My wife paid for a purse on Etsy. First,It took many tries to get it to go through. Paypal kept saying her credit card was not accepted. The merchant ended up sending an invoice and the payment went through. We have the receipt from PayPal and the money was taken off our credit card. The merchant said "thanks it worked" and she would ship the purse. An hour later she sent a message saying for some reason the payment was pending... and that for it to go through we would have to open a dispute then close it for the payment to not be "on hold". We rarely use PayPal and thought we would try this. THANK GOODNESS we did some reading and realized that you CANNOT re-open a case and that you should *NEVER* close a case unless you get your item OR your money refunded. The merchant told us FOUR TIMES in an email that is VERY IMPORTANT to open and then close a case to make the payment go through. We realized this is most likely a scam, but she has our money already. What are our next steps? We're obviously going to have to open a case... but are we going to have to wait and see if she sends us something or can we start trying to get our money back right away? Like I said, we RARELY use PayPal and don't know what direction to go first. Thanks in advance for any input and info that can help us get our $500 back.
... View more