PayPal: Sides with the seller

I recently purchased something that is intangible, and the seller used PayPal as his payment method.

It wasn’t anything overly expensive, but I get annoyed when someone is paid for something and they do not deliver.

So, I lodged a complaint with paypal, that the seller didn’t actually deliver the intangible item, and there was no evidence of any attempt to deliver, the mail server logs prove it.

In my dispute opening with the seller, I advised that he should instead post the intangible item to PayPal, or a copy of the initial email to prove that he indeed did provide the item purchased in the manner requested.

The seller didn’t even refer to me via my correct name, and referred to someone with a different surname.

I escalated the claim for review with PayPal, mentioning, if he did indeed have this intangible item, he should indeed post the item to the complaint process, so we can see he did indeed deliver it, and leave the dispute at that.

He didn’t do that, and what’s worse? PayPal find in favour of his sorry ass.

This has to be the weirdest scam yet. Offer something intangible for sale, don’t really need to deliver on it, when the complaint is made, stay silent, PayPal find in your favour because they don’t bother investigating anything intangible. Nope, don’t even go as far as making the seller prove they delivered it, or require delivery of the item in the dispute process.

And of course, they don’t refund if the seller doesn’t deliver.

It’s disappointing, because the item, being a simple ‘code’ could easily have been provided to the PayPal process if he did indeed have it. Heck, if the code didn’t work, OK, my fault for buying, but, he didn’t deliver at ALL! Nothing at all came from him, and he gets to keep the funds.

I’m contemplating finding a way to get a chargeback put forth for the transaction, because it is really just stupid of PayPal to be siding with the seller for their own profits in the case. They should be able to easily see what was purchased was able to be provided through the dispute process, the fact he didn’t provide it when asked, suggests that he didn’t have it to start with, and that to me would warrant the refund unless they could prove they delivered the item by alternative means.

The owner of the product is apparently Japanese, so I’ve decided to kick a few stones over in that direction and see what comes of it, don’t really hold much hope though. It looks to be the antics of a scammer, relying on PayPal’s intangible item policy to protect him from having to deliver on the purchase.

That’s easily worked around, you only get so many strikes before they’ll suspect something is astray and suspend the account and terminate the membership. That should learn him.

Enjoy!