Is it possible to remove negative Paypal balance after getting scammed?

[breadstickss]

Hello,

a few days ago I bought an item off an online market place and stupidly made the mistake of sending the money via friends and family. You can already tell where this is going… I got scammed. I contacted the seller again and asked if I could get my money back, but they said that I would have to wait until the money from their Paypal balance is transferred to their bank account.

After that, I received an email from the market place themselves, saying that I should no longer interact with the seller because the rose suspicions amongst the platform. I immediately blocked them on the market place and Paypal and did a payment reversal via my bank.

I got my money back from my bank and the seller could no longer contact me. I thought I was done with it, until Paypal opened up a case about this and asked me to explain why I did a payment reversal and also asked the seller to take a stand on this.

After some time, yet again, I made the mistake of canceling the case because I thought nothing more would happen and the case would just close, since I got my money back and the seller did not receive any. But what happened was that I now have a negative balance that I am being asked to pay off.

My question would be if there is any way to either open up the case again or write off my negative balance, since no transaction was really made and I would just be paying it off for nothing, I guess?

I already contacted customer support and they told me they cannot do anything about it since I do not have buyer protection and I should go to the police with this. I thought there is maybe another way out of this?

I know buyer protection is a crucial factor in this case, and I know I should never use friends and family for buying goods again! 😞

Thank you!

[kernowlass]

@breadstickss 

Paypal paid the funds to your seller, when you did a bank reversal you got your funds back but paypal did not as they can't take funds from a seller for a friends/family transaction.

As you made the transaction and negated your buyer protection then paypal want their money back.

[breadstickss]

Thank you for your reply! Does this mean that if I were to pay off my Paypal balance, the money would go to Paypal and not to the seller? This obviously would be a huge loss for me 😞

[breadstickss]

Sorry, I just noticed, this also means that the seller did actually get my money in the end since you said Paypal is not allowed to take funds from their users when a payment reversal is made?

[kernowlass]

@breadstickss 

When you pay someone using friends/family once its marked as SENT on your account then the recipient has received those funds.

As you sent it using the f/f option then you can't open a paypal dispute which you didn't.

So you went to your bank who reversed it for you (you were lucky) normally they don't. 

The reason that your bank may have managed to reverse or cancel the payment is because paypal often credit payments made by bank transfer upfront to the recipient and paypal take the wait for the funds to transfer, this is so there is no delay in the despatch of any items.

So as your bank managed to reverse the payment and the recipient was already paid by paypal then paypal have lost out.

You got your money back, the recipient got their funds which Paypal cannot take back as it was a 'gift' ie friends/family payment but Paypal have lost money.

As you sent the payment as a friends/family payment with 0 buyer protection for an item and against Paypal rules then Paypal want their money back that they fronted to the recipient for you.

[breadstickss]

Ah okay, I understand now. Thank you so much for your explanation! 🙂 Would you think it’s wise to contact the seller again and ask them for the money back so I can write off my balance? Then again, they probably won’t answer me. I’m not willing to pay this out of my own pocket and the police probably won’t help much.

[kernowlass]

@breadstickss 

Sadly police won't be interested as you basically sent a 'gift' of money to someone.

Personally I would pay the negative balance, if not paypal may well limit your account and then sell the debt to a collection agency in your country to recoup their funds.