The "Weary" thread has been locked so.....

Anyone know if paypal or google will willingly eat a loss if they know someone got scammed, but can't retrieve the money from the scammers account? (in the case that the scammer was able to withdraw all the money before it was known they were a scammer)

 

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You have to understand how those refunds work.

Google Wallet, and PayPal, will not issue a refund without obtaining it from the seller's account.

Hence they will not take any loss.

 

That's not my impression. PayPal may need to go after the seller through the legal system to recover funds, but I don't think they keep the buyer waiting while that process proceeds.

 

Actually, they can, and they have.

And as far as PayPal taking legal action, I've never heard of them suing a seller. After all, it's not PayPal's money, it's the buyer's. That's an option left to the buyer.

PayPal is not going to take a loss.

 

I encourage ALL of you to write your people in Congress and demand that PayPal be regulated like a BANK (which it is). That would put a stop to a lot of the c--p that they dump on Sellers. And it is their biggest FEAR, by far. Ebay stock would plunge if this ever comes to pass.

 

PayPal isn't a bank in the sense that BOA, or HSBC, or even Chase.

What they are is the go between, bring buyer and seller together with secure payments for online purchases.

Non of this is PayPal's doing.

 

They perform some of the functions of banks, and anyhow, the point is to draw attention to their contemptuous treatment of account-holders.

Plus you have 50 different sets of state banking laws of totally-unknown requirements. States would LOVE to regulate them if they thought the action would hold up in court. And we'd ALL be better off. My comment stands.

 

How do they treat account holders?

The protect buyer's purchases online. What's so contemptuous about that?

As I said, none of this is PayPal's doing.

My comment stands!

 

I'm not seeing it in the User Agreement.

Clearly, as a business, PayPal isn't going to establish policies that leave them on the hook for deadbeat buyers/sellers in general. However, I don't see any verbiage anywhere about Purchase Protection settlements having to wait while money gets recovered from the seller.

I do see this in the User Agreement:

Nothing there about waiting until the money gets recovered from the seller, or being hung out to dry if they can't recover from the seller.

Here's the part about seller obligation to pay:

My mental model of this, based on a number of disputes, is that PayPal's reimbursement to the buyer and PayPal's recovery from the seller happen independently -- the buyer doesn't have to wait for recovery from the seller. I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary. What am I missing?

 

If you've ever filed a complaint, for whatever reason, through eBay/PayPal, their action can take up to 30 days after the date of the complaint. They inform you of this after they've begun the process, through email. It doesn't have to be stated in their User Agreement.

I know from filing several complaints about eBay purchases.

The buyer has several options available to them to settle a dispute with an online seller. They don't HAVE to involve eBay/PayPal at all. If they really want action, and feel it's worth their time and expense, they can bypass the eBay/PayPal process and file a suit in the jurisdiction the seller lives in, and take it to court.

Sellers can do the same.

What you're missing, is PayPal will not take a loss. If they feel they can easily recover the funds and return them to the complaining party, they will refund before receiving the funds from the other party. Otherwise, they won't.

 

Not sure to what extent you differentiate PayPal and eBay, but here's an example of eBay making good on Buyer Protection even though they couldn't recover from the seller:

http://www.cointalk.com/t212257/

 

I am interested in finding out any results for the people involved in this? I would really like to know some kind of update, good or bad. Thanks.

 

For me, so far so good, my money was returned via Google Wallet, and there's been no attempt from the seller to refute the chargeback. I think I have 2 more weeks for that to expire, after which I'm done with this.

Nothing has happened on the investigation side, I just received notes from my postmaster and FBI claims, but nothing further yet. If the situation doesn't change and I keep my money, I'm not going to pursue further on my own, but will gladly corroborate anyone else's claims if needed.

 

My funds have just been returned by American Express. It also still looks like HCSC still has an active account. Even though it doesn't matter. If he is banned he can simple make a new account and post something for sale in the same day

 

Congratulations for hangin' in there!

 

Glad it worked out for you.

As Doug stated, there is no way any of us would know if he has been banned.

However, the software used for this forum, as well as other forum software programs, records everyone's IP address, which can be added to a filter to prevent a banned member from creating a new account.

Whether or not Peter, Doug, or any of the other mods utilize this feature here at CT is unknown, and more likely would remain unknown.

 

Oh, I'm pretty sure they do utilize it. We've had incidents with a few pesky critters around these parts.

 

I'm sure they do too.

 

This can be a useful tool, but I feel for the mods in these types of situations, because IP bans are a royal pain in the bahookie to manage.

For the guy that sits at home and uses the same connection to access the Internet, they can be helpful as long as that person keeps the same IP address. But that's not always the case. IP leases expire and are eventually assigned to another person. While this site doesn't have so much traffic that the next person that pulls that IP address would likely come to CT, it could happen. Or, the banned user might pull another IP address, in which case he'd be able to access the forums once again. One alternative is to ban an entire subnet, but that has a greater chance of affecting other users. There's also the possibility that a banned individual has multiple options for connecting to the Internet. i.e. From home, from work, from the library, from school, from their neighbor's wireless, using an Internet proxy service, etc.

The bottom line is, even if we did know for sure that a particular individual's account has been locked and has been banned by IP, don't be so sure that he won't return using a different user name. ALWAYS exercise due dilligence when buying from people on Internet forums.