[Moru]

I once ordered some things together with a few friends. The total sum ended up around $3500, much more than I usually buy for. The buy went through and the company got the message from Paypal that everything was ok and the money was on their account. Sadly they had a vacation day (small home-run company) and did not send the items directly. Two days later when they were back, Paypal had just pulled the money back from their account and left the message that the user disputes the buy or something like that. I had done no such thing. One month later I got the money back except for $20 for 'investigation charges' or some such...

If the company would not have been on vacation at that time they would have sent the goods and we would have gotten both the things and our money back. I ended up transfering the money via the bank as normal and got the stuff about $100 cheaper than over Paypal.

Haven't used Paypal since.

[tokenadult]

You haven't said what jurisdiction you are in, but are you saying you were effectively charged for the item before it was put in shipment? For some forms of payment in some jurisdictions, that is strictly illegal.

[dlubarov]

It's just network policies that prohibit charging before shipment, so it wouldn't be problematic if this was an ACH payment.

If it was a credit card payment, most likely PayPal had just placed an authorization and was holding off on capturing. That would explain their aggressive timing -- if they let the auth hang for too long that would result in higher interchange fees, and eventually the auth would expire.

[DrStalker]

Doesn't PayPal get around that by charging your credit card to buy credit on Paypal, which is then used to purchase the item you want? Or do they only claim that when it is convenient to do so.

[jahewson]

Huh? This story doesn't really make much sense. PayPal don't charge investigation fees, don't cancel orders after two days (how would they even know to do this?) and don't allow fees to be passed on to customers ("$100 cheaper").

[Moru]

Yes, how would they even cancel an order with another company? What are you talking about? I have never claimed that they canceled my order.

They do however own the money on your account as long as you keep the money on your paypal account. They had just pulled the money back from the sellers account and gave it back to me again (much later). At that time the SEK->UK pounds exchange rate was much lower and the bank transfer usually ends up a few percent cheaper that paypal too.

[cmdrfred]

$20 in 'investigation fees'? can anyone confirm this? I won't use them again if true.

[GolfyMcG]

I haven't gotten 'investigation fees' (or at least not that I've noticed) but I would just not use them anyways for the very reason that they're so much less accessible than stripe.

[asddubs]

I once had someone initiate a chargeback over 5 transactions of 10$ they paid via CC. It ended up costing me 100$ because on top of the 10$ they charged back, every transaction also added a 10$ fee for being charged back. So I was scammed, and then had to give paypal 50$ for it on top of that.

[speleding]

Are you sure those were from PayPal? I've been charged those fees, but they were passing on the fees from the credit card company that the payment came from.

[asddubs]

Well, that could be the case. Either way, someone sent me 50$ and I ended up losing those and paying another 50$. That shouldn't really happen when you just have a private paypal account. This wasn't a commercial transaction.

[fsargent]

Save yourself the trouble and just don't use them!

[tehwebguy]

Spent a lot of time working with PayPal, never heard of this. I've also used their dispute process on both sides.

Something else happened here, a 2 day dispute process is not a standard PayPal dispute.

[Moru]

It was not a two day dispute, they just pulled back the money after two days and then I had to wait for a very long time to get the money back.

[ewang1]

There's a $20 chargeback fee, but that's typically charged to the seller.

[artursapek]

You should be avoiding them already.