Cancelled PayPal transaction and overdrawn charges

[lukechris]

HI

EDIT: Issue resolved

Edited May 19, 2010 by lukechris

[MARTIN3030]

Will move your thread into the forum these issues are usually found in.

[perplexity]

You seem to be confusing two separate issues.

 

The refund of a Payal payment is the return of the payment to a person who paid, which is thus in effect a second payment, in the opposite direction, not a cancellation of the original transfer of money. Paypal payments move from one account to another by way of a direct bank transfer. A cheque is nothing more or less than an order to transfer money, which is to say that it is one thing to cancel a cheque before the transfer is processed, quite another once it happens. There is no way to cancel a bank transfer after the money moves from one account to another, as if to rewrite the history of it.

 

Ergo, albeit that Paypal refunds the Paypal payment fee when a refund is granted, you could still be in trouble with your bank because an account was overdrawn in the mean time, if only for a few moments, because the system would be automated to that effect.

 

The best bet is to get back to your bank, on bended knees, to beg for mercy. There is no case to be made against Paypal, according to the present account of the incident. You made the payment.

 

[lukechris]

Ok I know what you are saying, but however, I made they payment, and cancelled instantly. Now if it didn't say "If a refund is requested within a few hours of the transaction, then no funds will be deducted from your bank account" on the PP website then fair enough, but it does say that. it was cancelled by myself within 5 mins

[perplexity]

While the management of Paypal is notoriously not the most competent to be encountered on Planet earth, it seems to me that "will be deducted from your bank account" implies that this would happen if the payment was not yet effected, and because it was not yet effected.

 

Otherwise, it would seem that the advice from Paypal is out of date, and as with so much that is done by eBay and Paypal, overly affected by what happens on the other side of the Atlantic.

 

There was a time when it took a while to effect a bank transfer, the banks would drag their feet for as long as three days or more, but this has since been speeded up, within the European Union. Nowadays it is all but instant.

 

[lukechris]

No no, you missed some out, it's not:

"will be deducted from your bank account", its

"then no funds will be deducted from your bank account"

 

I think we have the rights to the overdrawn charges, and if it is out of date then its their faulr, right?

[perplexity]

All I am doing is distinguishing between the past tense, the present tense and the future tense.

 

If the fact of the matter is that funds were already deducted from your bank account, no funds will be deducted from your bank account is exactly what happened when the request to cancel the cheque was made, if that is what you did, which is not at all so clear because you refer to a cancellation and a refund, which are different issues. If a cheque is cancelled the inference of that is that there is nothing to refund because the cheque was never cashed.

 

Otherwise you seem to be assuming that Paypal ignored a request to cancel an e-cheque, which may or may not be true, but I fail to see the proof of it and I don't know why they would ignore the request.

 

Anyway, whatever the fact of the matter what comes across loud and clear is your own reluctance to accept a responsibility for your own mistake. If the bank reckons in effect that 55 percent of it was their fault and 45 percent of it was yours, that would seem to be more than fair, if the fact of the matter is that the bank did nothing but exactly what they were instructed to do, and the same goes for Paypal.

 

None the less, for the record, to what extent to do you intend to accept the responsibility for your own mistake? Does that factor in at all or is everything always the fault of everybody else?

 

[nat8808]

Perplexity, I think you've mis-understood the point here - or at least you have understood it differently to me.

 

As I see it, the OP is saying this:

 

PayPal's website states that if you cancel a payment within a few hours of making this payment then then no bank transfer will occur.

 

The OP cancelled the payment within five minutes yet the bank transfer did occur, contradicting PayPal's own declaration of terms of service.

 

In a nutshell, PayPal advertised some terms of service and then failed to adhere to them. I would say that this constitutes a breach of contract. In this case, this breach of contract has incurred the OP costs and I personally would have thought that this entitles the OP to compensation to cover these costs.

 

However, where it potentially gets complicated is that the PayPal stated terms say that a "cancelled payment" if cancelled within a few hours will not be processed. This kind of implies that the sender of the payment must take the action. PayPal do not actually allow the sender to cancel the payment - it is the recipient that must reject the payment instead. In effect, even though the OP is both the sender and recipient in this case, it was still the recipient who rejected the payment.

 

So, if PayPal claim to provide a term of service yet then provide no means to actually implement it correctly, can they rightly claim that they are not responsible for any costs incurred for not providing this stated service (because it wasn't carried out correctly)?

 

On a separate note, I don't think your attitude, Perplexity, of just telling the OP they must take responsibility for the whole affair is particularly helpful or appropriate for a forum of this kind. To me that is akin to going to the bank charges forum and telling people that it's their fault they incurred the fees and so should do nothing to claim them back. What is the point?

[nat8808]

LukeChris, emailing PayPal is pointless - you simply get a stock email or a non-considered response.

 

You really need to call them and speak to someone. You can call them on 020 8605 3000, opt 1. This is actually Ebay's number but option 1 takes you straight to PayPal. It means you don't have to call them on the 0870 number.

[perplexity]

 

A refund of a Paypal payment is not the cancellation of an e-cheque.

Which part of that is hard to get?

 

The advice from Paypal, to be seen here, is perfectly clear about the difference:

 

https://www.paypal-marketing.co.uk/guides/echeques/

 

Ergo, while the OP does indeed seem to be saying that PayPal's website states that if you cancel a payment within a few hours of making this payment then then no bank transfer will occur, that is simply not what Paypal's website states, as a matter of fact.

 

Specifically, the OP admits that he "took all the steps to cancel", N.B. "cancel", which was never going to work for as long as what he should have done was take all the steps to refund, N.B. "refund", which is astounding in view of his own account, according to which what Paypal actually say is that

 

""If a refund is requested within a few hours of the transaction, then no funds will be deducted from your bank account."

 

I surmise that what probably happened was that the request to "refund", or "cancel" (whichever) was sent in the name of the person who paid, so it is not then so much of a surprise if it failed to work.

 

Otherwise, Paypal is perfectly clear about it: "However, if we have already started processing the payment then funds will be deducted....", which is to point out that if this is what happened there is nothing whatsoever to be said against Paypal.

 

The entirety of the argument rests on the assumption that Paypal did not immediately send the request to the bank, but is it true? Why would it be true, if the system is automatic?

 

I see no reason why Paypal should not have sent the request immediately, and if they did, there is no reason to anything else but applaud their efficiency, and the same goes for the bank.

 

You are trying to blame them for running a swift service, which is ludicrous!

 

[Kraken1]

I think that Perx's analysis is fairly sound tbh. Not sure how you'd frame a claim against paypal and even if you could I doubt it would fly.

[lukechris]

Ok thanks everyone will keep you all updated