[meteorite-list] Re: OT: chargebacks & Lost packages (kind of long - sorry) :-)

From: Martin Altmann <Altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Feb 14 07:22:46 2005
Message-ID: <003a01c51290$4b618500$095f9a54_at_9y6y40j>

Hi list,

a good opportunity for ?n important and precious hint for European sellers,
who use Paypal for Ebay transactions:
Never let your money on your Paypal account, withdraw it always immediately
onto your bank account!!!!

If a buyer claims at Paypal, that your item didn't arrive or that you didn't
sent it, Paypal will charge back his payment + hefty fees from your account
without any examination of that case!

And also it is written in the ebay/paypal-instructions that they will accept
as a proof your receipt, that you sent it registered, they won't do. Not
from DHL, nor from UPS, nor Fedex, even not if you can track back, that the
parcel was delivered to the very address and the buyer got his stuff.
They will tell you, that they accept only methods of shipping, were at each
moment the very whereabouts od the parcel can be tracked, which is possible
only with special courier services (which costs about 100-200Euro to USA).

Paypal is known to act completely illegal here in Europe, to me it didn't
happened, but a short look in the ebay discussion forums and you'll find
dozens of cases.
If your account is empty, anyway they will take the chargeback from there,
but that doesn't matter, as the mafia-style harassements they will attack
you later with, that an encashment enterprise will visit you, are not
conform with german law and they won't take the risk of litigation.

Meanwhile there exist professional fraudsters in USA, who know about that
Paypal behaviour and that the seller has no chance, as all proofs of
delivery won't be accepted, who are ordering items in bulk, paying them
first with paypal and after they recieved the goods, they claimed, that they
never got it and get the chargeback of the money, so that you'll loose your
goods, your money and for this you have to pay additional a fat fee.

In USA Paypal is more careful, as the amendments there with class-actions
lawsuits are high and there they offer a sellers' protection program, which
is not available.

Unfortunately paypal is the most popular mode of payment for international
ebay transactions,
otherwise I would strongly recommend to switch to Bidpay or other
electronical money transfer services.

Another occurence, to demonstrate, how Paypal is acting, and which afflicted
thousands of German Paypal clients, was the illegal account blocking and
frightening of the clients, that they are under investigations and suspected
to be criminals:

European laws commit banks and money services to check the identity of a
client, before he/she opens an account, by identity card, passport or
electonical signature.
A lot of Germans opened a Paypal-account, when Paypal wasn't available in
Europe, in USA and there wasn't any other verification necessary than the
credit card.

Now Paypal was going to the European market and thus subdued to the European
laws.
What did they do, to get the missing data of their clients?
They sent emails to all of them, that they found strange transactions on
their accounts and/or that soon the sum of all transactions will exceed
7500Euro, so that they are compelled by the EU-money-washing-law to check
the identity of the client.
For this you should fax a copy of your identity card or an attestation of
your registry office, wherefrom your address is visible as well as a bill
from your electric current supplier.

Of course I didn't and then they blocked the account (also illegally and
this they did with all, who refused).

So I took a look in that mentioned EU-money-washing-law,
and what did I found? The bank has to proof suspicious transactions, if it
exceeds a value of 15.000Euro (not 7500 as paypal told) and only if it was
made as one single payment or in form of payments from the same sender in a
short period of time (practise is: 1 week - 10 days).
Thus not, as Paypal wrote in their scary emails, that the sum of all
transactions made from the beginning on - in my case 2 years! - exceeds that
limit.
And in the law also you could find, that for verification are allowed only
identity card, passport or electronical signature - no matter whether they
contain the home address or not.
A bill of the electrical supplier or the sheet of the registration office,
thus would be not valuable for that purpose.

As I heard in the forums, that for most it took weeks or even months to get
cleared their accounts again, I wrote to Paypal, that I will inform the
banking supervision about their practises if they won't clear my account
immediately - and voila in 20 minutes it was done.

That's Paypal. Failed to collect the necessary data from the clients, they
are threatening their own clients to press out the data, using simple lies,
forgering the law to get the data quickly in scaring the clients to be
suspected to have commited a crime - blocking their money, if they don't
agree.

So, if you're forced to use Paypal, always withdraw your funds immediately.
Cheers!
Martin
Received on Mon 14 Feb 2005 07:25:38 AM PST