A WILD RIDE ON A TRANSACTION WITH HERITAGE AND PAYPALl!!!

oreville

This is unbelievable!!!!

First of all, I must state that Heritage has been great during the entire transaction and paypal is screwing things up!!!!

Heritage is totally baffled by this as much as we are and Peggy has been quite pleasant while Heritage is currently out over $4000!

Here goes:
My wife buys two lovely California Fractionals in her account with Heritage Auctions and decided for once to pay via paypal in the amount of over $4000 using her American Express card since Heritage does not accept AmEx directly.

So payment was made late Friday 26th of October and Heritage ships on Monday, the 29th (note that the 27th and 28th were weekend days).

The express mail package arrived on Tuesday the 30th as expected and announce by Heritage in their email to my wife but due to working late neither of us could pick the package up. This morning at 11AM, I picked up the package and later in the day my wife got a strange email and telephone from Heritage stating the following:

Orevilla,

We received notification from Paypal that your payment was retracted because of non delivery of your package. Your package was shipped by USPS (Tracking # EA48 XXXX XXXU S) on 10/29/07, USPS attempted delivery at 8:03 am on 10/31/07. They show they notified you of their first attempt and they will make a second attempt to deliver your package. If the second attempt is unsuccessful they will hold the package for five days before returning the item. If you have any questions or concerns please contact me.

When you get a moment please contact paypal and let them know this has been resolved so payment can be re-issued.

Thanks,


Peggy XXXX

Collection Manager
Heritage Auction Galleries
3500 Maple Avenue, 17th Floor
Dallas, TX. 75219-3941

(800) 872 6467 Ext xxx
(214) 780 5508 - Direct Line
(214) 443 8408 - Fax


We immediately called and emailed Peggy that the package was picked up at 11AM this morning in good order and that we did not file any complaint with paypal. We verified that my wife's credit card never heard from paypal regarding any problems after being charged the full amount so that in effect, paypal was now holding the monies that belonged to Heritage!!

Both my wife, myself and Heritage were baffled at the turn of events.

The usps.com web site still does not show the package was picked up as of 5pm on their website (I believe their website is only updated once a day) yet it was picked up at 11AM.

Furthermore, my wife and I called paypal and dealt with a gentleman who said there was nothing he could do until the usps website was updated tomorrow. Furthermore, going on the website of paypal did not help since paypal was the one that initiated the investigation so we could not notify paypal on their website that the transaction went fine or bad or whatever!

Paypal on our customer site stated the following:

<<<Paypal is constantly monitoring site activity and reviewing activity.

This payment has been selected for review and we have opened an investigation.>>>>

What is going on with paypal????????????

Is this even legal???????????????????

notwilight

Cancel the payment and initiate a new payment for goods with no strings attached and Heritage will have their money tomrorrow morning. --Jerry

RYK

As soon as you told us your wife ordered the coins, I no longer believed the rest of the fantasy.

notwilight

<< <i>As soon as you told us your wife ordered the coins, I no longer believed the rest of the fantasy. >>



Good point. I've heard of such fine examples of the female homo sapiens but I've yet to observe one. --Jerry

Russ

It's a randomly selected audit situation, likely based on the size of the transaction. It will be resolved once the item is shown as delivered.

Russ, NCNE

drwstr123

"We received notification from Paypal that your payment was retracted because of non delivery of your package. Your package was shipped by USPS (Tracking # EA48 XXXX XXXU S) on 10/29/07, USPS attempted delivery at 8:03 am on 10/31/07. They show they notified you of their first attempt and they will make a second attempt to deliver your package. If the second attempt is unsuccessful they will hold the package for five days before returning the item."
That's SOP for Xpress handling by the USPS. Nothing that PayPal had any right to interfere with. Where do they have the option to recind your payment without you in the mix?

Bubblehead

From someone who seldom says anthing, I gotta just say that this
is one helluva scary situation!

oreville

Heritage got the USPS confirmation that the express mail package was picked up by us yesterday.

Still, paypal has done nothing to restore the funds to Heritage Auctions as of yet.

Perhaps paypal being on PDT/PST time is delaying things an extra three hours?

If I were Heritage, I would be furious at paypal!

The waste of man hours.

Longacre

<< <i>As soon as you told us your wife ordered the coins, I no longer believed the rest of the fantasy. >>




I was thinking the same thing. I also like the name, "Orevilla"

Keep us posted...

BECOKA

Does not seem right for them to interfere. They should at the most they should contact you first to verify you made the purchase.

I hope this does not discourage Heritage from using PP as that is how I pay also.

STONE

Sorry to hear about this mess-up.

How about showing off those coins you bought

Russellhome

I've had payments made to me 'retracted' by Paypal days after the item was sent out. Here is what happened...

A new member of eBay sets up his Paypal account and goes on a little buying spree. He wins 2 auctions from me and about 20 more from other eBay sellers. His total with me was about $200. A few weeks after I sent out the items for this transaction, I started getting nasty emails from Paypal saying my account had a negative balance and I was in violation of of my customer agreement. I checked into it and saw that the $200 payment had been retracted. I tend to transfer money out of Paypal as soon as it arrives (I've heard stories) -- so my Paypal balance was near zero when the retraction occured. A few days later, I got an email from Paypal saying that an audit found problems with the buyers credit card account and this was the reason for the retraction.

I contacted the seller -- and he was unaware of any problems. He checked into it and found that everything he'd bought on ebay in the weeks since he joined had been retracted. It turned out that the reason for the audit exception was that he had not put in that 3 digit number from the back side of his credit card when he created his paypal account -- and their system did not require the field to be filled in. Later, an audit program caught the mistake and automatically retracted every payment made with that card.

Lucky for me, the buyer was honest and he paid me again when the problem was fixed. He had to contact everybody he bought from and manually send each one the payment over again. In other words, Paypal would not reverse all the retractions when the problem was fixed.

I was more than a little alarmed at how easy it was for Paypal to take back payments that had been made. And in the end, it was their own fault for not having proper validation built in to their account setup routine. I don't know what I would have done if the buyer had refused to repay me. For me as a seller, Paypal is a necessary evil -- but evil non-the-less. I don't like Paypal.

BAJJERFAN

With Pals like them who needs enemies.

Broadstruck

My wife buys two lovely California Fractionals

Reading all about the Wild Ride ended right after "Here goes:" with the wording above...

But if it's true does she have a sister

derryb

I predict paypal will regret screwing with Heritage. Big customer to be losing!

wayneherndon

I'm surprised these big organizations are willing to take PayPal on non-eBay transactions given the problems PayPal has. I can see losing business on eBay without PayPal but I don't see them losing non-eBay business by not taking PayPal. I see there are a couple of airlines that are now taking PayPal as well. I wonder how long that will last once they experience some of what is described in this thread.

I dumped PayPal on our website a few months back and haven't noticed a difference and received zero complaints. We recently upgraded the site so that we could take Google Checkout and I've been very pleased with it. It looks like a far better option for non-eBay web payments than PayPal ever was.

WH

BAJJERFAN

<< <i>I predict paypal will regret screwing with Heritage. Big customer to be losing! >>



First Law of Business; "You don't screw a good customer".

oreville

Incredible, as of Saturday November 3rd, paypal is still holding onto Heritage's money!!!

I am beginning to suspect more than just an "audit" motive on the part of paypal when neither party has complained to paypal!!!!!!

If this continues...............

BAJJERFAN

As long as you got what you paid for let them fight it out. Offer your assistance to Heritage if asked, but otherwise its out of your hands.