to wait like 2 minutes to get to a live person. Anyway, my refund is being credited back to my credit card account. I asked them what their policy is if I had used a bank account. The representative told me that you would have a credit in your PayPal account. They do NOT automatically put it back into a bank account. This makes sense. For credit cards they have to pay a transaction fee. If they reimburse the credit card, their transaction fee gets reimbursed. With a bank account they do not incur such fees so they hang on to your money until you instruct them what to do with it.

So if you were refunded and your refund is not showing up as a credit in your PayPal account you should call them right away. Just go to PayPal Help and you'll get an option to telephone or e-mail them. If you choose to phone them, you'll get a special PIN number that's good for 60 minutes. When you call you enter that number when prompted. You should get through to someone in short order. I had to say "where's my refund" a couple of times but once I did that they stopped with the automated service and put me through to someone quite fast.

Good luck

[gwar]

I lost my credit card and it was cancelled .. i am getting a new one with a new #.

during this time i was sent a refund thru paypal to my old credit card #.

what happens to my refund ????

[bboyicy]

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@pianoman wrote:

Hi,

I just spoke to PayPal. I only had to wait like 2 minutes to get to a live person. Anyway, my refund is being credited back to my credit card account. I asked them what their policy is if I had used a bank account. The representative told me that you would have a credit in your PayPal account. They do NOT automatically put it back into a bank account. This makes sense. For credit cards they have to pay a transaction fee. If they reimburse the credit card, their transaction fee gets reimbursed. With a bank account they do not incur such fees so they hang on to your money until you instruct them what to do with it.

So if you were refunded and your refund is not showing up as a credit in your PayPal account you should call them right away. Just go to PayPal Help and you'll get an option to telephone or e-mail them. If you choose to phone them, you'll get a special PIN number that's good for 60 minutes. When you call you enter that number when prompted. You should get through to someone in short order. I had to say "where's my refund" a couple of times but once I did that they stopped with the automated service and put me through to someone quite fast.

Good luck

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So it will be the same with credit or debit card except they will charge you the fee and it will be sent to the card automatically. Is that what you say ? So if my refund status is shown as completed on Mar 23 and my debit card account does not go up, will i have to call them? Please help. Thank you very much

[princesseso]

I just spoke to a supervisor who gave me some lame excuse that the Federal Reserve is holding the refund money for 5 days! She also told me they don't take the money from our accounts for 3-5 days which is false because it always [in my case] gets deducted immediatley from my bank account. It's all just a bunch of hog wash.

[booshygm2]

Thank you, pianoman.  This helped me a lot.  Your reply brought me to the full understanding.  Have a great day.

[waggie2]

I really appreciate the way you explained the refund process.  The pop-up explanation box was confusing.  Thank you!

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@pianoman wrote:

Hi,

I just spoke to PayPal. I only had to wait like 2 minutes to get to a live person. Anyway, my refund is being credited back to my credit card account. I asked them what their policy is if I had used a bank account. The representative told me that you would have a credit in your PayPal account. They do NOT automatically put it back into a bank account. This makes sense. For credit cards they have to pay a transaction fee. If they reimburse the credit card, their transaction fee gets reimbursed. With a bank account they do not incur such fees so they hang on to your money until you instruct them what to do with it.

So if you were refunded and your refund is not showing up as a credit in your PayPal account you should call them right away. Just go to PayPal Help and you'll get an option to telephone or e-mail them. If you choose to phone them, you'll get a special PIN number that's good for 60 minutes. When you call you enter that number when prompted. You should get through to someone in short order. I had to say "where's my refund" a couple of times but once I did that they stopped with the automated service and put me through to someone quite fast.

Good luck

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