Sellers Beware, No Reason or Time Limit for Buyers to Reverse a Preapproved Payment

Question

Making a very long story somewhat less long: Buyer purchased a subcription to participate in our classified section.  They chose the option to automatically renew via Paypal's preapproved payment system. A week ago, they cancelled the subscription within their Paypal account, I received the notification. Then they disputed the last two renewals, one in late November and one in late May.  They claimed the transactions were "unauthorized".  The transaction amounts were put on hold. Then they contacted me claiming I had taken money from their Paypal account.  Had they beeen even remotely polite and simply said they didn't realize they had selected the auto-renew option or had accidentally forgotten to cancel it, I'd likely have refunded both since they were trivial amounts.  I reversed the most recent one immediately, since it was only a few days prior and they had not logged in.  I did this as a one-time exception to the clearly stated no refund on susbcriptions terms. The other one was over 180 days old.  It also did not meet any of the other Paypal user agreement terms for a dispute, yet Paypal accepted it.  It was also not subject to buyer protection, as it is a digital subscription.  I was given 7 days to respond. The biggest problem was that the Resolution Center did not allow me to upload files or comments proving my side of the story, with screenshots and copies that showed the subscription was legitimate and in no way, "unauthorized".  It only gave me options to refund or provide shipping information. I emailed support repeatedly, but the agents apparently do not read or understand simple questions.  In almost every reply, they ignored my questions and issues and resorted to generic responses about seller protection policies or how to upload a response (which didn't work as I repeatedly told them).  I asked many times for it to be escalated to a manager when it was clear that the agents did not understand English or simply did not want to read the information provided.  Finally one agent took a moment to read what I was asking and said I could also fax my information in response to the dispute.  Then they gave me the fax numbers in China, Japan and Hong Kong (I have a USA account). I finally called, since email support was utterly useless, and another representative kindly gave me the USA fax number.  I faxed the information exactly as requested, twice. Today, they deducted the amount from my account, indicating that I had not responded to the claim in the 7-day window. I don't suppose anyone has contact information of anyone higher up in the company that I could send this to?  It sets an awful precedent that allows anyone to dispute old preapproved payments without any ability for the seller to respond.  In fact, it took so much effort for me I can see why many would not even try.  Given that I can no longer trust Paypal's treatment of sellers, I will be curtailing my use of Paypal to the bare minimum, and accepting no large sales tranactions at all via Paypal.

Answer 1

Please let us know what other payment companies you have found to use. I'm looking myself, and don't know much about these other options. ThanksMichele