Uber Eats unauth charge on PP Credit account. Escalated and PP closed against me.

[retry]

I've had this PP account for almost a decade now. I also have my own Uber Eats account, which I have not linked to PayPal, ever, because I know how cumbersome it is to contest them in case something happens. Yesterday (July 14, 2022), I got two emails from PayPal indicating two charges from Uber Eats on my PayPal Credit account. A $42.49 transaction was done at 23:25 Eastern Time, with a confirmation of $2.00 (yes, someone committed fraud with my account and gave a low tip, go figure) arriving on July 15, 2022, at 01:12 AM Eastern Time.  I went and checked my Uber Eats account and found out that the last time I ordered something on Uber Eats (and the ONLY time I ordered something on Uber Eats) was on Dec. 16, 2020. This one order was not paid for using PayPal. 

So I checked my PayPal and PayPal account and saw that, yes, Uber Technologies, Inc was linked to my PayPal account on Feb. 16, 2019, for the sole purpose of using it to pay for Uber rides. Even then, whenever I pay for a Uber ride, I have always used a credit card linked to my PayPal account, never PayPal credit. I checked the history of transactions, and the last time I made a payment to Uber Technologies, Inc was on June 1, 2019. 

Next, I took the logical step to dispute these charges. I opened a dispute through the app and entered the information saying that I did not make those purchases and that my Uber Eats account doesn't even show this purchase on it. I was about to go to bed when this stuff started happening and it took me until 3:16 AM (July 15, today) to do all the work verifying that this was not indeed something that I might have missed, or that might have happened by accident. I filed the report, and by 7:16 AM they responded with the boilerplate answer:

We've completed our review of your unauthorized activity case, and we’ve determined there was no unauthorized use.

The payment in question was sent as part of a billing agreement you previously set up with the merchant.

We've now canceled this agreement for you to prevent any other unwanted transactions. Moving forward please be sure to review all your active billing agreements. If you need a refund for a payment sent using an active billing agreement, please contact the merchant directly.

Based on our review, we found this transaction is consistent with your PayPal history.

(Bolded by me, for reference)

Yes, I did have a billing agreement with Uber Technologies, Inc. However, this transaction is NOT AT ALL consistent with my PayPal history, as evidenced above. Anyone reviewing my account should have realized that (1) I had NEVER made a transaction with Uber Eats, (2) I had not had a transaction from Uber in the past 1.5 years, and (3) I have NEVER used PayPal Credit to pay for any of my transactions with Uber Tech, Inc. 

In the morning, I decided to do some more digging. A key thing about me is that I have only ever used Android and Microsoft products for the past decade. Checking the account activity log, there is a login from "Safari Windows 10" (who the hell uses Safari on Windows?) on April 18, 2022, 10:30 AM Eastern Time, and another login from an "Apple iPhone Opera Touch" on July 13, 2022, at 2:57 AM Eastern Time. 

I was bummed out that some unauthorized charge had happened, but now I am really disgruntled that someone managed to bypass security, even 2fa (I used text messages for login confirmation and fingerprint for login on my phone), and got my PayPal credit account info, added it to their Uber Eats order and had a meal on my budget. How has PayPal/PP Credit not realized the extraneous logins on my account? Where are the receipts for these transactions? Surely PP has an address associated with it, login time, IP address, and all the metadata. So why is it not available to me? The owner of the account cannot verify the information? 

I reached out to Uber in the morning and they were very confused because they could not find the associated charges on my account. When the rep figured out that the charges came from somewhere else, she very quickly decided to escalate it and said I'd get a resolution by Tuesday. I am not holding my breath. The question that sits with me right now is: why am I having to deal with Uber Eats about a charge that happened due to a breach of security in PP's system? This is not what I pay these fees for and definitely not the level of reliability I expect from a creditor. I am honestly considering it may be time to part ways if this is not resolved soon. 

[PayPal_RachelK]

Hi @retry,

Thank you for your post. 

I am so sorry to hear what has happened. I know this must be concerning. Based on what you have explained, it sounds like this payment was part of an automatic payment. When you make a payment with some merchants, they will sign you up for an automatic payment. This means they can charge you for their services without you having to enter your details each time. Please follow the steps here to cancel any automatic payments you don't use. This will stop any future transactions going through. 

Unfortunately, we don't consider automatic payments as unauthorized. This would be why your dispute was denied. I would suggest you contact the merchant directly to request a refund. As they have charged you, they will have the option to issue a refund.

I hope this helps!

- Rachel 

[retry]

Hi Rachel,

Thank you for your response. Although it addresses one point of my post, it does leave out several others, which are far more concerning. There is no denial that Uber Technologies, Inc was previously authorized on my PayPal (they are no longer). The real issue here is that PayPal, as a financial institution, has a duty to properly and thoroughly investigate fraud. I will summarize the facts:

1. Someone has gained access to my account 

2. This person made a purchase using my PayPal details

A. Is the one sole determinant of it not being fraud that the purchase was made through an authorized vendor?

B. Are you saying that it is PayPal's stance that if someone authorizes a vendor on their account, they are accepting the possibility of being defrauded without recourse from PayPal?

C. Would it really make a difference if the vendor was authorized or not if someone has obtained fraudulent access to the account, given that they could just as easily have setup the authorization themselves by making the purchase (per your description, it happens automatically)? 

D. Why is the response from PayPal's fraud department citing that the activity in my account was not unusual when (i) there is not a single previous charge from Uber Eats in the whole history of the account, (ii) the last charge from Uber Technologies, Inc on the account (before the fraud) was over a year in the past, and (iii) the charge originated from a different device that had logged into the account 1 day before the fraudulent charge?

I am certainly pursuing this with Uber, also. The investigation is under way. My main question now, regarding PayPal, is why do I need PayPal and what does PayPal do for me if I am the one that has to go chasing these issues when they happen? To say to a custommer that "It is our policy that if fraud is done in a certain way, we don't consider it fraud" is really not a professional approach and reeks of investigative morosity for a business that handles money.