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Dealing with phishers, paypal charge backs

Sitebee

UFO Hunter
NLC
I could do with some advice here please.

About 10 days ago we received a paid signup from a phisher who uploaded a PayPal phishing script to his allocated webspace. We caught the PayPal phishing script within a matter of hours, after our server provider notified us. I suspended the account, and notified the user who tried blame it on someone else.

Digging a little deeper I noticed the user was hiding behind a proxy, possibly a VPN. Upon entering his PayPal email into Google search it came back with similar cases as to what he has done with us with PayPal phishing scripts uploaded on other web hosts.

The annoying thing is that he`s opened a dispute claim with PayPal.

Within the PayPal dispute I`ve provided an explanation and even pointed them in the direction of the phisher PayPal email address being mentioned in phishing attacks against their own services.

PayPal are responding with robot generic answers and not even allowing me to fully fight my case.

On one of the responses, PayPal will only allow 3 responses: 1, full refund 2, prove item was sent, 3, prove refund was issued in another way.

This is does`nt help me one bit at all, I chose the 2nd option to try and fight my further.

I`m sure what I have just explained has happened to many of hosting providers on these forums, hopefully some advice to help me fight my corner.

I really don`t understand PayPal at times, I`m trying to help them by reporting a phisher, yet they throw it back in my face and deduct money from my PayPal balance, it was only $12 but that`s besides the point.
 
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Oh...where to begin.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we were close to dropping PayPal entirely at several points, due to exactly this nonsense. We haven't won a single PayPal dispute ever. We haven't had many either, but of the ones we have had, there is absolutely no way they should have ruled against us. I know you're in the UK, but you don't want to use those automated forms. They are handled by people outside of the US (no offense to people outside of the US), in the Philippines or India or wherever PayPal outsources those staff, and I don't believe they actually look at the claims. You always want to call and talk to somebody, because you will always get a real person in their US call center, and they will legitimately work with you. They will explain everything to you, and maybe even give you a fighting chance.

You have to remember though...businesses are likely to accept PayPay regardless, because of how big they are, and they know this. They might rule against you, but chances are you're not going to drop them. Rulings against a customer, however, and PayPal very likely might have lost that person, because they have other means of paying their bills. Most individuals don't need PayPal. So it's a system that's designed to screw you in the first place.

It's not just PayPal either. We recently lost 2 reasonably large chargebacks (total of about $600) with our merchant account. We fought it for months, submitted literally 50 pages of documentation. But the client said the magic word (I'm not going to explain here because I don't want folks picking up on the surefire way of winning these disputes, PM if you want to know more), and we were finished. Fighting it any further would have involved using our bank's attorney, at the rate of $500/hour, with a $1200 upfront deposit. They wouldn't even let us use our own. No thanks...we'll take the $600 loss. And this was not a dissatisfied client. This was a spammer who signed up for dozens of VPSs, and a VPS reseller account, and started immediately sending spam. We caught them within about 10 minutes.

All this BS has also led us to pretty much completely get rid of yearly anything on our products. People were using us for an entire year and then filing chargebacks or PayPal disputes. If we're out a month, it's not that big of a deal. So if you want a yearly plan, you basically have to be a good client already, and give us a quick chat through the ticket system.

So at the end of the day, enjoy the $12 loss. Go out and have a high-end margarita and make it a $22 loss (ha!), and just chalk it up to the cost of doing business. Hate to say, but you're just screwed.
 
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Now I don't know if this is still true but some time back when I was doing hosting the basic idea behind paypals dispute system was the customer can not dispute and win on a "non-tangable" item (Hosting)

So I simply replied with "The customer has been provided with a virtual service (Hosting) to the best of my ability and is not covered under dispute. The service has been provided and is non-tangable thus I can not provide any tracking number. Please see attached agreement"

I won 4 cases by using this method

http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/showthread.php?2214124-I-won-the-paypal-dispute!

take a look at that thread (sad the images no longer work) and you will see some of what I am talking about

Now that being said I have been out of the game for a while and paypals policy may have changed greatly since then but its worth a shot for a larger amount.
 
I have had only one Paypal dispute and I won that case it was against a spammer. What I did for my response was create a video that proved he had only signed up for the sole reason to send unsolicited emails.
 
They definitely don't offer seller protection for non-tangible goods/services anymore.

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/security/seller-protection-learn-more

You see that but if you also look into it further

"13.3 Ineligible Items. PayPal Purchase Protection only applies to PayPal payments for certain tangible, physical goods. Payments for the following are not eligible for reimbursement under PayPal Purchase Protection:

Intangible items, including Digital Goods
Services
Real estate, including residential property
Businesses
Vehicles, including motor vehicles, motorcycles, caravans, aircraft and boats
Custom-made items
Travel tickets, including airline flight tickets
Items prohibited by the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy
Items which you collect in person or arrange to be collected on your behalf, including items bought through In-Store Checkout at the retail point of sale
Items that violate eBay’s Prohibited or Restricted Items Policy
Industrial machinery used in manufacturing
Items equivalent to cash, including prepaid or gift cards
PayPal Direct Payments
Virtual Terminal Payments
Personal Payments

Even if your payment is not eligible for PayPal Purchase Protection, you can file a Dispute and try to resolve the issue directly with the Seller; however, PayPal will generally not find in your favor if you escalate a Dispute to a Claim for an item which is not eligible for PayPal Purchase Protection."
 
Even if your payment is not eligible for PayPal Purchase Protection, you can file a Dispute and try to resolve the issue directly with the Seller; however, PayPal will generally not find in your favor if you escalate a Dispute to a Claim for an item which is not eligible for PayPal Purchase Protection."

This is true. Basically, nobody is protected. Unfortunately, I have never won a single claim using that method. All they have to say is that their PayPal account was compromised, or they didn't make the purchase, and you're finished as a seller. The protection or lack thereof doesn't matter. Doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. Same thing if you use your credit card through PayPal (which if I use PayPal is something I do ALL the time). You file a dispute through your credit card company and PayPal is required to comply with their decision.
 
This is true but its always worth a shot! Whats the worst thing that can happen? Your out the money anyway? :p

I personally dont like paypal but its so large that there is not really a choice but to have it
 
This is true. Basically, nobody is protected. Unfortunately, I have never won a single claim using that method. All they have to say is that their PayPal account was compromised, or they didn't make the purchase, and you're finished as a seller. The protection or lack thereof doesn't matter. Doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. Same thing if you use your credit card through PayPal (which if I use PayPal is something I do ALL the time). You file a dispute through your credit card company and PayPal is required to comply with their decision.

In my case that is were the spammer made his mistake. He had opened the dispute saying we did not keep our service agreement. If he has just disputed saying his account had been compromised, for sure would have been a different story.
 
I thought I would reply back on this, I won the dispute.

Ah, great news well done. Was just reading the whole thread and I am not looking forward to those days where I will start to get disputes (because it will happen, it happens to everyone). But I am glad you won.
 
You should call them and get this sorted. Their email support is the worst as it has all pre-made content ready to shoot at us.
 
You're only 6 months late to the party...

tard.gif
 
Take care of few things like ordering IP and the country entered at paypal as billing country or paypal accoutn holder country. If they do not match, simply cancel the order. You can use maxmind fraud protection api to determine the fraud score.
 
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