Same.
Tiktok is utilising a common scam in my experience. Unfortunately it's entirely legal in most places. Onus is on consumers to suck it up and stomach the lost, or spend their own time/money retrieving the "misplaced" sum. Even if all parties acknowledge there was no wrongdoing by the customer and gross incompetence by the offender you will not be compensated beyond the original amount, if that. So there's little to no risk for companies while they rack up rewards.
Shady companies will approve payment without guaranteeing the product or service which in itself should be illegal without a independent contractual agreement.
For example you pay for a promotional Tiktok video to get more views but instead get a message claiming your content doesn't comply with their intentionally vague ToS. Purchase of digital assets or currency only to find your account locked along with the customer service options. Or express delivery options that aren't options.
Shams like these are most often used with small amounts that people won't miss or be bother tracking down if they do notice.
The rort generally takes one of three forms. A refund that will not be paid for a week or more; a few dollars from a few million people to buffer cash flows especially since they can legally put it off for months as long as they show intent to process a refund. Second is some form of store credit, or increasingly common is completely worthless digital tokens only redeemable for worthless digital gimmicks. Or they make any option to make contact or initiate a return so tedious and time consuming that even best case you'll be at a lose, but not entirely impossible making it perfectly legally since technically a procedure for dispute resolution is in place.
Also just from my experience and not necessarily representative of all cases; Paypal is more likely to facilitate these sorts of deceptive tactics (curious if the solved tag is true for you) than honour their founding mission statement which is completely antithetical to them.
Goodluck!
