How can he not have received the money? As soon as you make the transaction, he gets what you are charged. Of course, he needs to book it to his account then, but that's not PAYPAL's duty.

The 7 days are related to the buyer's protection. If you made the mistake of paying and then allowing the receiver of the money to cancel the deal, then there are two opportunities: 1) the buyer refunds you since he will have received the money 2) if he is not willing to, you can make use of the buyer protection, which causes the need to wait for a week or more.

In any case, you are not allowed to call the money back via your bank. Probably this will yield prosecution from PAYPAL, I'm afraid.

Mistakes are easily made when using PAYPAL. There is a quite a couple of things to consider or you will depend on the goodwill of the partner of your transaction. PAYPAL strictly follows its rules.

Kai

We must remember that Paypal is not a bank.
They have their own set of rules and they don't have to act according to bank regulations.
When you sign up with Paypal, you more or less allow them to do whatever they please with your money.
- Don't expect Paypal to work everytime.
- Don't expect Paypal to be fair in case of problems.
- Don't use Paypal for personal pickup buys.
- And don't trust them with more money than you can afford to lose.

Martin

I understand the rules completely and I don't really care what happens to my money if I am in error, however this was not the case, the seller categorically did not receive the payment that paypal said they had made, he was not lying I can assure you, paypal was in error and therefore as far as I am concerned the rules don't apply as they did not keep their end of the contract. Yes I know that they are entirely allowed to do whatever they want and yes I knew that when I signed up, but they could accept responsibility. In fact it was the call centre lady who advised me to contact my bank to cancel the debit as it had not reached Paypal account at the time of my complaint, so that I could get back my money taken out in error by them.

Its no excuse to hide behind unfair rules, I appreciate they are not a bank, but they are a financial institution of sorts and make charges so they should abide by a fair code of conduct. I very much doubt that I will be prosecuted by Paypal as I have my bank and the laws of fairtrade on my side, so bring it on.

Dillen has said it right, don't expect any fairness and don't trust them with more money than you can afford to loose. I still don't see why that should be the norm in a fair trading society.

In fact about two weeks ago they made a complete hash up and took two lots of money from my account, again their error, I phoned them and my bank and got an apology email from Paypal and an immediate refund. They most likely did not need to refund me for 7 days but they did an immediate refund 

I don't know why they did that and I also don't know why they did not pay the seller immediately this time, maybe they had some kind of problem with his account, not my problem unless they told me so, but they should have let me know that they were unable to action my transaction.

Remember the transaction was null and void, because of their error,  from the start and they had three days to realise that and still took my money.

What I was hoping for was some sort of kindred "yes that happened to me" and not a defence of Paypal.

Anyway this has made the decision for me now. I will be cancelling my account and more than likely use Gumtree and local pickups in future.

I didn't want to defend PAYPAL. I've had my share of problems with them, too. I just technically don't quite seem to understand yours. As far as I understand it, when you send money via PAYPAL, it's like sending an email - highly unlikely that the recipient doesn't receive anything when you can see the mail sent in your sent mails folder. And this is exactly what you describe if I didn't get you wrong. Kai

Dillen wrote:

We must remember that Paypal is not a bank.
They have their own set of rules and they don't have to act according to bank regulations.
When you sign up with Paypal, you more or less allow them to do whatever they please with your money.
- Don't expect Paypal to work everytime.
- Don't expect Paypal to be fair in case of problems.
- Don't use Paypal for personal pickup buys.
- And don't trust them with more money than you can afford to lose.

Martin

agree 100%

I don't trust paypal, they're just an arbitrary private company. They are only good at marketing like ebay, but they are not here to help you as a customer. They just want your money. The banks at least don't make a secret out of the fact that they want your money. ;-)

No Kai, you didn't get me wrong, exactly what I said happened, Paypal told me via email that the seller had the payment and closed the transaction. The seller received no such payment from paypal, so could not transfer anything to his bank account,  that is why I let him cancel the transaction the next day, as he really was quite desperate for the money. I always get an immediate payment via paypal when selling and my payments always get received by the seller immediately when buying, in fact I get lots of good feedback for my immediate payments within a minute of the auction closing. I may be guilty of an overreaction here, as I could have actually waited the 7 days for them to return my money as I am not in need of it, but there is a principle here. I am being penalised for an error on the part of paypal and they get my money for 7 days earning them interest.

I didn't cough up the money and then have a change of heart they just didn't put it in the other guys account and when I phoned they said there was absolutely no problems at my end the payment was processed as normal but they would not discuss with me why they failed to pass the payment on or why 4 days later the took the 429 pounds from my account after cancelling, or why even though they gave me an immediate refund two weeks ago on an error, they would not do the same today? . This has never happened to me or the seller before and I have been with paypal for over 15 years. However if Paypal are allowed to make the rules and don't have to follow them themselves, I suppose I should just stop whining and suck it up it, as you and Dillen have said, that's what I have signed up for and this is the accepted terms and conditions.

Just plain bad and inflexible customer service

Ok, I see. This really is rather unusual. However, usually PAYPAL is reliable in refunding after these couple of days. At least in my experience. Pretty annoying anyways...

Some sellers have not verified thier account, and paypal puts preventative measures in to make sure there is nothing dodgy going on. 

You made payment, it must not have cleared at sellers end, you canceled the sale and getting a refund, paypal takes a few days to clear your funds from your bank, then it takes a few days to put it back. It seems quite normal to me?

was the seller a new user?

No The Seller has been a Paypal customer for many years. Buried within my posts you will find that i said he was very surprised that he did not get my payment, as it had never happened before, and not to me either.

So its not perfectly normal. Anyway I am over it now, my bank managed to get back my payment the same day and Paypal have not kicked up any fuss about it, presumably because they know they were in the wrong.

Its good for Paypal I suppose, for them to have some posts defending them as well as posts in complaint.

If they don't strike me off for standing up to them, I will only pay cash on collection in future, unless i am buying small, low value items. I am not fussed either way really.