Can you un-send stuff you've sent over paypal?

[Nathan Phoenix]

Since their site is utterly impenetrable when it comes to finding help, I figured I'd try this here. I'll say first off that I think this may be a scam.

I won an ebay auction for some 40k models, I used the 'pay now' link from the auction and sent paypal payment. Then I get an ebay message from the guy saying I sent the payment to the wrong address, that the one I sent it to is defunct and he has no access to it. Obviously the fault is on his end since he is the one who had that paypal address in his ebay account information.

In my paypal account history I see that the funds are unclaimed, but I can't figure out how to get them back. I'm certainly not willing to send another duplicate payment until I can recover what I've already paid. I figured asking here would be about 100 times less frustrating then contacting paypal support, which frankly I think should be the sellers responsibility since it was his screw up...

[Lunch of Kong]

Nope.

[Machfive]

Was the "Pay Now" payment done entirely through the eBay and Paypal sites? IE, did you click through on the eBay site, and get sent to paypal with all the info auto-entered, and pay that way, or did you manually set up a payment using information given to you by the seller?

If it's the former, then it is the seller's responsibility to get access to the money, since it was his wrong information that led to you making a payment. He claims he can't get access to the account, which is bullshit, because he need only get in contact with paypal and remit the proper information to regain access to the account; he's just being lazy.

The payment went through, the account obviously exists, ergo it isn't defunct, ergo he can get access to it.

And it's his responsibility to do so, because as far as eBay is concerned, you made your payment already. If you have any issues, contact eBay first, not paypal.

[Chris Nahr]

Sounds like you just discovered why some people refuse to use PayPal.

[Nathan Phoenix]

Machfive - yes, I just went through the pay now links from ebay and all paypal fields were auto populated. And your assessment of responsibility is the same as mine... thanks.

[Slainte Mhath]

If the funds remain unclaimed you can simply cancel the transaction and the funds will be returned to you.

When you log into Paypal, does it show the transaction as "Unclaimed" still? If so, here's how to cancel:

Log in to your PayPal account.
Click the History subtab.
Click Cancel in the Action column of the transaction in question.
Click Cancel Payment.
You have successfully canceled the payment.

I've done this several times in the past for people who had provided an incorrect or "dead" email address in their Paypal account on auctions I won. It refunds the money immediately, and you can then initiate a new transaction (through Paypal, not the auction page) to pay the seller. To protect yourself from claims you never paid, you can tie the auction back to this new payment by choosing "Ebay Auction" as the payment type and then pasting the auction number into the space provided.

Hope that helps.

[Nathan Phoenix]

I saw that in the help area but there's no cancel link

[Moggraider]

Then the payment was sent to an active account.

[Slainte Mhath]

So it says it's "unclaimed" but not showing a cancel action when you look at it in your transaction history? That's weird. It should either be done (i.e. the seller accepted payment) or able to be cancelled if it's still unclaimed.
Unclaimed funds are returned to your account if they remain unclaimed for 30 days, so worst case you'll get your original payment back at that point.

In the meantime, I would put the onus on the seller. It's his fuck up that allowed this to happen, so he needs to take responsibility. If it were me, I'd tell him he can either cancel the whole deal now with no cost or negative feedback to you, or he can wait 30 days and when the original payment is refunded automatically you will pay him the agreed upon price to his new email address.