Concern about Best Buy Payment

[LegalEagle1]

Today, I attempted to purchase, online, a new TV from BestBuy.com. As I checkout my cart, I selected PayPal. It then sent me to the PayPal.com site. I elected to fund the PayPal purchase with Bill Me Later. At the conclusion of that process, it sent me back to the BestBuy.com webpage for final confirmation of my order. So far so good. I then hit the button to confirm the order and quickly a BestBuy.com page comes up telling me that my PayPal order could not be confirmed, asking me to re-order using a different payment method. However, a few minutes later, I received an email receipt from PayPal.com reflecting that a payment had been submitted to Best Buy in the correct total amount and also included a Best Buy Order Id number. However, after a couple of hours went by and I did not get any confirmation from Best Buy, I went to their site and entered the Best Buy order number to see its status and it tells me it has no such order number. I then called Best Buy customer support and they also told me that they show no record of that Best Buy order number or my order and they re-directed me back to PayPal. When I look at my PayPal.com account, it shows this transaction as "pending." So, what does this all mean? Seems as though Best Buy has $1500 sent to them on my behalf by Bill Me Later/PayPal, but yet they show no record of my order. Is this normal? Are they going to filfill my order?  Do I need to ask PayPal to terminate that transaction and re-order? What's going on here?

[PayPal_Adrian]

Welcome to the boards!

I'm sorry to hear your order didn't complete as expected.  There are a few things to know from here:

First, the status of the payment in PayPal - you'll notice the transaction ID starts with an "O."  This means it's a special payment process called an Order. 

An Order is an agreement to pay a merchant an amount in the future.  Large merchants use this specialized method because they have complex supply chains and high volume, so sometimes they may not want to bill you until they can confirm the order on their end and that the product can be shipped.  I'm sure you can imagine that even with the most automated and complex warehousing systems, supply and fulfillment is sometimes an issue.  This process also works out great for their customers, because it allows the merchant not to bill you if they can't fulfill the order for any reason.

The status of Pending means that no payment has been sent, but the Order is still open and could potentially be captured by the merchant.  Most merchants are very good about cancelling out PayPal orders, and based on what you're saying they've already conveyed via their website, I would recommend reaching out to them.  Let them know that you'd like to either submit a new order via PayPal or another method and to cancel out the old PayPal order.  Be sure to emphasize that the order needs cancelled in the PayPal system as well, and a representative on their end can have it taken care of for you.

If you run into speed bumps there, or the merchant refers you back to PayPal, just let us know via the Contact Us page.  We can submit the request on your behalf, verify the cancellation with the merchant via our own contacts, and void out the Order.

If you were to take no action, the Order should automatically cancel out after 30 days.

Thanks!

Adrian