Paypal Complaint
Submitted by: Anonymous | Post a complaint | Back to Complaints Forum
On July 10, 2019 I saw a Facebook post from a friend who was requesting donations for an animal rescue society in honor of her birthday.I have donated to this particular rescue several times in the past.I intended to donate $25 so I clicked the Donate button and was redirected to PayPal with whom I have an account linked to my bank account.When the donate page opened the amount of $75 was already filled in for the amount.I don’t know if this is done by PayPal or by the rescue society.I have had this occur before on the site.In order to donate the amount I choose I have to delete the $75 they have pre-entered.I did so and entered $25.
Awhile later I got a receipt from PayPal for $725.Obviously the 7 of the $75 did not get deleted before the 25 was added making the number 725, either by a glitch or possibly I didn’t notice it had not been completely deleted.In any event I immediately contacted PayPal at a phone number I found for them.This contact was made in less that 2 hours after the donation.I explained the situation to the first agent who then transferred me to another and I again explained the situation.This agent transferred me to a third agent where I again explained.This last agent suggested I contact my bank and stop payment.I did just that and had to authorized a $36 stop payment on the transaction.After I verified the stop payment the next day I again made a donation of $25 as I had intended all along.
On July 21 I received an email from PayPal saying that I had a negative $725 balance on my account and that I needed to contact them.I called them on July 22 at the number they provided and explained the situation again to a fourth agent.She referred me to the dispute department and transferred the call.After waiting more than 20 minutes on hold I hung up and called back.I had to explain the lengthening situation to a fifth agent who was no help and again referred me to the dispute department.After more than 30 minutes on hold this time I finally got an agent in the dispute department.Again, I explained the whole affair to agent number 6.
The only recommendation I got from anyone at PayPal was to contact the rescue society to attempt to retrieve the money from them.I certainly hesitated to ask for the return of a donation but did send them an email explaining the situation and asking for their help.I never received a reply.
Number 6, after hearing the entire story, said that PayPal had no way of stopping a payment once it had been made.I told her that her own website said different.I explained to her that when I called my bank later that evening that the payment had not been presented so I was able to put a stop payment on it.The transaction had not been made at this time.Number 6 said that when a payment is made that they immediately credit it to the receiver and get their money back later.That is ridiculous.
In any event none of the 3 agents I talked to on the day the donation was made told me any way that I could cancel the payment although PayPal has several methods that I found later.I made a donation in good faith, found there was a mistake, and did everything I possibly could to rectify it before it became a problem.The problem occurred with PayPal itself not having it’s employees properly trained to deliver customer service.The negative balance on my account remains in the amount of $725.The $25 donation I made the next day appears to have been processed.
In view of the facts that I fulfilled everything on my part PayPal has fallen short on their responsibilities.I fully expect them to attempt to negatively affect my near perfect credit score of 830 and request that the credit reporting services not allow this to happen.