Consumer complaint received 2021-02-10
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Unauthorized transactions or other transaction problem — 
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc (GA)

On XX/XX/XXXX I deposited {$140.00} to my XXXX online account. I did this so I could pay my power bill that was subject to being disconnected. I have a prepaid account with a power company so I had to pay it. No payment arrangement can be made on prepaid services. It usually takes 30 minutes for the money to actually post with XXXX. well, I wait 30 minutes. I go to my online account to check if it has loaded it has but there was {$71.00} taken from the {$140.00} in the account by XXXX XXXX. I do not know who this company is and do not have an account with them. So I contact them immediately via email. They respond that they made a mistake and will happily refund the money back to me. All they needed was my account # and routing #. Since XXXX canceled the debit card on that account, I gave them that info. On XX/XX/XXXX XXXX XXXX emailed me an invoice stating that they issued a refund in the amount of {$68.00} which is not of the amount {$7100.00} they took. However, they said that they issued the refund on XX/XX/XXXX. The same day they took the money. They however did not send refund to XXXX but sent it to PayPal. I was fine with that. Now here is the problem. Paypal has confirmed the money was received and that PayPal has the money, But they refuse to return the money back to me. I have an email from Paypal stating that the money is being held for my protection. So for 2 days, I have been battling with Paypal to return my money they outright refuse. Today I called Paypal Corporate Office and spoke with XXXX he assured me that he would handle the issue and have the money returned to me today. During the conversation to return my money we got disconnected. I called back asked to speak with XXXX and was denied that. XXXX the man I spoke with the second time said that Paypal had not received the refund and refused to help me in any way and then again call was disconnected. Now because my money was taken from my XXXX account and PayPal refuses to return the money and now says they never received it after 2 PayPal reps said they had. My power was shut off and for 2 days me my husband and my special needs son have been in a freezing house with no power and now no food. I am filing this complaint because I did some research into how to resolve this issue, In my search, I learned that since XXXX Paypal has done this exact same thing to thousands of people and never returned the money to many of these people. The amount of money PayPal has stolen from users is in the hundreds of thousands even millions. Now that i am having to take this action. For me, it is no longer about the money but about shutting Paypal.com down forever so they can no longer scam and steal from hard-working Americans. In my search, I also learned that Paypal has had 2 class-action lawsuits against them for doing this very thing to users. They settled and were made to pay out XXXX XXXX dollars just in one judgment against them. Yet now they are doing the very same thing. They can not be allowed to get away with this. Especially when covid-19 has so many family already in financial hardships,