PayPal
Digital sale reversed by buyer bank despite verified buyer

I recently sold a video game account on Craigslist that was delivered electronically. I did not want to jump into giving them the information right away, so I sent them an invoice on PayPal, saying the money was not refundable. They accepted the invoice and paid it. With that, I got an email from PayPal in response to my invoice, stated below (and yes, I changed their real name for obvious reasons):

* is a Verified buyer. Has completed the PayPal Verification process to help confirm their identity, and they have a confirmed bank account, or been approved for a PayPal Plus Credit Card. The PayPal Verification process is a security measure to confirm that a user is the owner of the bank account or credit card they are using in PayPal. Confirming each user's identity helps prevent fraud, such as identity theft, and increases the security of payments in PayPal. This transaction will appear soon in the Recent Activity list on your Account Overview.*

That email seems to tell me that the person paying the invoice is who they say they are, with all this confirming, helping prevent fraud, and increasing security. Awesome. I also took screenshots of the conversation, because I was pretty nervous about selling the account, which is worth $800, and I sold it for $800. So I sent them the information, including the account name, password, email address, and security question. Once someone has the security question, the account is fully compromised.

Not even a day later, on May 10, just after 9 AM, the charge was disputed by the buyer. I immediately contacted PayPal, very upset, but not mean or demanding. I quoted to them what was in the payment email, as I did above, and told them I had a screenshot of the buyer in Messenger saying they were said person and verifying their email address. They wanted me to upload the screenshot, so I did. And then I waited patiently.

Nothing more was heard from them until May 16. At this point they received a notice from the buyer's bank saying that the charges were being reversed on the bank's end. As soon as this happened, PayPal closed the current case, which had no changes whatsoever since I uploaded the screenshots, and opened a new case due to the bank reversing the charges. I again uploaded the screenshots on this dispute, but the case was closed and the charges were reversed on May 18.

It is very frustrating to me, making you feel like the transaction is legitimate and then allowing this. They let the case sit there and do nothing about it, but when the bank reverses the charges, it is case closed. I will also be contacting PayPal today to let them know of my anger and of this post.

I was going to start an online web hosting reseller website, but now it makes me nervous knowing that no business dealing with digital goods is protected.

Company: PayPal
Country: USA
State: Nationwide
Site: paypal.com

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