Consumer complaint received 2021-06-25
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: TN
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Unauthorized transactions or other transaction problem

Complaint:
This transaction was unauthorized because the service ( PayPal ) charged the account in question when there was no justification for doing so, because the money in question had been returned to PayPal over 2 weeks prior to the event in question. In addition, PayPal engaged in various examples of anti-consumerist behavior. 

Originally, a {$3900.00} payment had been processed in error to an online vendor. Dispite immediately contacting the vendor and PayPal and telling with them ( pleading ) that not only was this an error but also there were vastly insufficient funds in the account and that it would be unsuccessful. Days after I made contact ( and after getting a positive response from the vendor ), PayPal processed the transaction and the account was overdrawn. Over the course of the next 2 weeks, I would become trapped in a nightmare of financial abuse at the hands of PayPal and my bank ( XXXX ). PayPal would go on to repeat the charges a total of 5 times, 3 of which occurred after the initial payment had been returned to them from the vendor and all of which after I had initially contacted them to stop the payment. All of the replies I got were vague copy-pasted renditions of policy, most of which did not apply in this specific situation, and never once did I get an honest reply about something being done to solve the problem. 

When the vendor did return the money, it was less the {$110.00} that the vendor charged in transaction fees, an amount they should have returned due to the nature of the cancelled transaction. The vendor claimed they are contractually allowed to keep these fees under any circumstance, which, aside from making no financial sense, was never articulated to their buyers in any reasonable way ( when they informed me of this policy, after the transaction occurred, they had to direct me to a single page, hidden on their website, that contained a poorly written paragraph intimating as much ). PayPal told me that they would not be honoring their responsibility to protect their customers and would be siding with the vendor in the dispute. 

To add the gravest insult to injury, after denying the dispute to reclaim the {$110.00} in fees, PayPal then went ahead and charged the entire {$3900.00} transaction to my bank account again ( this was the 5th time ), despite the fact that this money had already been refunded and the dispute specifically stipulated it was only in regard to the {$110.00} in fees. Either this is the grossest incompetence perpetrated by a financial institution that should disqualify PayPal from handling money ever again, or it was done on purpose as an attempt to punish their customer for standing up for themselves. Due solely to the repeated overdraft fees incurred by a single transaction continually pushed through by PayPal, I have lost {$180.00} to 5 rapid, repeated overdrafts, all while I was stuck on the side-lines, begging to be treated like a human being. This is before considering the pain and hardship caused by my account being unjustly stuck in the negative and unusable for about half the time elapsed in the past 2 weeks.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation