Consumer complaint received 2023-04-15
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: OH
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
I was speaking with someone who I thought was an employee for a home improvement company. He agreed to come to my home to perform work on XXXX  XX/XX/2023 in the morning, XXXX. As soon as I sent the customer the requested deposit of US {$150.00} over PayPal they told me immediately after the transaction was complete that he was not going to come and perform the work that we agreed upon at our agreed time is XXXX XXXXXXXX eastern standard time. I asked them why and they told me that I made the payment wrong. I followed his instructions exactly and I chose the payment for friends and family as they specifically requested. Thinking back on it I was being really stupid because I really shouldve put it in as goods and services and questioned why they were telling me to do it this way. I asked this fraudulent criminal why they were doing this and why they immediately decided that they were not going to come and perform the work that they said they were going to keep our agreement and come and do the work that I was giving them a deposit for immediately after the deposit payment was confirmed. He told me that he no longer had time this morning and he asked me if I was able to meet him in the evening. Earlier on in our conversation, I explain to him that I was going out of town for two days this afternoon so he already knew explicitly that he wasnt going to be able to come and assist me with this work because we already talked about it in great detail. I explained that he had to come by XXXX XXXX in the morning so that we had time to get the work done. He told me that he completely understood and then he started to pressure me about hurrying through the payment process and an almost pushy and forceful way that I shouldve caught onto as being irregular and inappropriate since I was just trying to send him money and set up my PayPal correctly. Before I even went to use PayPal, he had me try and use XXXX, which did not work.The XXXX  account that he had me try to use was his sisters. The link for this XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX. After the payment would not successfully process while he was pushing me through it quickly in a hurried manner that seemed rather inappropriate telling me that her sister had to leave within XXXX minutes, he suddenly said dont use that lets use PayPal XXXX I had to reinstall PayPal on my new XXXX and link my bank cards to it so it was going to take a little while, but he kept pushing me a long like I was wrong and I shouldve caught on that he was being inappropriate and irregular. The XXXX  transaction was blocked somehow, and retrospectively thinking I believe it might have been a fraud protection that was kicked off. I asked him if he could reverse the transaction from PayPal after he told me he wasnt going to come and perform the work and he said that he could not refund the money at that time because he had not yet received the payment and his PayPal and he told me that he would assuredly send me back the money as soon as he could once it went through on XXXX XXXX. I asked him if he was deciding that he wasnt going to actually come and perform the work why he didnt stop me from trying for 10 minutes to set up. My PayPal line pushed me along and made me nervous.? He told me that he just didnt have time anymore and that there was no point in arguing with me anymore because there was nothing that could be done. When I told him that I was going to file a dispute, he started trying to talk me out of it, saying that it would take longer for me to get my money back, he tried to talk me out of filing a dispute for about three minutes and finally I said that I didnt wan na talk to him anymore and I hung up. Again, thinking back retrospectively he didnt want me to file a dispute. He just wanted to make sure that the payment went through to him so that he could take the money without anyone saying anything. I sent him a request through the complaint link, asking him to please refund my money on the PayPal app link for disputes, explaining that I would like to be refunded because he told me that he was not going to come and perform the work that we had agreed-upon as soon as he got the payment confirmed, but still not received. He has not responded. Also, I discovered that his name on his PayPal account was not the same as the name that he gave me when he told me that he was a home improvement employee.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief