F You PayPal

This has to be an utter joke. Someone just got away with scamming me out of $400 for services rendered to them. I uploaded clear evidence of those services being delivered, them thanking me for the services rendered, the actual services and a text from them saying they were going to open a dispute because they had credit card debt.

It doesn't matter. I doubt they even looked through the case and it was closed within a few hours in the buyer's favor. This is a scary time for freelancers. PayPal is an utter joke. Their email support is outsourced to New Delhi, India and all you get are generic copy/paste responses without anyone actually investigating your inquiry.

Without getting a response from a high executive, there's literally nothing you can do. I guess this is just how it is now. A buyer can open a dispute and get their money back with no effort and no investigation done on their part.

I have contacted all of their Twitter accounts numerous times with no response in 3 days, I have contacted their executive email with no response and their typical customer support contact channel just gives generic answers. This is absolutely asinine. This person just got away with scamming me out of $400. I didn't know this because I haven't had a single dispute since 2014 but apparently, they changed their policy to protect buyers for digital services.

So, if you're a freelancer and sell digital services, beware. No matter how much evidence you have that you've actually provided the services, your case will be handled by some poorly paid person who doesn't even look into your case that reads off of a script. I hope in my lifetime, we see a PayPal competitor that's relevant. This is ridiculous but I'm not going to stop fighting this.

I will email the CEO if I find their email and every email I find until they either ban me or rectify this situation because this is utter bullshit. How the hell can someone get away with this? Even in their dispute notes: It was very vague, all they said was "commissioned piece not received". To you, scammer: I hope karma is real because you're a piece of trash.

 

Thats very unfortunate indeed.

From my perspective - PayPal mostly supports buyers but if you can provide some good number of dicuments epecially related to delivery it would surely help. Have you tried calling them ? You can call to live support by support PIN - they were always helpful.

I have heard several cases where calling ( repeatedly ) works. Different Agents actually might give different opinions for the same issue.

PayPal, like any other online payment system, has policies which will work against sellers if they do not take the necessary steps to ensure that they deliver and can prove this. Without tracking, the buyer may receive the item and claim that they have not set eyes on the package. The item can be placed at the buyer’s door then stolen. In this case, the seller will be liable because the buyer will claim that they never received the item and there is nothing to prove they did.

 

Sorry to hear man what freelance site did this happen on?

 

What number are you calling? Every time I have ever called their support, I was routed to New Delhi and it was like I was talking to robots. They just give generic script responses to anything you ask and will not help you.

 

Unfortunately, it was a deal made over emails. I uploaded all of those emails, even the one of her thanking me for the work provided. I don't think they even looked at anything I uploaded, it was closed really fast and all she put in her notes was 'commissioned piece not received.'

 

Something similar happened to me around 2014. I got scammed for around $600. I stopped selling digital products and services through PayPal and started using cryptocurrencies. That's the way to protect yourself as a seller.

 

It's not perfect though since not many people use cryptocurrencies.

 

It's technically not Paypal, they piggyback on Visa and Mastercard policies for chargeback/dispute resolution. And the company that issues the buyer's credit or debit card is who decides the winner of a dispute. Guess who they're biased for?

In short as a merchant selling without being able to swipe or use the chip on the card, you cannot win a dispute if the customer claims they did not receive, or that the services provided were not what was agreed on. For merchants who ship products, it's similar. There's no way to prove that a customer received a package, so if a buyer files a dispute that they didn't receive it, the seller will lose every time.

 

Regardless, I've switched to Stripe. I cannot believe I haven't done this sooner. They can have that account. From the transactions I've had so far, I'm saving money on the fees too.

 

Same thing happen to me... it sucked. she tried to help me but she had no clue what to do.
I was really pissed off but didn't say anything.. Just stopped using PayPal.