Today I made a purchase of a model horse from a fellow hobbiest that I know casually from a hoby message board. The cost of the model was $25 and $6.65 for shipping. She sent me her PayPal account, I cut & pasted it and sent the payment.
Several hours later, she e mailed me that she had not gotten the payment yet, and asked if I was sure I had entered the “.” in the account. I wrote back that I had cut & pasted it JUST as she had sent it to me, and sent her a copy of the e mail.
She wrote right back, saying basically HOLY CRAP she had transposed the address- she had written john.doe@yadayada .com and it was supposed to be doe.john@yadayada .com. I right away checked my PayPal account and the payment has already been claimed.
I am at work right now so there isn’t a lot I can do until tomorrow when I can call. She has already mailed the model out to me and given me the tracking #.
I cannot afford to pay for the model twice, but feel really bad that she MAY not get paid for it, even tho it was her error.
Has anything similar happened to any of you, and what are the chanches that PayPal will make good on this?
By all means, open a dispute with PayPal. I imagine they can reverse the transaction since it was misdirected, and since both the buyer and the seller will confirm the error. There are instructions on the site for opening a dispute. Do it right away, and good luck.
Unless the incorrect recipient is going to dispute it (unlikely) this should be easily corrected. While this is her error it may require you to do the coordination necessary to pull the funds back.
Honestly, this is a bit surprising to me. I would have thought that paypal would have some facility to correct these errors. You’re pretty much on your own re the good graces of the recipient.
That was going to be my advice. Contact the receiver of the misdirected funds (you have their address) and ask for your money back.
It’s an unfortunate mistake, but since the seller is the one who made the mistake, I don’t see why you should pay twice. If the misdirected funds can’t be recalled, I’d say you should let this be a $31 lesson for the seller to be more careful in the future.
The problem is that the seller cannot reverse the payment, because it went to wrong seller. She would have to access this payment through the incorrect email address as a new account, which is impossible since it doesn’t exist.
When this happened to me, my buyer was able to revoke the initial payment kn their end, and then I sent a new invoice with the correct address.
I just got off the phone with PayPal, explained the situation, and they were able to reverse the payment and I can re-send to the correct seller. I am so relieved that the seller will actually get her money-I felt terrible about this!