January 05, 2009

Curious, George: Paypal Customer Service? Asking for a friend-filter. Buddy bought a refurb Xbox Elite for his kids on Ebay. Worked for a few days, then red circle of death. Tech looked at it and determined that he'd been sold a modded POS with a non-Elite motherboard, and either it failed or MS detected and bricked it.

He's contacted the seller, an actual company (good) somewhere in Latin America (not good). He's also contacted Ebay about changing his feedback for the company, and has sent an email to Paypal and is waiting for response. He has photographic proof that this is a hacked console with serial numbers that do not match. The seller has a big store on Ebay and tons of positive feedback, but they're mostly a distributor for other, mostly honest, suppliers. My question is this: if the company itself doesn't come through for him like they should with either a refund or a new console, what good can PayPal do him? Have any of you dealt with PayPal customer service on a bad deal, and if so, what was your experience? I'd like to give the dude some peace of mind while he's waiting, if I can.

posted by middleclasstool 15 years ago
  • Is it possible for him to do a chargeback with the credit card he used with Paypal (assuming he did use one, which I do)? If he can explain to his credit card company that he had been given fradulent goods, they should allow the chargeback. Other than that, I don't have much, sorry.
  • I just had a paypal dispute settled last month to my complete satisfaction. When I contacted Paypal about an uncooperative seller and a non-working item, they immediately put a hold on the seller's account of the amount of the eBay transaction, and the whole thing was settled in fairly good time. I have all of my money back, and he has his broken widget back. Weasel.
  • He should immediately cease trying to resolve this with the seller, as it's pissing his protection away. He needs to IMMEDIATELY report this as "Not As Described" and do a dispute. I do think Paypal is a bunch of asshats, but they do tend to side with the buyer and if your friend has all his ducks in a row and proceeds within the set deadline, he should be fine. I believe that he MAY also need to send via a courier service when returning the unit (such as DHL or FedEx) to get a foreign address signature.
  • Also in regard to he has sent an e-mail to Paypal, Paypal really doesn't read e-mails. He needs to go through the website and do the actual menu-driven dispute process.
  • He may have done that, roly. I guessed at the email part. He went through the dispute link on ebay, which sent him to paypal, so I assume he went through this process. I'll link him to this thread, though, to be sure.
  • Update from friend -- he's signed up for an account but doesn't have posting privileges yet, so I'll post for him:
    Thanks for linking this for me. I haven't ventured into the world of the MoFi, yet. However, I'm here, now! I went through eBay to dispute the purchase and sent several emails to the seller with absolutely zero response. My wife finally contacted someone at their 877 number and ripped them a new one. She is great at "aggressive negotiations." Alnedra, I'm not sure about a chargeback because I have not done that before. I'll look into it just in case.
  • Good luck, I hope it works out. Hopefully your friend does complete the dispute process, as it's pretty common for shady sellers to string the customer along until enough days elapse where the Paypal protections cease. At that point, there is no recourse.
  • Heh. They got it worked out. He IMed me just a little while ago. His wife walked in the house while talking to the company on her cell phone. Them: Well, if you hadn't opened the case, we could give you a full refund. Her: Well, if you hadn't sold me a fraudulent piece of shit, I wouldn't have had a certified tech open the case. Are you telling me I need to escalate this with Paypal? Them: ... Her: ... Them: We can refund your money. Her: KTHX. Paraphrased, of course.
  • Woo!
  • His wife is pretty goddamn scary when she wants to be. Being between her and something she wants is not a place most people would want to be.
  • :D
  • mct, is your friend able to post? I sift through the SEOs and spam when I activate accounts and want to make sure I got his.
  • I don't think he's tried yet. I can see his profile page, which I assume means he didn't get washed away with the douchebag brigade.
  • Okay, I'm able to post! I just found out this morning that they denied the refund on PayPal yesterday after telling my wife they would give us a full refund on Monday. They said that would exchange at no cost to us. So, I'm not sure what's going on. I hope they are planning to refund the money in a different way. So, we'll see what happens. It may just be that they don't want a negative PayPal claim against them. Like an insurance claim being closed and settled between parties. I hope, at least.