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Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it

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Re: Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it

#41

Post by Pamar »

NorwegianDude wrote: post #28

PayPal is the pinnacle of stupidity. I've sold the same digital product many thousand times, and this has happened multiple times: Some customers decides to try to get it for free by paying and then creating a PayPal claim by lying that someone else made the purchases or that it was not delivered. And this usually works, and people tell others, so more people abuse it. Basically every single time someone tries to com…

This is super interesting to me. I am an amateur artist and I publish my stuff on instagram (@pamar).

In the last year I had multiple cases of people contacting me out of the blue and asking if I could draw a picture of their nephew's favourite dog (it is always a dog, and it is always for their nephew whose birthday is coming soon so there is an implicit sense of urgency).

I never actually pursued this stuff because it was obviously a scam of some kind (I draw mostly nudes, dogs or animals in general amount to less than 1% of my production so far, so someone starting their message with "I just adore your style can you please draw a dog for me..." is obviously either a scammer or blind).

Another clear sign is that they are obviously following a script (my standard answer is something alongside the lines of "Gee, thanks, but I do not really work on commissions, and I don't draw animals anyway" to which they would infallibly answer "Fantastic, would 2500USD be ok for you?" - at this point I just block them).

But I am still a bit confused about what the angle would be for this type of scams: assuming they send me 100$ and then open a claim against me because I did not deliver... at most they would get 100$ back after a few days. There is no actual profit, right? (I am considering one of my drawings basically worthless, I draw on paper, usually a5 or smaller).

Is this a laundering schema? What would they get out of it? (There are also lots of people asking to buy my stuff for NFT, I did not fall for that, either, but some other artist on IG explained to me that usually they ask you to create an account on some third party site... the account requires a fee, and after you have paid for it the NFT guy will just disappear - so in that case the way they get money from you is clear... but I still don't get how it would work in case of a physical item).

Any clues?

Re: Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it

#42

Post by seanhunter »

zimpenfish wrote: post #39
seanhunter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the moment I use paypal when my bank rejects a credit card transaction due to fraud risk. For example this happened yesterday when I tried to make a payment to a (very reputable) educational institution for an application fee. This is by no means a high risk transaction. In fact I would go so far as to say the payment could never in a million, billion, Brazillian years be fraud, but it was rejected. But they take…

> I think some UK banks are much more trigger-happy than the global average For a good year, Barclays would ask me if my monthly Oyster purchase, for the same cost, at the same station, on roughly the same day of the month, was actually me doing it. Natwest, similarly, have blocked my "early September, about £1200, to Apple" payment for 5 years in a row now. It's infuriating.

Yeah. It's completely nuts. Especially when you consider how little of the actual fraud they seem to manage to stop. It's like someone needs to go in there and give them a stats 101 talk about type I and type II errors, because they somehow manage to defy all the rules of logic and have extremely high rates of both.

Re: Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it

#43

Post by WeylandYutani »

arcticbull wrote: post #18
danShumway wrote: post #6

I know that FedNow isn't really a digital currency system and I'm not making any assumptions about how it's going to play out, but I hope one consequence of it is that sites like Paypal start seeing a lot more competition and lose a lot of power. I know other countries have similar systems, but the US being a holdout and having terrible money transfer options despite being a massive market in the tech space maybe (ho…

The dollar is already a digital currency, and its issuance is largely decentralized. Most dollars are issued by retail banks. What you can't do is self-custody the digital dollars or have an account at the Fed. FedNow is going to be fine, just like ACH but faster. PayPal sucks in a lot of ways, but there are reasons you would use it over an actual money sending service like Zelle, FedNow or Wise. For what it's worth…

I used PayPal a few times because I didn't have a credit card. It is shit. Sending money from bank account to bank account without an intermediate parasite is not only efficient it's also more censorship resistant.

Re: Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it

#44

Post by freetanga »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #30
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost nobody in Europe uses credit cards. We use debit cards, various types (immediate, deferred, ...). It was also the case 10-15 years ago. The usage has became much higher, but it was already all right by then. Except Germany, for cultural reasons.

Plenty of people have credit cards in Europe. In 11 countries, the majority of people do, in fact: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/people_with_credit...

A same-bank-as-your-cash-account credit card set up for full payment at the end of the month, so there is no financing.

Technically a CC, feels like a DC. Thats my experience in EU a I worked in Banking in many countries .

Re: Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it

#45

Post by fuzzybear3965 »

NorwegianDude wrote: post #28

PayPal is the pinnacle of stupidity. I've sold the same digital product many thousand times, and this has happened multiple times: Some customers decides to try to get it for free by paying and then creating a PayPal claim by lying that someone else made the purchases or that it was not delivered. And this usually works, and people tell others, so more people abuse it. Basically every single time someone tries to com…

As a consumer, if I was obligated to pay to file a claim with a payment provider I'd be disincentivized to use that payment solution. Also, if I had a real issue and the fraud system failed to evaluate the case properly/competently then I'd immediately cancel my account and avoid further use.

Re: Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it

#46

Post by Denvercoder9 »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #30
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost nobody in Europe uses credit cards. We use debit cards, various types (immediate, deferred, ...). It was also the case 10-15 years ago. The usage has became much higher, but it was already all right by then. Except Germany, for cultural reasons.

Plenty of people have credit cards in Europe. In 11 countries, the majority of people do, in fact: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/people_with_credit...

That statistic is about possession though, the parent comment is talking about usage. I'm in the one-third of my country that has a credit card, but I use it maybe five times a year, while I use my debit card daily.

Re: Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it

#47

Post by lesserknowndan »

Pamar wrote: post #41
NorwegianDude wrote: post #28

PayPal is the pinnacle of stupidity. I've sold the same digital product many thousand times, and this has happened multiple times: Some customers decides to try to get it for free by paying and then creating a PayPal claim by lying that someone else made the purchases or that it was not delivered. And this usually works, and people tell others, so more people abuse it. Basically every single time someone tries to com…

This is super interesting to me. I am an amateur artist and I publish my stuff on instagram (@pamar). In the last year I had multiple cases of people contacting me out of the blue and asking if I could draw a picture of their nephew's favourite dog (it is always a dog, and it is always for their nephew whose birthday is coming soon so there is an implicit sense of urgency). I never actually pursued this stuff because…

Apparently, read this somewhere else, the scam is that they will then change their mind and ask you to refund the money (probably suggesting you send it to them to avoid the refund fee). Once you have refunded the money, they then claim the original payment. So they started with $100 and now they have $200.

Re: Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it

#48

Post by seszett »

smcl wrote: post #37
seszett wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is it just to cause a nuisance by causing target accounts to incur fees? Most likely, they give money to a random email address using a stolen card, then dispute it and receive that money back, but now it's clean money because it comes from Paypal.

I suppose, I'm not sure how far these cases get pursued but it feels like you could track the movement of money between a stolen card and the scammer's account if you really wanted. But maybe they give up after seeing a charge to PayPal

It could work within one country, but I suspect they would use stolen US credit cards to get funds on Paypal, but then transfer that money to a bank account in another country where Paypal is unlikely to be able to get it back.

So the owner of the credit card should get their money back from their bank (or credit card company? Not sure how that works in the US) which might get their money back from Paypal if they want to bother, but it's probably too difficult for Paypal to get their money back from some bank in a country where they might not even have physical presence.

Re: Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it

#49

Post by seszett »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #31
Fradow wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit card is a rarity in Europe, because what we call a "credit card" is actually a debit card. Credit card are available at a premium, and while they offer some other advantages, few people use those. Visiting the US is actually one of the compelling reasons to get one. In France (and I'm going to guess similar rules exist in other EU countries), businesses are required to accept at least 2 different payment optio…

That's not true. Debit cards are more common, but credit cards are also very common in Europe: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/people_with_credit...

I see that 50% of people in Belgium have credit cards and I suspect it's because bank cards until very recently used to be almost only usable in Belgium, and not for online purchase (except at some Belgian stores). So you would need a credit card for a "normal" modern online life.

Not sure if it's still true but it also used to be the case in Canada while I lived there a decade ago or so.

Bank cards today seem to be double more and more as Mastercard/VISA debit cards and I think the amount of people bearing credit cards might decrease in the future. At least that's what has been happening with a few people around me.

Re: Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it

#50

Post by arcticbull »

plantain wrote: post #36
arcticbull wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dollar is already a digital currency, and its issuance is largely decentralized. Most dollars are issued by retail banks. What you can't do is self-custody the digital dollars or have an account at the Fed. FedNow is going to be fine, just like ACH but faster. PayPal sucks in a lot of ways, but there are reasons you would use it over an actual money sending service like Zelle, FedNow or Wise. For what it's worth…

>it's pretty rare that I have been materially adversely affected by the latency of an ACH payment What about every time you make a credit card payment (and associated fees)?

We don't use credit cards in place of ACH at the point of sale.

Debit cards maybe, but of course, debit card fees were significantly constrained in the US by the interchange caps in the Durbin amendment to Dodd-Frank in 2010. Non-exempt debit interchange (most of it) is capped at $0.22 + 0.05%. [1] In Europe it's been capped at 0.2% since 2015.

This compares to a FedNow transfer cost of $0.045 [2] - although I suspect there are significant bulk discounts here to financial institutions -- and surcharges to retailers. I'd call this "give or take the same" as the price of a non-exempt debit payment, but you may disagree.

I believe ACH clocks in at $0.003 in bulk to financial institutions.

Credit cards are not money transfer products so much as loan products. The actual interchange, the cost of processing cards, is quite low. In Europe it's capped at 0.3%. In the US most of the delta between what merchant acquirers charge and interchange is paid back to customers in the form of points or cash back, which basically just don't exist in the same way in Europe or other capped markets. Customers also like the insurance products, the ability to charge back, better fraud handling and the ability to batch their transactions into a single lump sum.

We pay a premium for these premium services.

[1] https://www.checkout.com/blog/revisiting-the-durbin-amendmen...

[2] https://www.frbservices.org/news/press-releases/012722-fedno...

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