Paypal are Awful

Welcome to our Paypal experience website (Why you should avoid Paypal).

We had been Ebay members for many years and had used Paypal to both make and receive payments.

Ebay purchased Paypal in 2002 and although they separated in 2015, they alledgedly still have close links.

Our issues with Paypal stem from Ebay closing our accounts without warning or reason (they refuse to provide an explanation).

Please refer to Ebay; Awful Doesnt Come Close for more details.

When Ebay closed our accounts, they refused to provide an explanation. We therefore withdrew all monies from our Paypal account and contacted our bank and cancelled all permissions - Standing Orders for both Ebay and Paypal.

I (Kevin Genner) then phoned Paypal, explained the situation and instructed them to cancel all access to our Paypal account by Ebay (in an attempt to force Ebay to explain and possibly reverse their action).

The Paypal agent instructed me to go to the Paypal Preferences page and use the option to refuse Ebay permission to access our Paypal account.

As can be seen from the above image (please click on image to enlarge), I followed Paypal`s instructions and denied Ebay access to our Paypal account.

Paypal Agreement

The eBay refunds and disputes section states; "Set up a pre-approved payment so that eBay can charge your PayPal account for amounts you owe to eBay or your eBay customers under eBay's terms (for example, refunds to your customers in case of disputes you've lost)

"If you don't set this up, eBay won't charge your PayPal account but you'll still be responsible for these refunds and payments. This only applies if you sell on eBay"

So; Ebay had no right to access our Paypal account and Paypal  not only had no right to allow them access. Also; Paypal they have a duty of care toward us, where Paypal must not allow Ebay to access payments in our account.

Paypal Treachery

On Ebay, we had been selling software which we mailed to customers on CD and also supplied via email attachment (we charged £15 per sale). The software simply accessed a specific Microsoft server and allow customers to either immediately upgrade their computer to Windows 10, or create a disk to reinstall Windows 10, or upgrade to Windows 10. Full support was provided by ourselves (I am a fully qualified computer engineer and we are Microsoft Partners).

Please note; this is completely legal, and at tyhe time, we had for many years been providing official (free of charge) anti-piracy services to ebay. Note; we had been invited by Ebay to join their "secret" network of experts who could report counterfeit items, which Ebay would rthen remove from their pages.

At the time that Ebay closed our account, we were dealing with two open disputes.

Customer 1 claimed that he had not received his software. However, we had supplied the software by email (the software was attached) 3x times, we had allowed him to download the software directly from our server and we supplied it by mail 3 times (the final time, the CD was signed for). The Royal mail tracking number was NV525266949GB.

Customer 2 claimed that the software is virused. With respect; this is genuine Microsoft software supplied directly from Microsofts Server. Our disks are checked using the latest, topt anti-virus software, It is absolutely not virused.

So; both cases were fraudulent and we had been dealing with them. However, when Ebay closed our account, we obviously could do nothing and Ebay simply found in their favour on 20th February 2021 and 24th February 2021.

On 25th February 2021 another customer opened a claim and Ebay immediately found in their favour. However, in this instance, we have no details of the case at all, because we had no access to our Ebay account.

From our perspective, these cases could have given us leverage with Ebay to obtain an explanation of why they closed our account, after all they had been denied access to our bank account and paypal account, so; if they choose to refund fraudsters, they would have to pay.

No 1; Despite our having phoned Paypal and despite following Paypals instructions to use Paypals system to refuse Ebay access to our Payp[al account, on February 20th, Paypal allowed Ebay to pay the 1st fraudster.

We were not happy with this betrayal by Paypal and phoned Paypal numerous times to ask that this be resolved..

No 2; again -despite our having phoned Paypal and despite following Paypals instructions to use Paypals system to refuse Ebay access to our Payp[al account, on February 24th, Paypal allowed Ebay to pay the 2nd fraudster.

Finally, Ebay received a claim (we dont know whay - we have no detaisl because we could not access our account). and found in the claiments favour almost immediatly.

No 3; yet again - although we had phoned Paypal and despite following Paypals instructions to use Paypals system to refuse Ebay access to our Paypal account, on February 25th, Paypal allowed Ebay to pay the 3rd fraudster.

Because we had cancelled Paypals right to take payments from our bank account, Paypals incompetance (or criminality) left us with a negative balance of £45.

We continued to phone Paypal in an attempt to resolve the issue. We also contacted Paypal via the Paypal online meassaging system but their response was always the same; "when we setup our Ebay account, we had given them the right to access our Paypal account". So although Paypal telephone staff could not argue with the fact that Paypals own Ebay Refunds and Disputes section allows Paypal members to cancel the agreement (and it could also be argued that by cancelling our membership, Ebay had also cancelled the agreement), Paypal still claimed that we were liable for the £45 which Paypal had to awarded to fraudsters.

We then began to receive phone calls from Paypal payments, they were demanding that we pay the £45. We resolved this by explaining that since this was a Paypal issue and everytime that we dealt with this, Paypal would be liable to pay us £500 per instance. Continuing to contact us about the case without having resolved it would mean that they accepted their liable to pay £500 every time that we had to deal with the issue.

After a short time, the calls from Ebay collections ceased, but I received a notification that Paypal had taken (without permission) money from our overseas currency account toward the negative balance issue caused by Paypal incompetence.

With respect; "They had no right, how dare they. Surely this is theft"!

I phoned them yet again and was told that they could not deal with the case because it had been passed to an external Dept Collection Company.

I then decide that "enough is enough"; I should escalate the case and contact the ICO and both thje UK and Luxembourg Financial Ombudman.I phoned the UK Financial Ombudmans Office.

The UK Financial Ombudmans Office told me that I could make a complaint, but I would need to provide a Final Response Number from Paypal. This should have accompanyied a "Final Response Letter" which Paypal are required by law to provide. Paypal are required by law to mail the Final Response Letter to me at my registered address.

I then spent from 1pm to 5pm on the phone to them again. I have not been able to obtain the Final Resonse Number and have nevesr recieived the Final Respose Letter.

However, on April 15th, we received a letter from Moorcroft Debt Recovery (please click on the above image to view).

I phoned Moorcroft Debt Recovery and explained the situation (I told them the story). They were understanding and have paused any action (If necessary, I will fight this in court and I expect to be awarded serious compensation).

Fighting Paypal

The next steps are to fully involve the UK and Luxembourg Financial Ombudsman, contact Trading Standards and the ICO, create these websites and then involve the media internationally.

Paypal Reviews