Someone tried to scam me and I'm the one being charged a fee.

[beertraveler]

I had someone send me money out of the blue...  I do not know this user, and I have never requested money from anyone.  The use then sent me a message asking me to refund this money because it was "accidentally" sent to me.  But to keep $5 for the transaction fee.  

This is obviously a scam.  

The user then filed a claim.  The money got taken from my account due to the claim, which is fine, it wasn't my money.  But then I got charged a $15 fee.  How is this possible?  It was either:

1.  Most likely a scam

2.  An honest mistake on the senders part.

So....  I'm out $15 for trying to be scammed, or out $15 for someone else's mistake.

What can I do?  I tried to report and explain all this in the resolution center.

How can I prevent this in the future.  I don't want to be charged $15 every someone tries to scam me. 

Can I prevent money coming into my account from everyone?  I only use this account to pay some bills, never to receive money.

If I can't resolve this, then I'm just going to cancel my account as well as my separate business account I guess.

This is ridiculous.

[sharpiemarker]

@beertraveler 

The $15 is probably the PayPal dispute fee. You’re charged this fee because your account met the criteria when buyer disputed to get their money back. All you would do is Issue a refund from within the same transaction (the safest and proper way to refund in PayPal) of just the exact amount you received after PayPal fees were deducted, that would have taken care of the transaction fees PayPal doesn’t refund. You didn’t refund as requested or didn’t refund in time and sender was impatient so they decided to dispute. The sender doesn’t know you will be charged the dispute fee. Talk to customer service explaining the situation, they may consider refunding the dispute fee since you didn’t sell anything and the person sent you the payment by mistake.

https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/contact-us      

Scroll down to click “Message Us” or “Call Us” option on the bottom.

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[kernowlass]

@beertraveler 

Easy enough to make a typo in an email address and the funds go to the wrong person.

The sender offered to pay the transaction fee for you so all you had to do was refund minus the fee you were charged and that would have been it.

As you did not then the buyer opened a chargeback and won and so you ended up paying the chargeback fee instead.