Someone bought a diamond watch of mine using buy it now. There were numerous problems with the sale, but I will give just the basics of what happened here. The buyer took a long time to pay, requested shipping to an unconfirmed address and repeatedly asked about insurance on the package. I eventually shipped it insured with signature confirmation to the confirmed address. Two days after the buyer personally signed for the package, he opened a return case on ebay stating that the box was empty. He also stated that he thought his mail carrier stole the watch out of the box. I filed an insurance claim with the USPS. A postal inspector investigated, and the buyer did not cooperateand. The USPS denied the claim and opened a case of mail fraud against the buyer. I then received a phone call from someone claiming to be a police officer from the town that the buyer lives in demanding that I refund the buyer his money since I shipped him and empty box. If not, he said, my local police were going to arrest me and take me away in handcuffs. I hung up and dialed the number back, and it only gives a busy signal. I reported all of this to ebay. Then the case took a sudden twist. The buyer proclaimed he miraculously "found" the watch, and needed to return it ASAP, because he needed the money. No explanation of how or where he found it. Ebay closed out this case, but then it got reopened with a twist. The buyer reported that the watch was missing the diamonds, so it was not as described. This was eventually closed but then appealed and changed to "the watch is rusty". Eventually, after much stress and finally talking to someone with some common sense at ebay, the case was officially closed in my favor and the buyer was kicked off of ebay. I thought the problems were over.
But then a case was opened up on paypal for the watch with the reason of "not as decribed, broken, and probably counterfeit". I spoke to many people at paypal and explained the USPS case and the ebay case, and I uploaded documentation of all of it to paypal. Paypals response is that anything that happened on ebay or with the USPS is not relevent to paypal. The only thing that matters to paypal is what the buyer tells them. They told me that as long as the buyer gets 3rd party confirmation supporting their claim, they win. The fraud that the buyer tried to perpetrate with the USPS and ebay does not matter whatsoever to paypal.
Paypal is allowing and actually encouraging fraud by doing this. They are not combatting fraud at all. The buyer gets to try to fraudulently collect the insurance money by claiming the box was empty. If that doesnt work, all he needs to do is say get a 3rd party to say that the item is counterfeit and he gets the money back from paypal. And if that doesnt work, he says it is broken and gets to return it for a full refund.
If a buyer falsely claims that a box is empty and tries unsuccessfully to get the money from insurance, he should never be allowed to open any other case. Paypal should consider what happened with the USPS and on ebay, but they dont.
Has anyone else had an experience like this?
