Endless Paradigm

Definitely a W.T.F. moment...

Quote:Yesterday on Regretsy, Erica, a fan of the site, emailed in her own personal problems with PayPal that echoes Winchell’s “oh my god what are they thinking” experience with the financial giant.

Erica was in the process of selling an antique violin that predated World War II, to a buyer in Canada for $2,500. But when the buyer received the violin, they disputed the label on the instrument. Erica asserts that this is a common thing in the world of antique instruments — and a quick Google search can verify that it is indeed commonplace. On top of that, she also confirmed that it was appraised and verified by a legitimate luthier.

The buyer wanted a refund, which Erica was willing to provide, but then PayPal got involved. In order to issue a refund, PayPal demanded that the violin be destroyed, as the company had somehow decided that the instrument was counterfeit–despite any actual investigation into the piece itself.

The buyer then sent Erica a picture (above) of the destroyed instrument. She contacted PayPal, who strongly defended its actions. In the Terms of Service for PayPal, there is a line that reads “PayPal may also require you to destroy the item and provide evidence of its destruction.”

In many ways, this may seem like a justifiable move on PayPal’s part to protect its customers, at least until you start to think about it. First, PayPal is in no way a legitimate source for the authentication of antique violins, especially since the bulk of its interaction was handled by phone and email.

Second, for some reason PayPal immediately seemed to side with the buyer. From an impartial point of view, there is no particular reason to assume the buyer is telling the truth while the seller is not. Perhaps the PayPal reps just trust Canadians.

Third, even if this were a scam there were better ways to handle it, none of which include PayPal anointing itself as the arbiter of a product very few people in the world are experts on. Now, without actually having the shattered violin analyzed by an expert, there is no way to confirm that Erica is telling the truth. But even if she was trying to sell a counterfeit, it was not PayPal’s place to decide that, especially without concrete evidence.

If Erica is telling the truth, thanks to PayPal she is now out a $2,500 violin, and a rare antique has been destroyed. All because of a policy that had no business being cited in this situation.

PayPal has said that it is investigating the matter.

Source: Digital Trends

I smell a lawsuit coming...

yo double you tee eff?

D; WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!

Ah Paypal, screwing you over everyday in many ways!

.....still waiting for them to put money that they took from my checking account a few years ago. They said it was part of a lawsuit with my bank, me along with many other people are still waiting but it's three years later. I doubt that money will ever return, and for that matter why Paypal decided to take the money out without my permission in the first place is beyond me. Not to mention the fact that my bank gave the approval for the transaction. I'm just thankful that I put a halt to it before anything else was taken out, I don't work for a living to have my money taken from me by people that have no business taking it.

I no longer use Paypal, as for my bank....well as it turns out, every other bank runs through my bank's system. So no matter what I have to deal with them and cannot escape them. I know, it's way off topic but Paypal kind of rubs me the wrong way and when I read a story of someone else being screwed over by them it brings up those memories.

I use paypal as my ebay middleman, and that's about it except a few online purchases on other websites (mainly steam) They never hold any money for me (except ebay winnings that are moved strait out) and that's the way i'd like to keep it, it's a shame google checkout has never taken off, I'd much prefer to use that

I thought the title states that the Paypal was the one who ordered a violin. Meh, they're scumbags anyway.

Yeah, never use PayPal for large transactions of any kind.

Not surprised about the story - have heard a lot of PayPal related horror stories from sellers (chargebacks and the like).

At least on the other hand, the buyer is sort of protected. After reading this Ill bet that if something never arrived or you did recieve a counterfeit, at least youll probably be able to rely on paypal to get your money back.

If I were Erica I would be so angry
To make things worse they mailed it back to her to rub it in her face. )':

Did the buyer even go to a luthier to check whether the instrument was genuine? Now I know for sure I will never use PayPal.