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by zzm9980 » Sat, 28 Dec 2013 11:17 am
I've been almost-burned by PayPal selling from the US to someone in Spain via eBay. They did exactly what was described: Received my goods, and claimed not to have. The vast preponderance of the evidence was on my side. Luckily I removed the money from PayPal before shipping, and my bank account was linked in a way that they couldn't claw it back. They tried to via the linked Amex, but I just called Amex with the same evidence PayPal ignored and Amex refunded it. Once or twice a year PayPal still sends it to a collections agency (which can't do anything to my credit rating luckily), and I just send them a copy of the Amex dispute letter in my favor and they go away. Still quite a hassle, and not worth dealing with international buyers because of it. The risk may be worth the 15% premium to that company worth selling to you. Probably not for a larger merchant due to volume as they'd have to dedicate a headcount just to dealing with these incidents and eat into that premium.
Paypal itself is even worse. Their dispute resolution process is heavily rigged towards the buyer. It is impossible to send an email or describe your situation to PayPal. The buyer is allowed to file a dispute via a form with pre-populated options. You're only allowed to respond via pre-populated options and supply very limited data or upload documents only to support your exact point. You can present your own case. I had to resort to typing my response, printing, scanning, and uploading it along with whatever very specific paperwork PayPal requested. I have no idea if anyone even read it.
In my specific case, I sold a laptop to someone. I had photos of the laptop being packed at a UPS Store (shipping center) in the US, the official UPS customs form as to what was in the box, weight, etc. The UPS employee packed it themselves and signed a statement attesting that I actually shipped the laptop. The photos I took of the item being shipped were even geo-tagged, and the location showed up as UPS on Google Maps. (It was also a very popular location quite close to PayPal HQ, so no doubt at least half of them had actually been to that very same UPS store before). The buyer claims I shipped a broken shell of a laptop. Paypal told him to return it to me and ordered a refund. When it arrived, it was a piece of plastic. The shipment invoice for this plastic was 2kg less than the package I sent to him, < 1kg vs 3kg. All of this pointed out to PayPal made zero difference. Amex ruled in my favor almost immediately, and the local police department even said "It's a slam dunk if we had jurisdiction in Spain". lol. Again, Paypal didn't care about anything.
A friend used to work for PayPal in a department related to fraud. He said PayPal and eBay have some of the very best anti-fraud detection in their backend of any company in the world, but it's all tuned towards protection eBay and Paypal from being defrauded themselves. They don't care about buyer or seller.