Paypal scammed - Legal advice

[poly800rock]

Has anyone else had any experience fighting paypal? as a seller, i got frauded by paypal when they took my money back due to "fraudulant funds" from the buyer. Item already shipped, money was lost. The address was unconfirmed, but the seller was verified, and I am **** out of luck now. Is there anyway to take paypal to small claims court for this? As far as I know the money was transferred to my account and then taken away. How do they have the right to take money back from me?

PLEASE ******* HELP! I HATE THIS ****! and i am out of $300

 

[DNW]

Sucks to hear your story. I'm neither qualified nor knowledgeable enough to give you advice, but I just want to chime in: Paypal's protection policies suck. The only protection they provide is for their own ass. I hope they get fucked with a massive class action suit soon, with punitive damages. I was almost cheated out of $2000 last year when I bought laptop computers through eBay/Paypal and the sellers defrauded me. If it wasn't for American Express stepping in on my behalf, I would've been screwed and without recourse. Now, I will ONLY pay for winning items with my Amex card. The protection Paypal says you will receive if you fund your purchases with your checking account is a crock of ****!

 

[j]

I set my Paypal accounts up only to be connected to savings accounts and transfer the money out of them. I've been hearing more and more about Paypal screwing people lately. It seemed to have died down, so I was leaving money in there to take advantage of the money market fund (5%!) but it's not worth the risk now IMO.

Sorry to hear about this and I don't know where you could turn for help. Seems like a lot of people have been seriously screwed by Paypal/Ebay and it's only getting worse...

 

[lawyerdad]

Originally Posted by poly800rock

Has anyone else had any experience fighting paypal? as a seller, i got frauded by paypal when they took my money back due to "fraudulant funds" from the buyer. Item already shipped, money was lost. The address was unconfirmed, but the seller was verified, and I am **** out of luck now. Is there anyway to take paypal to small claims court for this? As far as I know the money was transferred to my account and then taken away. How do they have the right to take money back from me?

PLEASE ******* HELP! I HATE THIS ****! and i am out of $300
The answer to the literal question of whether there's a way to take PP to small claims court is yes. You can go down to court, get the appropriate form, and pay a small fee. You would then need to serve it on paypay, but with a bit of simple research you can figure out who the agent for service of process is.
Whether you'd have any chance of winning, I unfortunately can't tell you. It would depend on what the terms of their contract with you say - and I can't imagine those terms are terribly favorable to you.

 

[Tck13]

Not sure if you want to go to court yet. There are some other avenues to try first.

Phone # from another thread:

call eBay and find out what's going on: 1-888-749-3229

Also, try signing in to your account and going to "Community" and posting your problem in the forum. I've always gotten the best help there. It is a forum like Styleforum and someone always answers quickly (usually the same day).

I would exhaust all options with ebay / paypal first. Usually, it gets resolved in a pretty short amount of time. Hope you didn't lose too much and I hope you get your money.

 

[EL72]

Sorry to hear that. Happened to me a while ago too though thankfully for a smaller amount ($50) and this was at least 4-5 months after I had shipped the item. I complained to paypal but all they say is essentially: read the fine print; it's in the terms of the agreement you enter into with them when accepting payments. They can charge back payments anytime. And I don't know if transferring the funds to a savings account matters because they simply charge your credit card like they did mine as I had no $ in my pp account.

 

[VMan]

Calling Ebay is a *****. I've been having problems, and whenever I call and tell them my specific problem, they just transfer me to a line where I get a message telling me to go to the ebay site, click 'help', and go from there. Terrible.

 

[A Harris]

because they simply charge your credit card like they did mine

That's the first, I heard of something like this. You are saying a buyer charged back, your account was empty, and paypal took tje money from one of your attached credit cards??

 

[lawyerdad]

Originally Posted by A Harris

That's the first, I heard of something like this. You are saying a buyer charged back, your account was empty, and paypal took tje money from one of your attached credit cards??
Just a guess here, but maybe it was one of those cc's that are set up to act as overdraft protection for the linked account?

 

[LA Guy]

Originally Posted by j

I set my Paypal accounts up only to be connected to savings accounts and transfer the money out of them. I've been hearing more and more about Paypal screwing people lately. It seemed to have died down, so I was leaving money in there to take advantage of the money market fund (5%!) but it's not worth the risk now IMO.

Sorry to hear about this and I don't know where you could turn for help. Seems like a lot of people have been seriously screwed by Paypal/Ebay and it's only getting worse...

I'm the same way. My paypal account reads $0.00. I transfer money out of the accound as quickly as possible, and pay through it only using a cc.

 

[j]

I went into the bank today, and the teller asks me, "do you bank with us? do you buy stuff on the internet with your checking account?" And now Bank of America has a system where they make you a linked checking account that ties directly to your main one, that you can transfer money into for buying stuff online, and they give you a Visa number to charge stuff on the account. But it's one-way, so Paypal (or another defraudster) can't drain your entire life savings.

I signed up my personal and business accounts for this thing. It was free.

 

[RicoItaliano]

Originally Posted by DarkNWorn

Sucks to hear your story. I'm neither qualified nor knowledgeable enough to give you advice, but I just want to chime in: Paypal's protection policies suck. The only protection they provide is for their own ass. I hope they get fucked with a massive class action suit soon, with punitive damages. I was almost cheated out of $2000 last year when I bought laptop computers through eBay/Paypal and the sellers defrauded me. If it wasn't for American Express stepping in on my behalf, I would've been screwed and without recourse. Now, I will ONLY pay for winning items with my Amex card. The protection Paypal says you will receive if you fund your purchases with your checking account is a crock of ****!
Agreed, PayPal's so called protection policies only supposedly protect buyers/sellers however, they do indeed protect PayPal unless your agressive. A seller who sells regularly online should NEVER use PayPal and should obtain thier own merchant account. As far as a Class Action Suit, NEVER, I would engage in a civil action on my own. Class actions are only for the lawyers profit. I will not use PayPal either as a buyer or seller. PayPal will most always cave in to the credit card companies without fail. I am not sure if a checking account is required, open one then after providing the information close the account. I would use only a credit card for purchases, better yet avoid PayPal alltogether.

 

[A Harris]

A seller who sells regularly online should NEVER use PayPal and should obtain thier own merchant account.

And then you would have even less protection. With paypal you have at least some protection against chargebacks, with a merchant acct. you have none.

 

[RicoItaliano]

In order to file a civil action you would need to locate information about in which state are they based. Corporations are required to have a representative who is thier registered agent who is required to be available for service of process.

Get your ducks in order now, bank statements, emails, printouts of all PayPal website pages showing what has occured and in what amounts. Do that IMMEDIATLY as if your account gets shut down you will not have access to the pages in order to use them in court.

After you compile your information send them a certified letter say no more than 2 pages detailing the matter, afford them 1 week to contact you to resolve, after the week send another certified in the form of a demand letter for all amounts you are out including bank fees or any monies related to this issue.

Provide a notice of I would say 10 business days after which a civil action will be filed in your area small claims court not thiers. Some say you have to go to thiers however, due to the fact that they conducted business with you in your state means you can sue them there.

When filing the action I would list the amount you are out of and be brief about the reason such as (Suing for damages due to unauthorized debits on my account.). The reason being I would want to fight the case in court and not on the claim which may allow for a summary judgement and never the oportunity to be heard.

I would not converse on the telephone with them about anything let the call go into voicemail and if you should happen to pick up recard the call and let them now the call is being recorded and if they do not agree to be recorded they should hang up, I would say put it in writing and I would not respond and let the case go forward. I would also seek treble damages due to the fraud/unauthorized taking.

One last thought is they may come back and make simply boiler plate statements that you are contractually bound however, I doubt you ever signed a document in writing and in my state any contract that is not signed in writing is in effect void (I had a battle like this in court and they lost).

I would close any accounts that are linked to PayPal immediatly to prevent further damages.

 

[RicoItaliano]

Originally Posted by A Harris

And then you would have even less protection. With paypal you have at least some protection against chargebacks, with a merchant acct. you have none.
Sorry to disagree. PayPal is useless and unregulated. Merchant accounts afford a higher protection level than PayPal ever and currently offers. I have merchant accounts and as long as you dot your i's and cross your t's you can defend a chargeback. I feel this is probably easier when selling merchandise vs. services as the buyer cannot simply keep merchandise and not pay vs. a service can be claimed to be unsatisfactory. Additionally, if you operate well in business and the client attempts to keep merchandise and proceed with a chargeback they have not engaged in wire, telephone and perhaps mail fraud which may result in both criminal and civil actions if it were me. PayPal is notorious for caving in to credit card companies when they activate a chargeback, and they will simply tell the seller how sorry they are and how hard they struggled in your defence. Heres a site PayPalSucks.com. And P.S. I am not an attorney.