I have recently been hit with a spate of chargebacks from buyers through Paypal. I disputed the first few because I have sent the items and not heard anything from the buyers so I assumed they had received them and had no problems with them but Paypal sided with the buyers anyway and so the payments were refunded, leaving me out of pocket. Although I'm obviously disappointed with that, I do sort of understand because I was selling digital items (codes for Steam games) and so there was no real tangible way for me to prove that I sent them. However, my big problem is that I then noticed that I had also been charged a £14 fee for each chargeback. At first, I thought this was because I had disputed the chargeback and so Paypal was essentially charging me for investigating the chargeback for me. So instead I tried accepting liability for the next couple of chargebacks, thinking that the payments would be refunded and that would be that. But I have been charged £14 for each chargeback for accepting liability as well! This is ridiculous - I am basically being charged for being the victim of a scam. These are either people who are using someone else's Paypal account or credit card details without permission and the real owner is filing the chargeback when they see that the payment has gone out, or it's just someone buying a game from me knowing that they can file a chargeback and get their money back easily because Paypal will side with them. Either way, they know that by the time the chageback is filed, they will already have activated the game and there is no way of me getting that back. Instead of making a few pounds on each one, I'm basically giving these scammers free games. To date I've had 9 chargebacks, leaving me about £90 out of pocket. As Paypal are charging me £14 for each one, that's an additional £126 I will have to pay because some people decided to rip me off. I don't see why I should have to pay for this - especially when I don't contest the chargeback. When going through the resolution centre, I don't have the option to just refund the payment, so any option I choose results in this additional fee - despite the fact that it is not mentioned anywhere throughout the resolution process, it's just added on at the end after the case has been decided. And isn't the whole point of Paypal to protect us from this kind of fraud in the first place? What is wrong with their security measures that's allowing all of these people to pull this stunt? I've been selling digital games like this for over a year and had maybe 1-2 issues the whole time, and then suddenly 9 in the same month.
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