There's a $1,365 charge on Hank Hu's PayPal account. Someone ordered a watch from Tag Heuer and shipped it to another state. Why won't PayPal help him?
Q: Someone made an unauthorized purchase of $1,365 using my PayPal email address. I have filed claims three times, and the first two times they claimed this transaction was "consistent with previous activity." The third time the customer service agent said they would escalate this, but I never saw confirmation that a new claim was filed.
PayPal refuses to acknowledge that this purchase was fraudulent. But it was. Someone bought something on the Tag Heuer website and shipped it to Glendale, Ariz. I live in San Jose and have never been to Arizona.
I've been delinquent on my mortgage payment this month because this was such a large amount. I just want my money back. Can you help me? -- Hank Hu, San Jose
A: PayPal should have removed the charge the moment you flagged it. The company promises to "monitor every transaction 24/7" to prevent fraud, email phishing and identity theft, according to the company. Surely, buying a luxury watch on the Tag Heuer site and having it sent to an out-of-state address would have raised some red flags.
Maybe, maybe not. Look, for all PayPal knows, you might have sent a new watch to a special someone in Glendale. The artificial intelligence PayPal uses to flag potentially fraudulent purchases can't read your mind -- at least, not yet. But still, it might have given you a heads-up that it was problematic.
I reviewed the paper trail of correspondence between you and PayPal. The company has the audacity to claim this purchase was "consistent with previous activity." I haven't reviewed your previous activity, but I'm skeptical that you were buying luxury watches from Tag Heuer if you're struggling to pay your mortgage.
It looks like you were stuck in an endless loop with PayPal. It's hard to know where AI ended and a human agent began working on your case. But at some point, someone who appeared to be human acknowledged that you had a case under PayPal's Buyer & Fraud Protection guarantee, and offered to escalate your dispute. That person may have handed it off to an AI again, where it languished.
I publish the names, numbers and email addresses of the PayPal customer service executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. A brief, polite email to one of them might have gotten another human involved and led to a resolution of your case.
The bigger question is: How did someone access your PayPal account and make these charges? I would immediately change your password to prevent another fraudulent charge. You say you have two-factor authentication enabled, which makes this case even more baffling.
And by the way, if you ever get an email from PayPal asking you to sign into your account, don't follow the link from the email. Go directly to the site to sign in. I've almost been fooled by one of the PayPal scams making the rounds, and if it almost happened to me, it could probably happen to anyone.
I contacted PayPal on your behalf. It reviewed your case (this time by a human) and agreed that your purchase was not consistent with your previous activity and was covered under its fraud protection guarantee.
"We determined that the transaction was conducted on a third-party website and the provided delivery address was a web gift address," a representative told you in an email. "Considering that there have been no previous claims or disputes of abusive behavior, we accepted the claim and issued a full refund to you."
Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy (https://elliottadvocacy.org), a nonprofit organization that helps consumers solve their problems. Email him at chris@elliott.org or get help by contacting him at https://elliottadvocacy.org/help/