Is this a new way Paypal scams people on refunds?

[Adwiz]

I ordered a Kisha umbrella in June. Never received it. Asked the company twice for an update on my order. Crickets.

So I contacted PayPal to ask for a refund. Got a message that they would contact the vendor for a response. That's what they normally do.

Then I got another message from PayPal saying that the case would be closed unless I "escalated" the claim. I didn't know how I could escalate a claim for a refund, since the request for a refund is the highest form of escalation I can think of. What does it mean to escalate the claim?

I logged into the message center to see if I could make sense of it. There was no option to escalate the claim. There was just the message string that included the original message that they were waiting to hear from the vendor.

Then today I got a message saying that the claim was closed forever because I didn't escalate it.

This is completely unacceptable. It's clearly a bait-and-switch approach. Tell the customer that they have to escalate a claim to get a refund with no tools to do so. Then close the case and make it impossible to revisit. I can't see how this is even legal but I imagine that it must earn the company millions unless something is done to put a stop to this process.

[kernowlass]

@Adwiz 

You click on 'view' on the dispute and the claim option is on the next page.

[Adwiz]

As mentioned in my post, I had clicked on "View Conversation" and there was no such button or link. In the past, when I filed a request for refund (which has only happened twice in over 15 years of using Paypal) they would contact the vendor and evaluate their response. If there was no response they would automatically close the case in the customer's favor. It seems that this process has changed, to the benefit of Paypal and the detriment of customers. A request for refund is as far of an escalation as anyone can expect to take. What else can we do to escalate such a request? To ask for a refund and then be asked to escalate the request, especially with no option for such escalation, is absurd.

[kernowlass]

@Adwiz 

Well most folks manage to escalate to a claim as per link and I did it myself a few weeks ago.

You have to do it before the dispute times out at 20 days, this is all information given in the email you receive when you open a dispute.

 https://www.paypal.com/ca/smarthelp/article/escalate-dispute-claim-faq822?app=searchAutoComplete