Been robbed of £200

I'm in a stinking mood.

I ordered a pond liner off ebay yesterday for £56. All good. Receipt came from PayPal clearly showing everything, all present and correct.

Then out of the blue, today I receive another emailed receipt for completely different transaction that I know nothing about and had no part in, for £199.95 to a courier company.

At first I thought maybe I'd made a mistake, and misread the 'free delivery' bit, but I ALWAYS check the details before hitting confirm when buying online, and there's no way I'd authorise a transaction for £200 when I'm a bit skint.

Straight away, I hit the 'dispute' button on PayPal. Then I phoned the courier company that the £200 has been sent to. They have no record of me, or any delivery to my address either past or pending, which is not surprising, because I've never used this firm before and never had anything delivered by them.

I then phoned the pond liner company. I didn't suspect them of any wrongdoing but seeing as the only PayPal transaction I HAVE done recently was with them, I thought they might be able to tell me if there's a blunder on my part or even theirs. They were very helpful and polite, and confirmed that delivery of their stuff is included in the purchase price (£56) and that my pond liner hasn't even been cut yet so they haven't even involved the couriers on my behalf, and when they do, next week sometime, they use an entirely different firm.

So I phoned my bank (well building society, I don't like banks). I told them what's happened, and they checked, and its not merely a spurious email. £199.95 has indeed set off from my account to PayPal with a reference mentioning the courier firm. It is in a 'pending' state apparently, which means there's nothing anyone can do until the receiving bank (at PayPal) accepts it. Probably overnight. So tomorrow I have to phone again, and they will initiate a 'Visa dispute' and claim the money back.

Once I have my money back, and I will get it back even if I have to sue PayPal myself, I'll be terminating my accounts with both eBay and PayPal.

 

The very first thing that crossed my mind was that it was fake, and its the first thing I checked before starting to panic. As I mentioned, the bank confirmed that the money was taken, and its there in my PayPal account details too.

The good news is I've just had an email from the courier firm that my money has been sent to, and they've confirmed that they did receive payment from me via PayPal despite them not having expected it as they have no shipments for me, so hopefully PayPal will be speedy in sorting out their error.

 

I can't understand, who or what initiated this payment of £200.

Val

 

PayPal initiated the payment, without my authorisation.

 

Well that is scary!!!!!!!!! I kind of trust paypal and assumed this sort of mistake couldn't happen!!!!

Val

 

It wont be malicious. It will be a software error. The question is how quickly will they put it right.

Apparently this is not unusual. I mentioned it at work when I discovered what had happened, and straight away the lads volunteered their tales of when it happened to them.

 

have you considered the possibility that somebody got hold of your password and simply directed the 200 paypal payment where suits him best? In that case it would be a good idea to change your paypal account or at least the password.

PS of course one panics whenever anything happens that has to do with our private bank account.

 

So, a workplace full of others who were given the shock of their life via a software error.

Hope it's resolved quickly, CL1

 

I briefly considered that, but it would be odd for it to go to a legitimate firm in the UK, where such things are easily traced and audited. If it had gone to a firm outside of UK/EU jurisdiction, then I'd have panicked even more.

The firm that were sent the money have replied to my email confirming that they received funds originating from me, and that they know they shouldn't have, so at least they are cooperating.

It's all down to how cooperative PayPal are now.

As soon as I've got my money back, I'm closing down my PayPal account, and I'm going to instruct the bank to deny any transaction requests from them too.

 

That is terrible poor you! was the paypal name for the courrier the pond liner uses exactly the same as the one showing up on your bank statemet?

 

The pond liner company confirmed that they never use the courier firm that the money was sent to.

All sorted now (almost). PayPal have confirmed that they are going to refund the money. The ignorant gits aren't going to give me the opportunity to find out exactly what happened. I just got an automated email saying they've reviewed the case, will be issuing a refund, case closed, don't reply to this email because we don't read them type response. So I logged into PayPal and found the case in the resolution centre section, hoping to find more info there, but nothing. Just step 1, case reported, step 2, case investigated, step 3 case closed. Like I say, no explanation of what happened, and more importantly, no hint of what, if anything, they might do to reduce the risk of it happening again. So I have my own way of reducing the risk of it happening again. As soon as the money hits my account, its by by PayPal. I'll not just close my account, first I'll remove all my card details from there, and also tell the bank to deny any furture requests from PayPal.

 

I totally agree about you cancelling your account etc. I dont think I will be using ebay / paypal after hearing about this. I get confused with the simplist transactions.