Great thread this! I've just got round to reading it.
I'm currently barred from paypal, all over an ebay sale I unwittingly made to some fraudster, which is a massive hassel when people want paying through the tossers. I allways get **** off about this when I think about it, so it's about time I had a little rant...
I sold a graphics card about 3 years ago (an overclocked 6800GT with a zalman cooler I had attached) and bidding ended at about £200. It was won by someone in Spain (I think), so I charged him a total of about £230 including registered airmail, posted it off and kept the shipping receipt.
Three whole Months later(!), I got a ridiculously long-winded, pseudo-legal email about paypal/credit card fraud which I first thought was spam, but I logged into my paypal account to check just in-case. My balance had gone from +£140 positive to -£90 negative!! After re-reading the hugely bloated obnoxious email (that seemed to be accusing me of something!), I eventually figured out that someone had bought my graphics card with either a stolen credit card or a stolen paypal account (or both).
The email included a paypal phone number (that took me through to a human being!), so I phoned it and asked WTF was going on. I was asked if I had evidence of delivery, which I did, so they told me "Sorry about this, don't worry about a thing, the funds are just on hold while we investigate. Just fax a copy of your postal receipt over to us and this will all be sorted out soon". So I go through the hassle of finding a fax machine (in this day and age

) and I pay one bloody pound to send it from a shop's fax.
A Month and a half later ..I get another obnoxious bloated email from paypal (that I don't understand for a while) saying that the investigation has been ruled against me (???) blah blah blah. So I contacted the paypal account holder in question and he said "sorry about that, I had my paypal details stolen,
it's been a massive inconvenience, but my credit card insurance company have now retrieved stolen funds for me". I tried that phone number that paypal emailed me and it didn't work anymore. When I emailed paypal about the situation, I just got a standard "our security means a lot to us" auto-reply.
So in the end I'm £230 down because some stupid toss-pot compromised his paypal details (probably by replying to some fishy V1agra/PR0N/P3NIS X-tnder email) and HE GETS HIS MONEY BACK. In my experience, if
I lose something,
I'm the one who's out of pocket. ...Not so for mr-****-little-dick!
Anyway, i refuse to pay the £90 negative balance for as long as I can, but by the time I get the final "bailiffs are on their way" letter from paypal, i just think **** it, and pay them the £90 + interest. Only, by now they have suspended my account due to "extensive late payment of debt" and I can't re-open another one.
I used to leave a balance in paypal, because I stupidly presumed it was "my money" and treated it like a bank account. I can't believe they dipped in and took my money to pay the guy's credit card insurance company. If someone steals money and buys a pack of fags from tescos, tesco's don't have their money seized from them.
Arrrgh! The filthy buggers!
PS: If anyone has got any advice on how I could get a paypal account back, please tell me. Trying to argue my case with them has got me nowhere.