Why has money transferred from my bank when I'm just refunding from paypal account?

[Siouxmoo]

I've been in dispute with a seller from Holland for nearly a year due to a lost package.

She finally was issued the postal refund and in a rush to refund me, sent me 2 separate payments from her phone through paypal. It was nearly the full amount from her end, but with paypals fees and currency conversion etc I ended up £20 short of my full refund.

So I suggested that I would refund the two payments so that she should go back to my original June transaction and do an official refund. (I have since discovered that there's a 60 day limit on that for some reason).

Anyway. I refunded the first of her two payments with no probs, and it showed up on my account details with paypal covering the fees. When I tried the second amount I was told there were insufficient funds and it would take 7 days to process. So I immediately stuck £10 in my paypal account thinking it would resolve the issue, but now I'm not sure what's happening.

The amount I'm refunding (from her pov) is 225 euros.

I just looked at my personal bank account and it has had £192+ removed as a 'paypal payment'. Flippin heck! I can't afford that! I'm the one who's supposed to be getting money back from her! I don't recall any moment where I confirmed transfer from my bank (even if it is set up to be linked to paypal). As far as I was concerned I was just doing a direct refund from one paypal account to another.

Paypal got its pound of flesh from us the first tme I paid for the (ultimately) lost items.

So what I want to know is: is the £192+ in my paypal account (30p different to the amount shown in my bank account) my own money, or the pending payment to the girl in Holland? How do I see if she's got the refund yet as nothing is showing on the account history page for 225eur. Why didn't paypal only take the 30p (or so) needed to make the refund? And when she finally is able to refund me (which I guess will have to be a 'gift' but will still be an international transaction, right?) why should I be penalised with fees? I've had a nightmare year trying to resolve where my lost items were, who was responsible and when the money would be refunded to her to pay me. It makes the 45 day dispute margin laughable when trying to deal with international and UK postal services (and the 3 month policies which are fine unless the claims go missing too!)

I wish I'd taken the £20 hit now to be honest!

What's the deal?

[PayPal_david]

Hi there Siouxmoo,

Welcome to the Community!

I can imagine that this must have been very frustrating for you. You would have had an option to dispute the transaction through your PayPal account within 45 days if you wished.

As the transaction was nearly a year ago, your seller won't be able to initiate a refund using the correct process. The only way that they will be able to initiate a refund to you would be by sending a payment directly to your PayPal account from theirs.

If they send you a payment, you could ask them to include extra to cover a fee that will be applied on the transaction. If they are sending you a personal payment, they will have an option to pay the fee themselves when they are sending the money to you.

If you are charged fees upon receiving this refund from your seller, you can try contacting customer services directly if you wish and we will see if there is anything that we can do to refund the fees that were applied.

Please let me know how it goes.

David.

[Siouxmoo]

Thank you for replying.

I'm sorry the first was so long winded - I'm not sure you managed to read all of it.

My main query is about the two instant refunds I made back to the seller in order for her to RE-Refund me as a gift, with less fees to me.

Ideally, she shouldn't have to pay fees either, but I understand what you say and once it's resolved, if I get charged, I'll take it up with Customer services.

But.

I am curious to understand why, at the beginning, with her money sitting in my paypal account, after sending back her first payment as a refund with no problems, the second one told me there were insuficient funds to make an immediate refund and seemed to take the whole amount again from my bank account rather than just the 30 odd pence needed to complete the refund? 

So the money now sitting in my paypal account (minus the 30 odd pence) is mine, right? From my own bank account.

Also, my paypal account reads that both refunds have been made to her, but only 1 has completed.

What is happening? Why didn't paypal just take the 30ish pence needed to complete the refund?

[PayPal_Siobhán]

Hi there Siouxmoo,

Refunds don't work like payments in the sense that we cannot make up the difference of the refund from your bank account if you are short. You need to either have the full balance available or none will be used for a refund.

So... by the time it came to you sending this second refund to your seller you did not have the full amount available and you initiated the full amount from your bank which takes a few days to clear. 

To sum it up, yes what is in your PayPal balance sounds to be yours and you can withdraw it back to your bank account to make up for the funds that have been transferred for this refund.

Siobhán 

[Siouxmoo]

Thank you 🙂

That answers my query.

Ironically, in the meantime, my refund to her has cleared and she has, in turn, refunded my full amount in £'s (which has also cleared, and probably incurred currency charges on her side now). Meanwhile, my own excess bank funds are still pending clearance in my own paypal account. Lol!

Craziness! ><

[AdamSmith]

have you called the bank and told them the direct debit from paypal wasn't authorized? Your bank will give you the money back then leave paypal to sort the mess out.

[Siouxmoo]

No. I don't think it's worth it.

If it had made me overdrawn and I was incurring an overdraft fee from my bank, then yes - I'd be really angry. But legally there's no point as my paypal is linked to my bank account for when I'm [usually] just buying things. So I guess it's on automatic' some how. So in a way, it is authorised (except I didn't know X years ago that I could potentially be authorising something I didn't want to happen)

If paypal had made a little popup window saying 'Do you want to transfer £xxx from your bank account?' I could have changed it there and then to 30p (or whatever it should have been). I do think it's a massive flaw in the refund system though. And I also think it's a bit cheeky for paypal to set a time limit on personal refunds. Especially when most postal services have a 3 month claim policy themselves.

After all, why would somebody fake giving a refund? They'd fake a claim, but I can't envision someone faking giving back money!

Anyway. I think I'm squared away now.

Perhaps some of it'll be handy for others to know.

Oh and PS mods; my windows 8 metro mail service seems to like stashing these paypal forum updates as spam. Not sure if that's something useful to know...