PayPal handed down its decision that she DOES have to send the dolls back to me at her expense, so I will be getting the TWO dolls she claims arrived back. I am hoping beyond hope that she packs them as well as I had, and that she has a non-smoking and clean home, etc. because dolls with odors don’t sell well. I have to absorb the value of the missing doll and the $20 I contributed to her shipping, plus PayPal’s fees. It leaves me out almost $100 with no help from PayPal what-so-ever. When I finally got a real person on the phone, I was told that their buyer experience is paramount and that they don’t offer any sort of seller protection in cases where the buyer claims “not as described” even though the dolls that made it there clearly are as described and USPS was at fault for the damaged box. Moral of the story…require insurance and pay out of pocket for it if the buyer refuses to pay for it!!

My account was in a negative status after they put the buyer’s payment on hold, so I transferred in the $181 to cover it.  Now I’m back at zero but PayPal won’t let me use PayPal shipping or pay for any transactions without adding funds to my account via bank transfer, even though I’m still set up for instant transfers via my two debit cards.  I was told on the phone that there were no account restrictions and that there would be no punitive actions against me, other than having to accept a return that will be short about $80 in value.

I am starting to feel even more distrusting of PayPal, so I tried to delete my debit cards and checking accounts and the system would only let me delete two of the four.

I will no longer be using a PayPal account and will be closing my account as soon as I receive the returned dolls in satisfactory condition.  It’s interesting to note that is IS possible to purchase things using PayPal checkout without creating an account, and that’s what we will do from now on, when it’s our only option of paying for an online purchase, as it was with the tickets I recently purchased for our local Thanksliving celebration.  It’s still scary to give PayPal any personal information considering the way they conduct themselves, but we will using a low-limit credit card reserved for online purchases and sketchy situations.