I have a VERY similar story. I just saw an article about this in the news and thought of looking here. In my case, PayPal sided with a knock-off producer that was fraudulently advertising on Instagram. Their website disappeared and they were not even responding to PayPal itself by the time PayPal decided in their favor. I'm here to say that my solution was to replace my PayPal Plus Mastercard with a bank that still has humans working for it. I soon discovered that just replacing my preferred card did not keep my PayPal Mastercard from being charged when clicking the PayPal button on sites where I had already used PayPal in the past, when my PayPal Plus card had been my preferred card. I had to go into the place on the PayPal site where you change cards you've set for recurring payments (like subscriptions) and de-couple my card from every single vender I had ever used PayPal with before. Took some time but worth it to know that at least PayPal will not be collecting on that part of their business with me ever again! @kernowlass I followed all of your steps except that I shipped the fake item back to the distributor's address that was on the package instead of the factory in China as they requested. (I questioned PayPal if that was OK, but didn't hear back from PayPal before the deadline to ship) PayPal didn't even get a response from the vendor as to whether they received it before siding with the seller, telling me too late that the $17 shipping fee was reimbursable. No one at PayPal ever answered my question: "Can a seller request you return an item anywhere in the world, and PayPal will pay for it?" Apparently, their policy is YES. It was particularly maddening because the item had ads with actors saying that the factory is "right here in the good old USA!"
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