Consumer complaint received 2019-11-05
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: TX
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Unauthorized transactions or other transaction problem

Complaint:
There are two cases that have come up recently involving Paypal that has led me to believe that the company is unconcerned about consumers. Their incoherent rules and unwillingness to investigate suspicious behavior further ends up helping scammers rather than deter them. There is a reason scammers love to use Paypal to pull off their scams - they know they can use the company 's rules and general uncaring attitude against their victims. 

I have been the victim of two scams over the last year. In each case, I filed a complaint with Paypal ( see details below ). In both cases, Paypal ended up favoring the scammers. 

Paypal Case XXXX ( XX/XX/XXXX ) The scammer is posing on XXXX as a seller of sports tickets. The scammer claimed that they had tickets available for an event. I corresponded with the scammer via text messages. The scammer shared their Paypal e-mail address and agreed to send over the tickets once payment was received. As soon as I made the payment of {$150.00}, they stopped responding to my messages. Once I realized I had been victimized, I tried to stop the payment by claiming it was an unauthorized payment. Unfortunately, Paypal stated that because the payment was sent as a personal payment, they couldn't help at all. On top of that, they said that they investigated the IP addresses, which showed that I had made the original payment. They never bothered to investigate the scammer 's IP address. I feel that a consumer can very quickly find out once they have been scammed. Thus, by not allowing a user to cancel a transaction within minutes, it is allowing scammers to pull off these scams. 

Paypal XXXX ( XX/XX/XXXX ) This is a scammer posing on XXXX who wants to buy tickets. In this particular instance, I had posted two tickets for a sports event. The scammer made contact with me and purchased the tickets for {$210.00}. The scammer paid via Paypal, received the tickets, and there is proof ( from XXXX ) that the tickets were used at the event. A few days after the event was finished, the buyer claimed the Paypal transfer was unauthorized. They got their bank involved and were able to get their money back. The scammer refused to reply to my messages, pick up my phone call, or respond at the e-mail address that was used to receive the tickets and make the payment. In this case, Paypal refused to help me once again and simply took the money out of my account. 

As you can see from the above, Paypal is being abused by scammers to perpetuate their crimes. I know that consumers have to be careful, but Paypal is completely shunning their responsibilities as a financial institution. Paypal prides itself on being a company that values security and protects buyers/sellers. However, this is simply lip service. They care only about their bottom line. They are just as guilty as the scammers out there because Paypal provides them with an easy avenue to get money from their victims.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief