PayPal charges... Stuff I don't understand

[hoodmeister]

Hmmm. Just had a bit of a nasty shock looking at my bank account.

Story is this :

My PayPal account has been being a little odd. All payments I make have been going through as "eCheques". I think this was cos' there was no "credit card" assigned to the account (ie, all payments are in fact direct debits)...

OK. So I bought a camera lens, and made payment. After a week or so, I check my PayPal account to find that payment failed... seems the provided PayPal address doesn't have an account tied to it anymore.

I contacted the seller, and it turns out that the PayPal account tied to his Ebay account was an old one... He had recently changed ISP's and lost the old email address. He gave me new PayPal details, I made payment to this new address, all is fine.

but... I just looked at my online statement to find :

30 Dec 2005	CHG	UNPAID ITEM(S) , D/D 165.00, PAYPAL PAYMENT	 - 	38.00

Which basically says that £38 has been debited from my account, for an unpaid item charge.

Sooooo... As I understand, i've been charged for the failed payment, and all because the seller gave an incorrect PayPal address?

I really can't afford to just lose nearly £40 like that. Is there anything I can do? I could contact the seller and ask him to refund it... But I doubt he'd be obliging.

Where do I stand?

[arthurleung]

AFAIK unclaimed payments will be refunded after a month or so. Check the payment status and see if your failed payment was accepted or not. If what the seller said was true, he can't refund you, and the only way to get it back is wait.

[hoodmeister]

No... It wasn't unclaimed, the payment just failed because the account I was sending it to simply didn't exist.

And i've been charge £38 for that payment failing. Actual cost of the item was £165

[arthurleung]

No... It wasn't unclaimed, the payment just failed because the account I was sending it to simply didn't exist.

And i've been charge £38 for that payment failing. Actual cost of the item was £165

Well, I read about paypal faqs quite a long time ago and I'm sure they said you can create an account AFTER someone paid to that email address. Even if the account doesn't exist you can still send to it (but no one can receive it unless a new account with that email address is created. I can't explain why its £38 not £165 though.

Why don't you give paypal a call / email and ask them to explain why did they charge you the £38 or was it held on the non-existing(yet) account.

[Spud1]

I think you have lost that 40quid basically, because it was an e-cheque not a 'standard' payment.

I use my credit card as the only source for putting money in to paypal, offers me 'some' protection against chargebacks etc, and I have never had the issue you have. Sometimes accounts I have tried to pay do not exists - but when that happens the payment just fails and my credit card is refunded.

I guess that e-cheques are similar to real ones in that a bounced/not usable/none-cashable cheque can subject you to high bank charges..