PayPal made to pay £220 after eBay mix-up

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/pers ... ix-up.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

PAYPAL PAYS UP ON 'PROOF OF DELIVERY'
I sold my iPhone on eBay using PayPal. I sent it by special delivery and the buyer left positive feedback a couple of days later. However, much later, there was a chargeback from the buyer's credit card company.

After some investigation the buyer confirmed that he had received the iPhone. However it transpired he had paid using his girlfriend's credit card. The couple had since split up. The buyer claimed that his ex-girlfriend reported her credit card as stolen so that she did not have to pay for the phone. The ex-girlfriend's version was that her card details were stolen by the buyer who had used her card fraudulently. Both the buyer and his ex-girlfriend refuse to pay for the iPhone even though the buyer confirmed receipt of the item.

I have reported this to PayPal. However, it said that the purchaser's credit card company's decision is final. It has deducted the money from my account, including its seller fee. The police say there is nothing they can do.
It appears that I am a victim of someone else's domestic dispute. PayPal offers no protection at all in such an incident and it seems there is nothing I could have done to avoid the scam.
Can you help?

SM
Worcester Park, Surrey

You had clearly come up against a separated couple from hell who did not hesitate to involve an innocent bystander in their infantile squabbling. The buyer confirmed to your wife that he had bought and received the iPhone using his eBay account with his girlfriend's credit card. When your wife called the ex-girlfriend at the number the buyer had given, she claimed her erstwhile partner had stolen her credit card details and purchased the phone fraudulently. The buyer maintained the iPhone was a gift from his ex-girlfriend. According to his warped reasoning, depriving you of money due while not returning the iPhone was not his problem. In other words, he was, as I interpret it, in receipt of what he believed to be stolen goods and didn't give a toss.
Initially, I was told you had been ineligible for PayPal's seller protection because the online tracking did not match the "proof of delivery" as it did not show the recipient's address or, PayPal told me at the time, at least the city/county or postcode in the proof page.

Although to some extent this was a red herring in what was a very unusual case, as queries on this aspect of PayPal's seller protection do crop up from time to time, I felt I needed to clarify what Royal Mail does or does not provide in the way of address information with electronic confirmation of delivery, that is, what you see online. The "screen grab" with a 13-character reference to track your item merely showed that it had been delivered. It did not show an address. Getting an answer from Royal Mail as to whether there was any way around this and if it was indeed the norm, took months. Some of the cause of the delay being, I am told, that those who could have answered my questions were helping in the mail-sorting offices during postal disruptions. Meanwhile, all sorts of different answers were given including one that turned out to pertain only to old-fashioned delivery cards.

In fact, the address information for Track & Trace is on the proof of posting presented at the start of the item's journey. This important evidence, which should always be retained by the sender, shows date of posting, office posted at, the 13-character reference termed as the bar code on the item and information about the address it is going to. Once the journey is completed, Track & Trace does not provide delivery address details for, I am told, data protection reasons. However, it does confirm the item's arrival.

Another point it was difficult to get clarification on, this time from PayPal, was how someone else's credit card could have been used on the account. I realised no comment could be made on the buyer's own specific circumstances as the former couple had not given permission or indeed even knew the matter was being looked at by me. The generic answer now given is that, when someone initially links a credit card to their PayPal account, they have to provide such details as billing address and provision of the three-digit number on the back of the card or four-digit one on the front in the case of an American Express card. It adds that a credit card to fund a PayPal account can only be added when the user is logged into their account. Read into that what you will.

Meanwhile, as PayPal puts it, it values your business. In light of the peculiar situation you unwittingly found yourself in, it issued what it described as a courtesy credit of £219, which is the amount deducted from your account because of this tiresome episode.

As a result of the information I have provided to it, PayPal says it is currently reviewing the way it explains the proof of postage requirements to customers to minimise the chance of them not meeting these in future.

I urge anyone selling anything through this method to check the "seller protection" rules online before proceeding with a transaction. Hopefully the deeper understanding that appears to have resulted after months of toing and froing between myself, Royal Mail and PayPal, will at least put this particular issue to rest.

[not me]

bit of a non story
paypal dont require the address to show online
seller protection covers this with SD

[norbert]

http://www.nopaypal.co.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://paypalcomplaints.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;