

Open Letter to PayPal: Do the Right Thing - gherlein
http://blog.herlein.com/2011/05/open-letter-to-paypal-do-the-right-thing/

======
dangrossman
Sorry, but PayPal has not done wrong here. Credit cards and PayPal accounts
get stolen, that's not unusual and simply not 100% preventable.

PayPal/eBay offers, essentially, free insurance against fraud through the
Seller Protection Policy. To take advantage of this insurance, you have to
ship to the buyer's confirmed address. Whoever took over the account and spent
someone else's money can't easily change that address without the real owner
or PayPal noticing.

PayPal is completely unambiguous about how this works. It's in the receipts,
it's on the thank-you pages, it's in the policy descriptions, it's in the
FAQ's, etc. Here's a screenshot of a PayPal receipt for a received payment, if
you haven't seen one recently. It's brightly highlighted right up top what you
should do to stay within the protection of the free insurance.

<http://i.imgur.com/QhrBm.png>

The OP got scammed. PayPal got scammed too. They don't have the stolen funds
he was paid with. If the payment was funded by credit card, PayPal not only
doesn't have the money but also paid a chargeback fee on it. They're actually
willing to use their own money on top of that to pay for the stolen items if
the seller shipped them to the PayPal account's address -- great! But the OP
didn't, so he's in the same place he'd be if he were paid with a bad check or
directly with a stolen credit card -- all he can do is take the scammer to
court, if he's ever found.

Re the final line: "I urge PayPal to do the right thing and correct this issue
immediately, lest I be driven to seek legal options to recover what I believe
is legally owed to me." The party that owes him money is the person that
placed the bid on eBay, not the means by which he made a fraudulent payment.
When someone pays a store with a bad check, it's not the bank that's sued,
it's the check writer.

~~~
eli
As someone who once tried to take advantage of the Seller Protection Policy,
let me tell you that even if you follow all the rules, it's still a steep
uphill battle.

Any halfway intelligent criminal can easily force you into a position that the
policy doesn't cover. For example, shipping you back an empty box and claiming
they returned the item.

------
ElbertF
The database server is down at the moment, mirror:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy&...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1728&bih=1031&source=hp&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.herlein.com%2F2011%2F05%2Fopen-
letter-to-paypal-do-the-right-thing%2F&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1)

------
navyrain
Paypal is such an antagonistic entity that I cannot imagine electing to use it
if given any other option. Even if there was no other option, I cannot imagine
agreeing to use it for more than more than the price of a few t-shirts. They
have demonstrated repeatedly, over the course of _years_, that they have zero
interest in rectifying problematic transactions, will freeze and possibly take
possession of funds in your account without warning, and are famously
resistant to having a meaningful, person-to-person, non-form letter dialogue.

I really am baffled paypal still gets as much use as it does.

~~~
dangrossman
How would you buy or sell a computer on eBay? Cash, checks and money orders
provide no protection for the buyer against sellers that don't actually have
the product. Credit cards and any 3rd party processor that accepts them have
the exact same problems as PayPal.

------
rkon
_"The quote I mentioned above certainly implies that goods sold on eBay enjoy
protection despite the address shipped to."_

They were probably referring to eBay's own protection policy, listed here:
<http://pages.ebay.com/paypal/seller/>

"To qualify for eBay Seller Protection, be sure to: Use a shipping method that
provides tracking information and/or valid delivery confirmation to the
address in the PayPal transaction details or eBay order details page."

It sucks that you got scammed, and I hope you get the guy who did it, but
you'll need to get someone other than PayPal / eBay involved. It's probably
just going to waste your time and reduce your chances of catching him if you
keep trying to go through either of them.

------
lwat
Mr. Herlein should now do the right thing and stop using PayPal. It's
obviously not the service he wants.

