Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it
PayPal is the pinnacle of stupidity. I&#x27;ve sold the same digital product many thousand times, and this has happened multiple times:<p>Some customers decides to try to get it for free by paying and then creating a PayPal claim by lying that someone else made the purchases or that it was not delivered. And this usually works, and people tell others, so more people abuse it.<p>Basically every single time someone tries to commit &quot;friendly fraud&quot; as the card networks calls and it(customer tries to scam seller by lying), there are a handful of transactions from one person. PayPal usually rules 90 % of the cases in favor of the buyer.<p>However, there can be 20 purchases during just a couple of hours from one person and card, and somehow PayPal is certain that purchase 6 and 10 was legit, while the rest was someone who used the card without permission. That seems probable, right? Even on a account with a flawless record for over 10 years I&#x27;ve had this happen so many times. Usually when this happens I have to spend hours on this and contact PayPal by phone to get the money back. Usually the customer gets the money too, for some absurd reason.<p>PayPal&#x27;s fraud system is absolutely garbage, and so is the standard email support. Contacting account managers at least gives you what seems to be a human response.<p>I too got my PayPal account limited in 2012 as a result of a scammer who abused PayPal disputes.<p>The solution is super simple: make buyers pay to create PayPal claims and use the money to have real people quickly look over the cases. This is similar to how cases are handled for card networks.<p>Was the claim legit? Money back, including the claim fee. The merchant has to pay a fee, same way as today.<p>Was the claim not legit? Basically free money for PayPal, and some should probably be shared with the merchant for helping out with solving the fake claim.<p>At least in europe the scams on PayPal has mostly shifted from &quot;unauthorized use&quot; to &quot;not delivered&quot; as a result of strong consumer authentication.