ebay – Paypal and Your Protection

When you buy and sell on eBay, one of the greatest sales vehicles ever created, you must take care to protect yourself and one of those ways happens to be by using PayPal. PayPal offers it users a buyer protection. I will get into that in a second but first let me give you a story which opened my eyes very wide concerning eBay & PayPal.
 
I purchased a ventriloquist figure on eBay and I was thrilled to be the one who won the auction. It sold for hundreds of dollars. I used PayPal and paid for the item instantly when the auction ended. My procedure is to do this and never leave the seller waiting for his money. I also feel that this will get the item shipped right away which has proven to be very true. Although in this particular case I did not receive the item for just shy of 2 weeks from the date of purchase.
 
Upon receipt of my figure, which was shipped by way of a UPS shipping store, the figure arrived to me totally destroyed. It was supposed to be carved wood but it was in fact a composition.  I covered this in a previous blog. Here is where YOU have to be very careful. I know first hand. When you have a damaged item you MUST be able to provide to PayPal a tracking number for the item showing that it has been returned to the shipper. Without this information it will be almost impossible for PayPal to give you a refund on your purchase. The problem I ran into was that UPS was called and they came to me with a damage pickup slip and took the damaged item away. The only tracking I had was the initial tracking number for the item to get to me.
 
I waited the 10 days that PayPal requires and then put in a dispute for an item that was both misrepresented in construction and then poorly shipped. I just assumed that there would be no problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. After many emails I finally contacted PayPal by phone and was told by the PayPal representative that they wanted to find in my favor but…..without a tracking number confirming the item had gone back to the shipper they were going to find in the shipper’s favor. I was shocked to say the least and on top of that the shipper insisted that until he received reimbursement from the insurance he took out with UPS he would not refund my money. Insurance is always paid to the shipper and not the recipient. Boy I was losing on both ends.
 
All of a sudden I received from PayPal by email a survey to fill out telling them how I was treated by the PayPal representative and was there a resolution. Well this was great. I put into writing my total frustration and how I felt I had been done wrong by PayPal. This was the best thing I could have done because this red flagged a supervisor from PayPal who then called me on phone.
 
At this point I want to tell you that Michelle, the supervisor, listened to my entire story and she took over my case and told me she would see what she could do for me. It took a while but she was instrumental in causing the higher ups in PayPal to see exactly what happened to me and they did in fact finally find in my favor and I am receiving my money back.
 
Michelle also taught me something that I want to teach all of you about PayPal and the protection that they offer. I was under the assumption that you were automatically protected for $2000.00 but that is not the case. If the person who is selling has less than 50 for a feedback your protection is only up to $200.00 Michelle showed me that when you look at an item you are interested in, the block on the right hand side of the eBay add that shows his feedback score has a PayPal logo protection amount on the bottom of this block of information. Just remember if it says $200.00 and you pay more than that for the item you will not have protection for the amount over the $200.00. This is now a most important feature and from now own I will always look at this. If the seller’s feedback is all purchases and not many sales it will only give you the $200.00 protection. A seller must prove to PayPal that he is a true seller before the protection jumps to $2000.00
 
I wanted to give Michelle, from PayPal, accolades for the time she spent working on my case and getting me my refund and I guess my blog is the only way I could publicly accomplish this. I will call her and make sure she knows I have done this. My case had some very unusual circumstances and Michelle even said it was one of the most unusual cases she had ever worked so it was not the norm. Just remember if you have to return an item you must be able to supply PayPal a tracking number and also make sure you will be covered for your money!! 

THANK YOU MICHELLE

Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com

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