I sent some payments to my girlfriend earlier this month so she could buy something on Ebay.
She didn't already have a Paypal account so she had to make a new one (so it did not have a credit card on).
When she attempted to make the purchase, her account was made limited (because apparently using money that was gifted to you from a verified account is considered a risk.. they needed more information about the transactions, yet they didn't bother to confirm them with me) requiring her to verify a non-existing credit card and utility bill. She doesn't have her own credit card, so she got permission to use her mother's.
After verifying both of these, Paypal additionally required her to verify her identity, she doesn't have an up to date passport and we assumed it meant the card holders identity so she had her mother to use hers.
After verifying this additional information, her account was blocked with no capability to do anything with the money. We have now been trying for a while to get the money refunded to me with no success at all.
Firstly, there is no 'Refund' option from the transaction 'Details' on the History tab.
Also she can't send a support E-Mail through the 'Refund' topic because her localization of Paypal requires a transaction ID before submitting, and when she does submit the E-Mail with the transaction ID, Paypal gives an error stating that the transaction is not a valid payment.
And she can't call the support phone number because it says the number isn't recognized (she lives in Asia, she's tryng to use the international code but it doesn't seem to work for her). But when I called, I got a response saying that it should be possible to refund payments on a limited account (even if they are sent as gifts and even if they're on-hold) but they needed her to contact them instead - of which she is unable to through relevant means.
When she uses an irrelevant topic on the contact form, she just gets a generic automated response telling her to check the resolution center for information that she needs to verify in order to verify her account - but there's nothing there because she already verified such information.
When I send an E-Mail through the 'Refund' topic I have, it does not require a transaction ID but I get a response saying that they need her to contact them instead.. Why can't they contact her? I explained that she is having trouble contacting them, yet they will not contact her instead. Why isn't it enough that she has already contacted them several times through other topics, can they not simply check those E-Mails through the other topics to confirm that she wants to refund the payments?
To say the least, Paypal ruined our valentines day.
