How I got scammed by TinyDeal and Paypal - UPDATED

Buy / Sell Budget Dealer Experiences
21

Paypal is well known for stealing money from users and dealers.

They stole $15,000 US from a friend of mine. They just removed it from his bank account and there is no recourse except a lawsuit. On several occasions they took money from my bank account and the only way to stop them was to close the account.

Anyway, you can protect yourself from Paypal and bad vendors by using a US Credit Card as they are protected by Consumer Protection Laws up to 90 days.

In your country I don’t know what the CC laws are.

Generally, it is best to only do business with reputable sellers and avoid Paypal completely.

22

How did Paypal go about to steel your money?

23

Long story, but when you link to a bank account to verify a Paypal account you authorize them to deposit and take money out of it, and they will do whatever they want to with it. They are not subject to US Consumer protection laws that govern banks and Credit Cards…again, in your country I don’t know what the applicable laws are.

On the other side of things, they screw with vendors too…as a vendor, if a customer opens a dispute the money is removed immediately from your account.

For all their drama and their anti 2A policy…screw PayPal.

24

As of a few minutes ago TinyDeal offered to ship the product to me Air Mail Registered, so I will update here once I have some tracking information.

25

I’ve never heard of them stealing from anyone until this thread. In what circles are they “well known for stealing money”? :open_mouth:

26

I don’t hold Paypal in high esteem. I have almost stopped using them altogether when I order from Chinese sellers, then I use AliExpress.
They are not perfect, and the sellers have variable shipping time, but I am most satisfied with them.

I once received an email from Paypal threatening to freeze my account because I made couple of legitimate dispute… that was enough for me to stop using paypal most of the time. my dispute was less than 5% of the transactions values. If paypal is using bots to send threatening mails, AND I have NO way to contact Paypal… then thank you no, thank you. I will look somewhere else.

27

Re. the original post, I asked here awhile ago about vendors that ship stuff and tell you that they don’t have a tracking #. I’ve always suspected that even though they say that they don’t have a tracking #, they HAVE to have a tracking #, but just don’t want to provide it to the customer, for some reason.

28

I don’t think so. The cheapest shipping methods are all sans tracking. Tracking is somewhat of an overhead for the shipper and they pass the (inflated) cost on to the seller who usually will pass it on to you. Although they may be doing as you suggest, it would be costing them to do so and I can’t think of any benefit it would give them to have a tracking number and not tell it to you.

29

+ 1

30

I honestly don’t know how these guys do business, but I can come up with a line of reasoning to support using tracking without telling the customer that you did it.

- the vendor knows they won’t win a paypal dispute without tracking

- vendor decides to track everything and increases prices fractionally to cover tracking cost

  • in the hopes of getting an extra buck out of us, the vendor offers to “sell” us tracking. If we say yes, that’s free money for them

- if we knew that tracking was automatically included, we’d never pay extra for it, so no free money for the vendor

I suspect that in the future, more shops will use “free tracking” (like “free shipping”) as a marketing differentiator…

31

Okay, I can see how that might work for them. But, I’m not sure they’re smart enough to figure that out.

32

They are plenty smart enough. CS and the warehouse may or might not be, but the people who decide this stuff sure would be.

Selling or marketing free tracking they already pay for, makes the most sense to me.

33

It looks like Tiny Deal stepped up addressed the issue here and sought to solve the problem .I have to say WTG to them for that .

I hope your problem is quickly taken care of .

it gives one hope

Sometimes if a company has an ebay store that can be almost a better way to buy from them since they seem to always want to protect their ebay rating.

I've had ebay and / paypal side with a vendor who was absolutely wrong . yt later when dealing with the vendor they stepped up and made it right too ..So sometimes the trick is just be persistant and keep letting them know they did you wrong .like others have said lots of times they will cut you a deal on the next item you order with them .. it works easier for you both . Mentally I always just factor in a 7% loss ..less stress less hassle .

34

Thanks for the support guys.
You know what would really be interesting? The original package finally finding it’s way to me. More at eleven…

Ok so I got the package. Let’s do a little recap:

  • I order the product on 28th of August
  • TinyDeal ships god knows when, without tracking
  • I open a dispute on the 45th day since the order
  • TinyDeal shows Paypal a tracking number to my town. Package shows as received
  • Paypal dismisses my case and tells me to shove it
  • TinyDeal offers to send the product again
  • I receive the original order, no tracking number as ordered, 48 days since ordering

I for one can draw two conclusions:

  • PayPal’s system for checking facts sucks bigtime
  • TinyDeal lied about the tracking number

Be careful out there guys.

35

Thanks for letting us know.

36

All your conclusions seem to be true. One more conclusion, while inconvenient for your point, is also in order:

  • It appears that while they had a fake tracking number [or someone else’s tracking number, or whatever] ready to use against you… TinyDeal did ship a package to you in good faith.

So the fake tracking number business seems to be more of a terrible, misguided, dishonest… protection mechanism.

37

Yes Wight, I agree with you 100%. While TinyDeal did use a dishonest technique to avoid paying for refund, they did originally ship the rather slow package. I guess we all accept the risk of something going wrong when we shop for items from so far away (and at low prices).
On a more bright mode, I’m now using the aspherics from the Google Cardboard I finally got to examine the die of any flashight I have. Here is a wallshot from a triple Nichia S2 I made with a brass spacer. Yes, that is on a wall.

38

Well at least Tinydeal seems to be making good on this and re-sending, at least they are trying to fix it. It may not be any dishonesty on their part. But no matter what, its also Paypal’s responsibility here and partially their fault.

I’ve had the wrong packages delivered personally to me at least twice, and I’m not talking about just the wrong mail in my box or at my door (which happens more), but the delivery guy coming up to me, showing me a package and saying its for me, getting my signature, then giving me the package and then I look at the package and have to run and get the guy or save the package for when he comes back…so I bet I’m not the only one in the country this happened to, and some are a bit less honest or noticed.

Sometimes I’ll also get packages that should have been signed for left at my door. How did that happen? What if any of those didn’t actually show up at the right address? Doesn’t the delivery guy have to do a “delivery signed for” click or check too to complete that delivery? If so, the same situation would have occurred if it was delivered to the wrong address, or someone took the package after it was left. I’ve also noticed packages that are scanned by the carrier and not signed for before they are handed to me, I think that is what this package had on it by the looks of it. That is not proof you got it, its proof the carrier delivered it to someone, but who?

So, who’s job is it to even check? I don’t think anyone actually does have that in their job description other than the carrier. If nobody else does the job of checking, and we already know that carrier fails are semi-regular, then it only becomes apparent it was delivered to the wrong person when someone complains and goes to check. And once someone complains, and a tracking number is produced, who’s job is it to look and confirm that x’s package was delivered to x’s address, not y’s, and the signature is x’s, not y’s? Or maybe it was just scanned delivered, no signature? I would think Paypal should have done that checking, or rejected the tracking number if this was not possible to confirm a signature. “Delivered” scan could be to the wrong person, a dishonest carrier, a guy standing at your mailbox, or dumpster too. In this case, you didn’t sign for it, so Paypal is just as responsible for the error and taking a non-verified tracking number, whether there was or wasn’t a tracking number.

In this case I outlined, both Paypal and Tinydeal didnt “scam you”, but Paypal failed to verify the tracking number and make a correct judgement. I’m betting this is the case. Now maybe Tinydeal knows that when they scan this “tracking number” it can be submitted to Paypal and taken as “evidence” sometimes when it shouldn’t be however…