And now for something completely different

In a departure from my previous rants today I'm going to bitch about Paypal.....

I've been a Paypal user since, well since they came into being. 99% of my Paypal usage is to pay for stuff I got off eBay. While I've sold stuff on eBay before I always got paid by cheque, recently I decided to allow Paypal payments. If I knew now what I knew then I'd never have bothered, and I never will again.

I sold a rather high value item on eBay, the buyer decided I hadn't described the item correctly (something I disagree with but thats a story for another time) and logged a Paypal dispute, I wasn't concerned about this because, to my mind, the case was open and shut but nothing could have been further from the truth.

I'll open with the following: Paypals dispute policy/process is biased in favour of the buyer!

If the seller doesn't reply to the dispute within something like 10 days the buyer automatically wins. I don't have a problem with this (hell I've won one dispute because of it) but its the start of something bigger.

The number of characters the seller is given to respond to the dispute is very small, and its a web form so no email or attachments or anything.

The buyer is given [multiple] opporunities to respond to, and expand on, the sellers reply to the dispute (in my base the buyer even changed his complaint when I proved his original statement to be incorrect), the seller is not given any further opportunity to respond until the dispute has been resolved by Paypal.

The buyer is given a full refund once confirmation has been received that the item has been returned to the seller - interestingly Paypal [at this point] don't care if the item is incomplete or (as in my case) damaged, they just care that the seller has received 'something' when they give the buyer his money back.

If the item is incomplete or damaged (or you are just unhappy with the result) you can appeal - to appeal an incomplete or damaged item Paypal instruct you to get a stamped Police statement to forward to them, unfortunately the Police treat this kind of thing as a civil matter (and not criminal) and don't want to know.

At that point Paypal ask you to send the item, by tracked delivery, to them in the Netherlands (so by international courier) so they can inspect the damage - all of this at your expense despite already being out of pocket on the deal already and with no guarantee of getting anything in return.

But here's the best bit, _if_ Paypal were to reverse the decision you will only get your money back _if_ the buyers Paypal account has enough funds in it to cover the price!

Unfortunately it doesn't stop there, during the refund Paypal managed to put my account into a negative balance and despite being told on the 2nd of February that this would be rectified I'm still waiting for this to be resolved (and am now being charged interest on the negative balance)

I have to say that thanks to this incident and the extensive communication I've had with Paypal because of it I can confidently say that Paypal are quite possibly the most unprofessional, faceless, unorganised pile of shit on the Internet and I will never accept another Payment through their service again!