Short Change

Last year for the holidays, I bought my wife a magazine subscription on EBay. The seller confirmed my purchase (and $70 Pay Pal payment) by stating that I needed to wait 8-10 weeks before receiving the magazine – which seems reasonable given that it takes a long time for subscriptions to get started, especially with a third party seller.

What irks me about Pay Pal is that each time I purchase an item, it defaults the payment to be funded from my bank account. Doing so means

• I lose points from paying with my credit card
• I lose all buyer protections offered by my credit card.

Pay Pal even goes so far as to remind you of their Buyer Protection Program when attempting to switch the funding on a transaction. There is no way to set your credit card as a default with Pay Pal (maybe opening a new account with just a credit card would work..!)

After ten weeks of patiently waiting, as instructed by the seller, I began to dispute the claim on the grounds that I did not receive the item. Luckily my third attempt worked:

1. EBay will not allow users to dispute a transaction after 60 days (also meaning I could noteven leave Negative feedback about the transaction to warn other potential buyers – one of the biggest features of EBay)
2. Pay Pal’s touted Buyer Protection Program expires after 45 days.
3. Luckily American Express (who I believe gives consumers 90 days to dispute a charge) took on the claim. They contacted Pay Pal and within 10 days I had a refund.

Bottom line is that you should never fund a Pay Pal transaction from a bank account, as there are no benefits to the consumer. Despite safeguards, some transactions on EBay are stacked against consumers. It would seem to me that they should either

• Extend their protections for transactions that take longer than 60 days to process
• Be more flexible with their policies based on the transaction.

Buyer Beware!

Labels: Credit Cards, Fraud, Online