PayPal refund oddities

Svack · 14 Aug 2017 at 12:15

Got a bit of an odd situation with PayPal,
I ordered a guitar online on the 3rd of August,
the shop then contacted me on the 4th to say it was out of stock and on back order until September,
they gave me the option of waiting for it to come back in stock or cancelling the order,
Since nowhere else had stock and I wanted that specific one, I decided to wait it out.

On the 11th I found the same guitar in stock on a different site, so I decided to cancel my existing order and get it from the other site, I put in for a refund with the shop and got a message almost instantly from PayPal to say I had been refunded, money was back in my PayPal account, all good so far,
I placed an order at the new shop through PayPal to use the balance (Item was the same price).
Later that evening when checking my bank account I noticed that PayPal had charged my account a second time, but when I checked PayPal It said the money had come from my PayPal balance!?

I plan to give them a ring this afternoon but I was curious if anyone else had similar issues before?

Scrutinize · 14 Aug 2017 at 12:34

PayPal refund will go back to the bank/card you paid with unless it was your pp balance.

If your pp balance is X (refunded money) then the new payment must have defaulted to your payment bank/card. For whatever reason, this has happened.

Otherwise if your pp balance is zero it's simply the delay in the refunded funds appearing in your bank/card.

If you have a pp balance X and bank/card debited, simply withdraw from your pp to your bank/card which will be quicker than messing around and ultimately the same outcome.

Problem solved, no real drama?

Kuros · 14 Aug 2017 at 12:58

Yeah, I've always had paypal refunds go back onto the card. I've also found that it takes some time for paypal to process, so could be a couple of days.

Svack · 14 Aug 2017 at 13:27

Just to be clear, the refunded money did go back into my PayPal account, not my bank account,
then went out again when I placed the second order as I expected it to
It's the second charge to my bank account that's the issue!
Just going to give PayPal a ring and see what they say.

pastymuncher · 14 Aug 2017 at 13:56

There seems to be a overlap between refunds and new payments with Paypal. I ordered a item off Ebay and paid via Paypal but 11 days later nothing had turned up and nothing heard from the seller. I contacted the seller to find out if they had sent it and they replied that they didn't actually have any stock (so why list it and why no contact? :mad:

). I told them to refund me me and once I got the refund message from paypal ordered from another seller. This was a new payment from my bank account though and the refund that was sitting in my Paypal account wasn't touched. I ordered something else the next day and that did use my refund balance from my Paypal account so there may be a 1 day delay before the funds are actually available.

Svack · 14 Aug 2017 at 14:00

Well, after a rather circular conversation with a call center employee who couldn't quite get their head round the problem, or really speak English...
Looks like they have actually refunded the first transaction back to my bank and not my PayPal account,
It just looks like that due to the way it shows the transaction history on the site, apparently it should appear in my account within 5 working days.

Panic over, just caught me off guard to have £629 missing from my bank account

So yes, looks like you guys were right, money is on its way and I am just being impatient