Power Sellers Unite

Stockmiser · Joined: 03 Jun 2006 Posts: 1146

So something happened today on ebay that I have never seen.

I get a paypal email notice that a buyer just paid for one of my fixed price items - immediate payment required. I wait a bit and get no matching ebay sales notice. I update my auction management system and it finds no new sales.

I look more closely at the paypal email and note the item#. I go to the item number and there is no corresponding buyer listed (it's a multi-quantity item with over 30 prior sales).

I to directly into paypal expecting to not find an actual purchase - I figure it's some kind of a fake email. But no, there it is. At 7:25 this morning - and the paypal record is referring to the same item. Nothing unusual about the payment record - all the info is there.

But there is more.

At 7:29 the payment is reversed, including the paypal charge. No additional explanation.

WTF?

No harm, no foal...but seriously, WTF?

Many questions...

How does someone make a purchase of an "immediate payment" item, pay for it, and then magically have the entire ebay transaction vanish?

How did the paypal payment get reversed? Was it an internal paypal thing, or did the buyer do it? Is there some kind of "4 minute changed-my-mind" rule I never heard of?

No additional email notices on any of this - just the single standard "payment" notice.

Has anyone ever had anything like that happen to them? Anybody got a theory?

kevinatgrannys · Joined: 03 Jan 2006 Posts: 1799

I had that happen many years ago...and after pestering PayPal for the better part of a morning they said that is was a stolen credit card that the system picked up...so the system reversed everything. I have no idea if this is the same as yours.

hotnana · Joined: 02 Feb 2008 Posts: 875

I've never had that happen with a PP payment but it's happened before with GCO.
Against my better judgment I listed a handful of items this past week on wepay, I sold a vintage lantern on Weds. Being paranoid about using wepay I checked the tracking a minute ago. Tracking shows the customer refused the package and it's on its way back to me!
Now howz them apples! :shock: What am I supposed to do now?

DaLizardsLair · Joined: 15 Feb 2009 Posts: 4782

As already stated, Paypal got a notification that the credit card had been reported as stolen, when they tried to process the payment.

As for the delay in notification from eBay, that's not uncommon. I had emails from eBay not show up until after the buyer had left feedback for the item.

Stockmiser · Joined: 03 Jun 2006 Posts: 1146

I think I didn't get the ebay notice because there never was one - or any kind of ebay transaction that completed. Wtih immediate payment, you go to payment processing prior to completing the sale - and if it fails, there is no ebay transaction at all.

So they made the purchase, went to paypal, and the only real glitch was that paypal put the "bad" payment through at all - and then had to quickly reverse it. The 4 minute delay and the email to me is basically the "glitch" - cause paypal never sent confirmation of payment to ebay (so no transaction), but did send notice to me.

Ebay has been pretty good, at least lately, about notices. Haven't missed one in about a year (out of thousands of transactions). I've always found that paypal is the weak link - they've gone through times when no emails at all were being generated, sometimes for a few days. But even paypal has been reliable - at least lately.

Appreciate all the insights!