Has anyone been experiencing unsolicited deposits to PayPal accounts?

My wife sells online - nothing major, just hand made jewellery, sewing patterns, a few coins and the like.

Recently there have been odd deposits being made to her Pay Pal account by strangers - never much, just odd amounts of a dollar or two, or up to perhaps $4 and change. The senders name is never the same twice.

She’s been worried about them and wanting to refund them to people who did not in fact buy anything. The amounts do not correspond to any items she’s offering. I telling her to leave them alone, that I suspect some form of ‘fishing expedition’ although I cant imagine how such would work. It’s happened every few days lately; she now has about $50 in unsolicited funds in her Pay Pal account.

Can anyone shed any light on this?

Ask Paypal?

Can you see a way that her paypal email could be typo’d by someone trying to enter something different? Try googling those addresses and see what you find.

It’s tempting to see how much it will build up to, but on the other hand, there may be someone else out there claiming that these payments never arrived.

IMHO, the route of least drama is to just hit the Refund button on each and get them out of her account. Don’t bother trying to engage with whoever is on the other end of the email address attached to the sending account. Just kick it back.

I would tend to worry that maybe somebody is trying to put the account in bad standing, maybe by later making a claim against that transaction. I’ve heard that this sort of sabotage can be a problem when people publicly post their PayPal address to receive donations or whatever. Probably a good idea to do what @amishbill suggested.

Perhaps someone that has an interest in filing enough “goods not received” disputes against her to get her banned from Paypal?

Edit: SB beat me to it :slight_smile:

Thanks, I’ll pass that along to her.

The strange thing is that it’s never from the same sender twice, and that it’s always for trivial and odd sums that don’t correspond to anything she has for sale, and the senders are always uncommunicative. Most of the time the deposits are a dollar and change.

PayPal also says “just refund it”, but it sure feels a if someone is ‘probing’ or looking for a response or an angle of some sort.

Oh, well…I was just wondering if it has happened to anyone else, and what the final consequence might have been.

There’s no harm in refunding it. And it makes sense they would use several identities and trivial amounts if they were up to something like this. Paypal doesn’t care about how little was stolen, it’s still a strike if you keep the money and give nothing in return.

Interesting question… are these being sent as Goods & Services, or Friends & Family?

Wasn’t there some bit of nastiness where someone sends you X, but when you return X you get hit for PP’s vig as well, and have to pay back more than X?

Get out of paypal if you can.
I tried to cancel my account and they refused to acknowledge my request.
I was able to remove my credit cards.
A short time later they sent me a message saying my account had been restricted.
What happened was this; I was signed up with a company that gave me the option of manual or automatic settings; I had my account set to manual and was charged anyway without notice before the due date; when I filed a complaint with paypal submitting a detailed account of what happened; they asked for more info; I sent them a screenshot of the manual setting and was again told they needed more info.
It was then I tried to cancel my account cuz I don’t deal with that level of aggravation.

Be careful; its sounds like someone is trying to access your wife’s info.

I’m sure I heard about this being a scam but I can’t find any articles.

Sometimes criminals will transfer small amounts to check hijacked accounts.

I’d be looking to change all passwords.

For me, one red flag in these occurrences is the sudden, unsolicited deposits in VERY SMALL amounts.

I for one would wonder why the hell would someone, even mistakenly, send some very small amounts to another via Paypal (or whatever) ?

Payment for what?

Online hackers are getting very sophisticated by the hour, it can be another form of ‘phishing’ or getting information of your account.

By opening your account to refund it, they might have an ‘embedded’ new technology that could automatically expose your account details.

Don’t assume that Paypal can always watch our back.

Nowadays we always have to assume the worst.

If I were you I’d rather leave it at that at the moment.

There is a scam like this for bank accounts but I don’t know if it works for PayPal. The basics are, you get money that you don’t expect, then you give it back, then the original amount bounces and you are still on the hook for the returned amount. I don’t know if the refund button short-circuits this or not.

Have never been thrilled with PayPal, but sadly it sometimes seems to be the least-bad option.

Maybe this transaction comes with a fake email too? And clicking the email link starts a sequence of events? idk.

Yrs ago.

One of my shooting mates was also my Bank Manager.

Talking, as you do We got round to this new (then) Paypal billing system on internet. and the pitfalls.

He told me.

Open an account in a completely different Banking Institution
to the ones you normally use. for $50ish.
Open a DEBIT card.

Then do all PayPal transactions through there.
Just keep in there the average monthly amount you roll over on.

It ALSO makes you think twice.
While waiting the coupla days to clear any money going into acc’t.
for individual items.
As to whether you REALLY do. want that item.

It stops my on the spot buying, by well over a grand a yr.

At least it keeps your real money out of their grasp.