Case2

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Vladimir the criminal.

This is a sad case, because it made me loosing a very valuable customer, who bought from me even before Paypal, using Western Union Postal Checks.

We had a payment from Russia, and for reasons, created by Paypal themself, the buyer had to split the payment in two. So that's what he did. It means we had two partial payments for the same package. Theoretically he could have requested one of the payments back, because in Paypal each payment must have it's own shipment. But this person I knew him since 20 years, and he is totally trustworthy.

Both his payments had the regular 'ok you can send the goods now' green mark on it. So I send it the same day.

The next day, both incoming payments were taken out of my account again, and I received an email that Vladimir was suspected of money laundry, which is an illegal activity.

Now that is curious, because I know him since years, and he is a totally down to earth. A normal engineer with a day time job, and we are on the phone sometimes to talk about triodes, electrical circuits, and these kind of things.

Now just look at the of what Paypal is doing. They accuse my customer about illegal activities, and playing police and judge at the same time, they take Vladimir's money away. But hold on.... Vladimir's money? No they took MY money, because Paypal tells me 'ok you can send the goods now'. So you can see the sharp contradiction between what Paypal say, and what they do.

For fake reasons, both my business partner and myself get involved into these accusations. The reasons were as fake as they could be, and we learned soon why. Paypal probably did not expect good communication between Vladimir and me! We just exchanged the screen shots, and we were both surprized and angry about we saw Paypal doing.

The whole story Paypal tried to tell us, was a complete FAKE story. Vladimir was mad as hell for being accused of possible criminal activities. Most all he was upset because Paypal tells him nothing about that, but tells me so. And yes, I have filed the screen shots, and send that to Vladimir. More than that, Paypal confiscated the money, which by their own rules is mine, after shipment. To make it extra disturbing, they took it via my credit card, because my Paypal account didn't have that much money on it any more. And the Credit Card company took it out of my bank account, and made my bank account negative!

So far for their "sellers protection program" which I learned at that moment, is worth nothing.

Let me repeat, this whole thing was based on a fake story, which Paypal invented, as we will see later.

So what to do now... The usual reaction of people is of course to become angry, and call Paypal first thing in the morning. You come in a waiting loop, and then get connected to some student who says: 'Hello, this is Michelle, how can I help you', and not help you down the drain. Instead of that, I just called Vladimir, since I know him anyway.

And then we had the truth coming! Vladimir said, he could not access his Paypal account any more. He did not know what was going on, and he also was not informed that his payment was confiscated by Paypal. He told me he was in a dispute with Paypal. They wanted a copy of his electricity bill. Which request he found so crazy, he refused it.

Ha ha! Now we are getting closer. I work a bit longer with Paypal myself, and I remember I had to give my electricity bill also, and initially I had the same reaction as Vladimir. And yes the same thing happened. They also blocked my account. That was 10 years ago, and I realized, Paypal perhaps told my customers the same story about ny 'so called' illegal activities.

Well other than Vladimir, when that happened, I had money on my Paypal account, and I had no other choice as to show my electricity bill to them. Which indeed solved the problem that same day.

Sooooo.... I advised Vladimir, to give Paypal a copy of his electricity bill, and indeed that solved the problem.

So now, Vladimir was no longer a suspected criminal, and Paypal gave me his money one week later. Still my bank account became negative because of this Pirate action, and it cost me 13% interest.

So how about the COST FOR THAT ?

I payed 13% interest, only because Vladimir refused to show his electricity bill to Paypal. Well, I decided NOT to waste my time with Paypal. because they have their own version of ethics anyway. Even so, they deleted the complete history of this case from my Paypal history. I think that is extremely illegal, because now I have payments from my Credit Card which do NOT match my paypal payments. I am so glad I made screen shots of it!

Instead of wasting my time with Paypal, I decided to waste my time writing this text here. So now at least everybody can see it.

MY ISSUES WITH THIS ARE MANY:

When Paypal says: 'All is ok. You can send the goods now' they EXPECTED me to do this, and so I did. This is what they WANTED TO HAPPEN. If they would have said: Take care! This man is doing illegally money laundry, and we block his payments! So don't send the goods! Then of course I would not have shipped. But look what they do, they tell me to ship the goods. And then take the money back. The purpose if this can only be that I put stress on Vladimir.
Making false accusations, is plain illegal, but Paypal is just doing so. In reality they took the opportunity of this larger payment, to put Vladimir in the cooking pot and boil him. Only thing is, the cooking pot is me. My issue with Paypal is not, they want a copy of his electricity bill, since that is none of my business. My issue is, they put me in front of their wagon as their donkey, and let me ship without payment - and the problem is, they do so KNOWINGLY.
Such things damage customer relations. I would not blame this person if it was the last time he bought something from me.
Paypal did not treat my customer's personal information confidential. This is absolutely disgusting. They just inform third parties about possible illegal activities by email, which activity never took place, and the whole situation was one big fake by Paypal.
The communication was quickly deleted from the Paypal site, after the 'case' was solved, but I have screen shots of each an every move they made. Particularly the fact that paypal instantaniously deleted the communication with ME about this, after Vladimir gave them his electricity bill, leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
Moreover, when Vladimir would have done, as he originally intended: which was NOT give them his electricity bill, then what would Paypal have done with my money?

p.s. I revised it here with this text, now six years later, and yes it was indeed the last time Vladimir bought something from me. Paypal killed our excellent business relation. So, SHAME on you, Paypal. SHAME!

Disclaimer: The above texts is only my personal opinion about an issue that I did not like.