Scammed by Chinese seller and Paypal sided with scammer

[kenstewart2005]

PP-D-45211970 - thank you (sarcasm) for siding with the Chinese fraudulent seller! Seller advertised product, sent significantly DIFFERENT product and only way they would refund me is if I spent more money which would amount to same, if not more, than original sale for my shipping cost (seller would not cover) ... and YOU (Paypal) sided with them ... HORRIBLE service and you obviously support fraudulent Chinese sellers! I will advertise this to others, report to BBB, and anything else I can do via social media. HORRIBLE CUSTOMER (lack of) service! There is NO buyer protection from you, can't wait to pay off this amount and NEVER use you again.

[Sh125]

Happened to me too. Ordered a Halloween advent calendar house and was sent a fabric bit of rubbish instead. The pictures on the website had actually been stolen from an etsy listing, and lots of other people have been scammed too. Even faced with all the evidence that this fraud, Paypal say they “need to be fair to the seller” and will only refund when I send back the bit of tat. This will cost me more than I originally paid and I have no doubt it will go “missing”. I’ve reported it to action fraud. Totally disgusted with Paypal. 

[Temp20201216e]

If PayPal can’t abide by their part of the contract , (being fraud protection), and want to keep siding with the sellers in obvious fraud cases, maybe the users should boycott payments to PayPal until they can start making the right decisions. If they don’t have to follow what is stated in their agreement, why should we. At this point it would be worth the small credit impact to just walk away from PayPal and their credit. Amazon has your back when it comes to fraud and scams.

[Temp20201123c]

Another victim of 'Buyer protection' here.

Bought from a UK webpage from what appeared to be a UK seller, turned out to be Chinese 'Gadgets Group', oh dear... What I received was a poorly made and vastly inferior rip off of the electronic device I did order. Missing pretty much every feature it was advertised as having, even as far as the HDMI connection (which lets face it shouldn't even be a 'feature' nowadays), so was completely incompatible and unusable for my purposes.

PayPal found in favour of the seller, claiming that what I received was 'materially similar' to that advertised, despite it doing pretty none of the things stated and being unusable due to the outputs which were lied about. 

From talking to the brick wall that is customer service chat, apparently not being usable and lacking 99% of the stated spec is not 'significant difference', and it seems that Buyer Protection doesn't cover 'expectations of buyers'. So they are saying that you should never buy anything with PayPal if you have any expectation that you will actually get what you bought and that it will work? Ridiculous. 

[IronDruid21]

They ship something to your town but not to your address. So it looks like it was delivered but nothing ever gets delivered. It's such a scam. They have out smarter paypal and PayPal doesnt care. PayPal is a horrible company, the seller and buyer protection doesn't mean **bleep**. The customer service is non existent. And they close disputes super fast without even contacting you. Wake up PayPal you dumb **bleep**.

[IronDruid21]

**bleep** the Chinese.

[Arial99]

Hello, I actually got my money back. I just flat out refused to send it back to the seller, even if PayPal was gonna give me $15 credit or whatever. I told them that this was **bleep** and obviously fraud and I’m not gonna ship back a damn $1 item. I’ll pay for the item and I want the remainder of my money back. Shortly after there was an apology and all my money.

[Kario5]

Lucky you. I got mad, said the same stuff, told them I was reporting this to whatever govt. regulation board oversees this sort of thing and they didn’t budge! I am out $89.00 for an inflatable raft! Of course, this was not what I had ordered!

[kargesphoto]

Sounds like you ordered the same thing I did , which was an electric powered surfboard for $89.99. I also received an inflatable pool toy

[kargesphoto]

So after spamming the PayPal Executive Office email address with dozens of screenshots of everyone's post on this forum, I received a response today out of the blue. I have pasted it below, with my response underneath. Maybe someday they will get the message!!!!!

Dear Albert <removed>,

This is Patrick from PayPal's Office of Executive Escalations. Thank you for your reply; I am happy to address your concerns.

I apologize for any frustrations caused by your denied claim, I can certainly understand why that would be cause for concern.

Upon further review of claim ID PP-D-76983686, I have appealed the claim for our dispute back office to review. Once they make a final decision you will be notified via email.

Please feel free to contact PayPal's Office of Executive Escalations at (email removed) if you have any questions or concerns or if we can be of further assistance.

Very sincerely yours,

Patrick

PayPal Executive Escalations

Copyright © 1999-2020 PayPal. All rights reserved.

MY RESPONSE:

Patrick,

Thank you for responding, my apologies for spamming your office with the posts of dozens of extremely angry and frustrated PayPal members who are being scammed by fraudulent Chinese sellers. Frankly I had given up on getting the $89.99 back that was stolen from me, but I would appreciate any consideration.

These sellers are running a scam, plain and simple, and are abusing Paypal's cumbersome resolution process to steal thousands, if not millions of dollars from honest consumers. And PayPal is allowing, even enabling this to happen by hiding behind its user agreement.

I would like to offer one simple solution to end this fraud:

Do not release funds to Chinese sellers until the buyer confirms that the correct product has been received. 

Its that simple.

This policy could be waived for Chinese sellers that have a long track record of successful sales. The fraudulent sellers undoubtedly have very short histories with PayPal, probably signing up under a different name every time they run a scam.

Furthermore, PayPal could still deduct its fee for managing the process. Buyers would much rather lose a few dollars to PayPal in fees, than the entire amount to the criminals.

Thanks again and Happy Holidaze,

Albert <removed>

[hami747]

Excellent Many thanks