Refund and conversion rate

[patipan125]

Greetings.

My name is Patipan and I live in Thailand. So my main currency is in THB.

I have made a purchase from Microsoft using PayPal on 2 December 2021.

The product price is 1,599.99 USD and I had no option to select any conversion rate at the time I made transaction.

So I was charged 56,364.65 THB (35.228 THB/USD).

For some reason, there was a problem during shipment and Microsoft agreed to refund and let me simply make a purchase again.

The refund was issued on 7 January 2022 with full amount of 1,599.99 USD.

But I only get 52,964.47 THB back (33.103 THB/USD).

This means I have lost more than 6% from this refund.

I have messaged to PayPal support and they said this is because the fluctuation of currency exchange.

I have checked the exchange rate thoroughly as well as all agreement written by PayPal.

Followings are my conclusions.

1. The actual difference of currency exchange is no where near 6%—it could be 2% max during the whole period. So, there must be something PayPal did not clarify.

2. In the Term of Service, PayPal Fees for Customers | PayPal, they clearly state that there is extra fee of 4% on top of "base exchange rate". This should be fine because they also state that this extra fee will be applied to refund as well.

3. In the PayPal User Agreement, PayPal User Agreement, under "Sending payments and buying >> Buying or Returning from Sellers >> Refunds", they also clearly state that the refund will include this "extra currency conversion fee".

4. I believe that, for my case, the extra fee is charged and never refunded. This explains why I have lost so much money during refund.

What can I do to solve this problem? I really want to just solve my problem and done.

Hope there will be a good solution.

Patipan

[kingceltic2001]

Following this. Same issue for me.

[PayPal_Donna]

Hello @patipan125,

Welcome to the PayPal community and thank you for your post.

As your question is very account specific, I would advise you to contact our customer care department who can help you further. You can do this by clicking on the Help and Contact link at the bottom of every PayPal page to check what your contact options are. You can also contact us via our Facebook Page or Twitter @askPayPal.

-Donna
 

[patipan125]

Hi @PayPal_Donna, 

Thank you for your suggestion.

I actually had already contacted customer support and they have transferred the partial difference back to my card.

Now I am waiting my month statement to see if I truly get the money back.

Hi @kingceltic2001,

You can try directly contact customer support and explain them (like I did).

The actual difference is 3,400 THB but they decided to transfer me back 3,000 THB.

I still have some loss but I am ok with that.

(FYI, 400 THB = 11.8 USD)

Hope you get your money back.

The key takeaway from this case is "avoid using PayPal at all cost."

[fzxfzxfzx]

Same problem here: 

I was charged 29240.44HKD but only returned 28182.64HKD. And the cancellation of order was initiated by the seller. The exchange rate that Paypal charges was much higher than market price which I can understand if Paypal needs to make profits or mitigate exchange cost. But the refund should be the same if transaction is cancelled. 

So disappointed in Paypal. It seems like it s purposely taking advantage of its market position. I may turn to other payment solutions in the future. 

[bbotss]

I am encountering the same problem. I purchased an item for 64,816 JPY (SGD738.15). The item was out of stock and I was issued a full refund of 64,816JPY. However, I only received SGD671.92, a whopping difference of SGD66.23, which is nearly 9% of the payment!