Refund from Insolvent Company

[CathK_Herdwick]

I have a dispute with an Insolvent company that I'm unable to report through PayPal's Resolution centre. Can anyone help? I purchased some shoes from Hotter Shoes. They no longer have branches to visit, so in order to try on shoes, you have to buy them mail order and then return unwanted ones for a refund. That's an agreed process with the company. I returned several pairs of shoes and have proof that they were delivered back to the company on July 11th. Today I have an email from a new company saying that the old one is in administration, and saying they are unable to offer me a refund for the returned shoes, and offering a credit note instead against future purchases. (Companies House website shows they went into administration on July 18th). The offer of a credit note is not acceptable to me, I need a refund, but there is no way to report this through the PayPal resolution centre, which does not provide anything like "I ordered these items and they are not faulty but are not suitable, and have been returned with the consent of the seller for a refund, and the seller has then refused to refund me even though they have received the returned goods", as an option anywhere. None of the options under returned goods are applicable. So I can't progress beyond that point in reporting the problem. Please help.

[kernowlass]

@CathK_Herdwick 

Paypal covers you for non receipt of item OR item received but not as described.

Anything else is between you and the merchant to sort out, if they have gone into liquidation then you would need to sort it with the receiver or a small claims court action.

[Temp20230807w]

I am in the same position and have tried asking for a refund on PayPal resolution service but probably not the correct place to do it, my purchase was under £100 so unable to claim against my credit card

[gchasapis]

But this is ridiculous. This is only half buyers' protection. If that is the case, then deeper investigation to what PayPal actually stands for is required and further knowledge sharing via social could be done to educate people who think PayPal can really protect them against scammers.

[kernowlass]

@gchasapis 

Paypals customers are both buyers and sellers, they can't give 100% protection to both parties as x1 party is always going to win a claim.

So they give 'some' seller and 'some' buyer protection and its up to us all to read up on it and then risk assess our own transactions.

No different than credit cards, they have terms and conditions as well.

[gchasapis]

"Some" protection implies reasonable assessment of the risk, like you say. If the buyer is not aware of the hidden risk by the seller, he cannot protect himself and obviously this is where he counts on PayPal to protect him. Claiming that PayPal protects it's customers only in case of not receiving an item or not according to description, is really a big issue that PayPal's customers should be aware of and understand the limited value of PayPal service.

[kernowlass]

@gchasapis 

Well most folks are aware of what paypal does and does not protect, thats because they take the 3 minutes to read the policy so that they know the protection that they have.

Paypal isn't your babysitter bailing you out from anything that goes wrong. They give SOME buyer protection and then you use your common sense in who you purchase from. 

[CathK_Herdwick]

I disagree with this. The fact of having terms and conditions did not make credit cards "no different", because their terms and conditions are different, and more favourable to the customer, in trust they have "Chargeback" for transactions of value greater than £100, which does cover insolvency. Also, as we, like many people, are not also sellers, that should be irrelevant to the Ts&Cs that apply to us. So people need to know that by using PayPal payment instead of a credit card, they do lose some of their protection, compared with using a credit card. So in various ways it is incorrect to say "no different than credit cards".

[kernowlass]

@CathK_Herdwick 

Wrong I bought an item years ago and spoke to my card issuer over the phone to see if it would be possible to chargeback and for various reasons they advised not to do so as it may be declined, so I filed with paypal instead and won.

As I said BOTH have terms and conditions, the rest is up to us to check out who we purchase from.

However now I use paypal funded by my credit card, then if I fail with a paypal dispute I have my card as fallback.