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PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

regretsy.com

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Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#91

Post by Shenglong »

leptons wrote: post #75
Shenglong wrote: post #54

It seems to be, that most of PayPal's PR blunders result from heavily regulation of stupid employees. I know we don't tolerate personal insults here on HN, but those of you who have spoken to as many PayPal reps as I have, will probably agree that there are few other ways to describe them. I guess their logic is: "If we can hire dumb people for less money, and regulate them so they can't make mistakes, we can save mo…

When faced with incompetence, always ask for another rep. Two employees at the same company will often give you two different experiences. This is true of all the contact I've had with AT&T, and others, and no doubt the same is true at Paypal. Just don't even waste your time if you can tell the person you are talking to does not comprehend your complaint, just hang up and call back and keep calling back until you rea…

Yeah that's what I ended up doing. At first, I couldn't believe anyone could be so incompetent, so I kept trying to break up the problem into pieces. Big mistake :(

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#93

Post by pflargger »

I don't see at all where the seller refused to have the item returned. In fact, in both paypalcomplaints.org and Regretsy.com, the seller said:

"Paypal instructed the buyer of a vioin (sic) I sold on Ebay to DESTROY the item rather than return it to me..." - paypalcomplaints.org

"Rather than have the violin returned to me, PayPal made the buyer DESTROY the violin in order to get his money back." - Regretsy.com

So it looks like the seller tried to get the violin returned, but PayPal wouldn't issue the refund until it was destroyed.

Though if someone has that information elsewhere, I'd love to see it.

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#94

Post by hack_edu »

FreakLegion wrote: post #89
jackowayed wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above clause of the TOS is the reason not to sue. The seller agreed to a TOS that says that if PayPal decides that it is counterfeit, they refund the money and the item is destroyed, without any restriction on what care PayPal has to take to decide that it's counterfeit. So PayPal acted within the terms of their agreement.

The mere existence of a contract is not evidence of its legality/enforceability.

But someone's got to stick their neck (and wallet, if only temporarily) out to challenge these.

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#95

Post by blantonl »

FreakLegion wrote: post #89
jackowayed wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above clause of the TOS is the reason not to sue. The seller agreed to a TOS that says that if PayPal decides that it is counterfeit, they refund the money and the item is destroyed, without any restriction on what care PayPal has to take to decide that it's counterfeit. So PayPal acted within the terms of their agreement.

The mere existence of a contract is not evidence of its legality/enforceability.

Unless you are someone who cannot afford the legal fees that would allow you to challenge said legality/enforceability. Which is pretty much anyone.

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#97

Post by rickyc091 »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #40

Yeah. I'm selling some old stuff on eBay, using money to buy newer stuff, drawing the difference from the bank when the PayPal balance is not enough. Repeat. After not even two cycles of this, I get an email from PP saying: > Starting MM/DD/YYYY, money from payments you receive will be placed in a pending balance for up to 21 days. By doing this, we're making sure that there's enough money in your account to cover po…

Sorry, I had to laugh a little when I saw this since I received the same notice recently. I've been using eBay / PayPal since 2002 with 100% feedback and hundreds of transactions, so you'd think they'd treat me like a loyal and valued member, nope. I think my trigger was that people were giving me refunds for my purchases and I was giving people partial refunds as well. During the holidays a lot of people I purchased from made mistakes and left items out so they decided to give me a little something. I guess all that buying, selling and issuing / receiving refunds cause them to flag my account.

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#98

Post by Vivtek »

mbrzuzy wrote: post #96

This makes me sick. Ordering to destroy? That makes absolutely NO sense to me. If someone told me this story in person, I would have thought that it was a joke. Paypal is right up there with godaddy on the list of worst tech companies.

The picture of the shredded violin causes me pain verging on the physical. It's probably best we don't know the identity of the buyer.

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#100

Post by waqf »

ars wrote: post #57
udp wrote: post #37

As a musician, there's something genuinely horrific about the destruction of a musical instrument. Whether it's the fault of PayPal or not, I really hope whoever has done this gets what they deserve.

> I really hope whoever has done this gets what they deserve I think they did. They got $2,500. For some reason I believe the buyer and not the seller. I think the seller fraudulently listed the violin as not what it really was, and got called on it. My reasons are: a: The buyer has only a minimal reason to lie (if they didn't like the product and tried to return it but couldn't). b: The seller refused the return, wh…

I don't think you read the email properly. The seller implies that their preferred outcome was to have the violin returned and, presumably, the price refunded. That dispenses completely with your reasons (a) and (b).
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