Yes, PayPal does refund money if a PayPal user gets hacked, but there are lots of requirements and conditions the user must meet to claim a refund or receive support.
PayPal has a detailed refund policy regulating refunds and chargebacks. Currently, the company has three major refund tools in the form of chargebacks, purchase protection and a 180-day refund policy.
The 180-day refund policy applies when the user purchases something via PayPal, but the seller does not ship the products. If fraud is involved, the user can cancel the PayPal payment. The condition for the 180-day refund policy is simple: the transaction in question must have a “Pending” status. The user can go to the “Activity” page and click on the option to cancel the suspicious item. PayPal will check if the payment was made and whether 30 days have passed since the order date. If that requirement is met, PayPal will refund the amount into the user’s account.
However, PayPal usually processes payments quickly. Once the payments are processed, and the user’s account gets scammed/hacked, there is little PayPal can do. In such cases, PayPal usually asks the buyer to get in touch with the seller and request a refund directly. However, the general policy remains the same: Users can open a payment dispute and then request a refund from PayPal, provided that 180 days have not passed since the date of purchase.
The second tool users can try is the PayPal Purchase Protection policy, which PayPal labels as a buyer’s safety guarantee. PayPal provides dispute resolution and fraud protection services and can offer further help if hackers take over an account and start making purchases.
For example, the PayPal Purchase Protection policy says that users are protected if the PayPal account in question has been charged for something that the owner of the account did not buy. The Purchase Protection program also kicks in if the buyer doesn’t get the item that was purchased previously. If scammers take the payment and then send a product that does not conform to the advertisement, PayPal can activate the Purchase Protection policy. This guarantees that the buyer gets full reimbursement, including shipping costs.