Bitcoin Forum

Paypal is susceptible to chargebacks.

I will preface this by saying that I have paid PayPal back and that no illegal intent took place.

So, I do not know how it happened, but one day I noticed that $1,000 was being transferred from my linked bank account to PayPal.
The funds had already left my account leaving me with -$400 in my account. I freaked. I immediately called PayPal and told them I did not
authorize the transaction. I then went to my bank and told them that the transfer was not authorized nor initiated by me.

They both went into fraud checking mode to see what happened. Paypal came back a day later saying that everything was legit, that it was me who did the transfer. I went to my local bank and told the lady that there was no way that I transferred money which would have left me in the negative.

That day, my PayPal showed a balance of $1,000. I immediately began the transfer back to my bank.

The next day my bank reversed the original $1,000 and waved my overdraft fees.

A day later the $1,000 from PayPal showed up in my bank account.

My PayPal account then showed a -$1,000 balance and my account was then locked.

So, essentially I could have taken the money from my bank and spent it and said screw PayPal (they would have sent me to collections though).

I got a call from PayPal and I took care of the negative balance.

What I suspect originally happened was my wife was buying something online and through a series of bad clicks, initiated the $1,000 transaction. She has no clue how to transfer money so I still do not know how it happened.


tl;dr You can get money out of PayPal by transferring money then telling your bank it was a false transfer.

The fact is the banks don't really care. They are running on 90 times the money they are given through fractional reserve. They'll happily side with the consumer every time because they have nothing to lose by doing so -- except credit given to them at little to no interest.

The negative impacts of this are numerous including chargeback fraud, much like you've shown.

PayPal interfaces with your bank using the ACH payment system, which has already been proven a chargeback risk - see the multiple instances of Dwolla fraud for examples.

I really don't get that -$1000 dollar and how it came up like that, if its $1000 dollars standing balance then you transferred a $1000 to bank account then it should have been $0 and not a negative. ????  ???

That wasn't a chargeback. Someone just transferred $1000 from your bank to your paypal acct. You could have just transferred it back once it got into paypal. It doesn't sound like fraud because if it was, it would have instantly gone to another paypal acct other than yours for spending.

@OP: Paypal is both scammable directly and capable of scamming you directly. I have been robbed of $10k by Paypal on one occasion and I have robbed $4k from Paypal on another. Unfortunately, people don't learn this until much too late.

When you create an account with Paypal, you agree that whatever they do is fine. When you give them your credit card number, again, you're agreeing that whatever they use it for is fine. Same goes for your bank account information. If you initiate a purchase with insufficient funds in your account, it automatically tries to take that money from either the bank or credit card. The main problem with this is that even if you cancel the purchase a split second later, that ACH is still going through regardless. Want to know the best part of it all? If you have insufficient funds in your account, they'll retry up to 2 times more meaning they will triple overdraft your accounts and still hold you at a negative balance in your Paypal account for fees incurred by them.

Paypal should be sued. Oh wait, they were! Numerous times! And keep losing! Check out more horror stories like yours at paypalsucks.com

how about tasering your dad? is it part of itunes?

actually the OP reminds me of a story a while back where it was found some 4 or 5 year old purchased an industrial digging machine / tractor with her dad's credit card, much to the parents' surprise.

Paypalsucks.com really rocks. LOL  :D

Your big mistake was not closing your PayPal and the associated bank account while you were ahead, to even the score of consumer vs PayPal by 0.001%. Otherwise PayPal gets to close it when they have $2000+ of your money. They'll never complain while the money is going in, but attempt a big withdraw, and that's when you'll get your account locked, along with any recent withdraws or payments being reversed, so they make maximum bank when you can't get it unlocked. Of course that's after you've already sent them photo ID, bills, SSN, passport, business license, lists of suppliers and invoices, proofs of shipping, shipper's account numbers; they just use that to mess with your credit and suppliers, steal your business model, and keep you from opening another account.

deepceleron, that's not true.

I manage several paypal accounts, some personal, some business, in various countries, and happened more than one time Paypal calling me about big deposits to my accounts. Let's say my account never got more than $100 movements and suddenly I got a $2000 deposit <--- that would make them call me and ask if it would be normal to get payments on those values and why I was getting them. So, yes, do they complaint about money going in...