I am in dispute with a vendor who I bought a laptop charger from. Only AUS$25 so a good deal ... I thought. The web site was a .au site so claiming to be in Australia (the point of the .au part of the URL). Australia has a particular electrical pin arrangement and all photos of laptop charges where images of adapters with Australian pin outs. The item I received did not have Australian pin outs. When I approached the vendor about the error, they told me it wasn't an error, they did not have laptops adaptors with Australian pin outs. They did not attempt to contact me before sending the article, otherwise I would have cancelled the order. I also appeared that the vendor is in China. The English names on their web site replaced thus another deliberate hoax. The vendor offered me AUS$3 in compensation. I opted for a full refund. The problem, this is a type of fraud since the likely outcome is, as is in my case, the requirement for tracking information for returned items sees a AUS$9 or AUS$20 on my end to provide minimal or best tracking evidence. So 50% to as good as 100% of the item. I believe this is known problem for buyers in many countries. I believe this is known problem for buyers that PayPal will be aware of. I think the problem stems from the fact that "Let the buyer beware" comes from a place in history where face to face transactions were the norm. Applying it in this new world of global transactions does not mean service providers can opt out of protecting buyers. This is really no different a class of problem than services providers supporting the the community in protections around child pornography or hate messages. It is a power the service providers have. I would cancel my PayPal account but over time PayPal have required more and more of my personnel information. Some I have elected not to provide, since it would only take 1 security breach to see my information lost to crime. That means I cannot cancel my account because PayPal require all my personnel information to be fully disclosed before I can cancel the account. The argument from PayPal is privacy protection. But I am not sure how I can be operating as a buyer at all but not have rights to cancel. Either the level of information I have provided affords evidence enough of my identity or it does not. If it does not, PayPal is already failing in its protections. So, PayPal aims to protect my privacy with exquisite process, but not act to protect me from systematic fraud. So, what it the aim here, to know without a doubt and with exquisite detail who is be defrauded? So here is the crunch. I would not be the only buyer burnt by the vendor I bought from. The notion that the dispute is between one buyer and one vendor over a misunderstanding about one purchase is a false one. The fragrantly fraud website is evidence enough the vendor intends a fraud against an entire country. This class of fraud, death by 1000 small amounts, is something designed to be not worth resolving at the individual transaction level. There should be enough evidence to deal with the vendor by dropping the vendor from PayPal at least. Whether Australian Federal Police need look a the systematic fraud of this type through services such as PayPal might also be an interesting question. I have taken note of multiple claims by Chinese companies, at least, to have offices in Australia but appear only to have a PO box for mail redirection. It can't be anything other than fraudulent, since there are as many honest Chinese vendors selling openly directly from China and buyers like myself happy to buy directly from China. The fraud itself hinges on the impression one can return items cheaply locally, given the .au in the URL. Aliexpress also now appears to have the same problem. When will service providers be accountable for their sponsoring of this class of systematic fraud. Up to the buyers. Speak out.
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