Buyer has opened 5 paypal disputes on transactions which are at least 240 days old. How?

[jobinjose]

I am a freelancer software developer from India. An old client of mine from USA has gone back and created a dispute on every single transaction that happened between us from September 2021 to November 30. All these transactions are at least 240 days old. He initially filed the disputes under "Item not received" but they automatically got closed i think because they exceeded the 180 day limit that paypal has for opening disputes.

Then i think he appealed and reopened those disputes under "Item not as described". I responded to the disputes saying these are all older than 180 days and requested that they be closed. But paypal is telling me to provide more information or the case will be decided in the favor of the buyer. Even the website i built for him is not online anymore and all our past communication was on whatsapp.

What should i do? This seems like a huge loophole in paypal's website that people can appeal disputes even after 180 days have passed.

[sharpiemarker]

@jobinjose 

Are you sure these are not chargebacks and are PayPal disputes?

[jobinjose]

I just talked to a customer support person and they have confirmed that these are not chargebacks. They are normal paypal disputes. Even they themselves are puzzled about how these disputes were lodged after 180 days. They say they have "escalated it to the relevant team".

Getting really worried because the deadline to respond to one of these disputes is in 2 days

[jobinjose · Accepted solution]

So apparently it was a glitch in paypal's website due to which the buyer managed to open these disputes. He initially filed them under item not received which automatically got refused by the system. But due to some technical glitch, he once again managed to reopen the claim but this time under "item not as described". Paypal support has successfully closed all these claims for me after a week.