Hi, is any other PayPal user suffering issues with PayPal's refund policies and criminal racketeers advertising quality products, then sending cheap knock offs of the product and when you complain they then offer a discount for you to keep the cheap product or you have to send it back to a postal address in China at your expense??? I have suffered this a few times from sales on social media and online advertisements. I pay using PayPal expecting protection from dodgy scammers only to find that they are manipulating PayPal's return policy to prevent a full refund. it seems PayPal is aiding these scammers by this return policy ,or scammers and racketeers are using this policy to take advantage of unsuspecting buyers who order and pay for items that were advertised, in good faith, only to be sent something completely different, often fake branded or unknown brand replacements, then these crims offer a discount or a refund ONLY when you have to pay expensive postage to a different country. This has happened to me a few times now and is now happening more frequently. An example of this happened to me recently, where as I purchased a quality brand fishing reel from an online advertisement on facebook. the advertisement was for a quality PENN Torque II TRQII7500 spinning reel, with links to an official PENN video of the fishing reel in action. The company said it was an anniversary sale and that they now have Australian based warehouse outlets for ease of transaction. After ordering and paying for the PENN reel, about a month later I received an unknown, cheap plastic fishing reel called an AIDE9000. This was nowhere near the quality of the fishing reel advertised, ordered and paid for! When I contacted the seller and informed them that this was not the fishing reel advertised I received an email from their so called customer service team, telling me, in their words, that "the advertisement was misleading "and offered me a 15% discount, or I could send the item back to their logistics centre in China at my expense, with a note that this was very expensive and no refund would be given if it didn't return. I continued to receive emails from them privately, even offering another 30% refund even after I had contacted PayPal to report the scam but I found it impossible to forward the sellers private communication to PayPal as proof as PayPal would not accept any email I sent them, not even as proof of the scam. This is a deliberate scam by racketeers to deceive buyers into giving up their hard earned cash for what they believe are quality products only to receive cheap rubbish from China and they then use and take full advantage of PayPal's failing return policy. This is not protecting buyers, it is helping scammers con unsuspecting customers out of their cash. In Australia, it is criminal to advertise a product but then send another inferior product instead and it is up to the seller to organise return postage/shipping if required for refund. PayPal is allowing bogus sellers by insisting that when this happens it is the buyers responsibility for return shipping. If these sellers advertise a quality product then deliberately, or inadvertently, send a completely different product, it should be up to them to organise and pay for return shipping as this is their doing, not the buyers. PayPal is allowing this because these fraudulent sellers have found a loophole in PayPal's policies. For me, this was not only very expensive to return the fake product, there was no guarantee that they would pay a refund if I followed their instructions, and that is a risk the buyer shouldn't face, as once a scammer, always a scammer. In this instance i have had to go above PayPal to my bank to report this mess and get a refund. This is happening by PayPal's failed policy and as much as I have reported this to them, they continue to aid these criminal racketeers by allowing this practise. When a substitute product is sent and sent from your home country, it should be the sellers responsibility to return and refund that fake product, NOT the onus of the unsuspecting buyer who has just been conned out of their money. This is NOT buyer protection, it is racketeers protection. A simple change in PayPal policy would deter bogus sellers from scamming buyers. If the seller had to organise the return shipping on fake products they would NOT do this as there is NO intensive or advantage for them...
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