My sister logged onto Ebay this morning and bought an item, then went to pay for it via paypal in the usual manner. When she logged into her account she found it had been restricted due to suspicious account activity, and she was unable to send payment. Basically it appears that her account has been hijacked. Someone completely unknown to her (a Scottish girl with a hotmail address, who we've managaed to identify on Bebo) had paid £493 into her account on the 10th of August presumably to pay for some non-existent ebay item or similar . Then on the 15th of August someone tried to withdraw various large amounts (£75 twice, £150 twice, £100 once) from the paypal account into an unconfirmed HSBC bank account with no other details (the last 4 digits of the account number do not match any account she holds or recognises). Now paypal seem to have got their asses together and placed the original £493 transaction on a temporary hold (presumably as the scottish girl has complained about not receiving the item and/or not hearing from whoever the seller was again), and the transactions since then have been reversed. My sister did not authorise any of these transactions, nor has she sold anything to the scottish girl, so this all came as a shock today. Unfortunately it has taken until now for her to notice as all emails from paypal were getting sent to her junk mail folder. Essentially thus far my sister has not lost out as paypal have reversed all outgoing withdrawals, and placed the original incoming payment of £493 under investigation. We (well, I) have gone through all the relevent pages on paypals site to report the unauothorised activity, and to resolve the issue regarding the original money she received, and are now awaiting a response from paypal. I presume its just a simple case of someone getting into her account by guessing or otherwise obtaining her password (which incidentally was the same as one as her hotmail, ebay, bebo, facebook and so on ), then using it to receive payment fraudalently for a non existent item and trying to pass the money on to their account, and that paypal will realise this - hopefully the scottish girl will get her money back, my sister will have her account fully re-instated and paypal and the police will find a way to nail some mofo to the wall when they discover who's responsible... I'd just like to ask if anyone has any experiences in resolving similar difficulties with paypal - how long did it take? Were the police in touch? Did paypal get in touch via telephone or email? What was the outcome?
This same issue has actually happened to me and a few other friends/members of my family. I was so disgusted with the way it was handled that I got all the money back and then closed the paypal accounts. I would suggest you do the same.
Balls. Crucify the mother f***er who did that. **Was about to insinuate something about your sister. Inappropriate.**
I might be misunderstanding here, but it sounds like you're complaining that Paypal did the right thing and stopped the unauthorised activity.
Quite - I'm actually quite impressed thus far, sinceit seems nobody has actually managed to take any money from my sisters account or transfer money into it fraudulently (the original transaction 'in' was stopped as suspicious and has been placed on temporary hold, and the rest has been reversed). I was just curious how paypal are likely to help resolve the issue and what steps will be taken, how long it will take and so forth. I am well aware of the much publicised problems with paypal and the apparent difficulty with which some disputes are resolved, often with an unsatisfactory outcome if you listen to many, but generally these complaints relate to a buyer/seller disputes rather than unauthorised transactions such as this.
Honestly, it sucks and all that it happened, but when you use the same password for everything then you're just asking for that kinda stuff to happen IMO, it's kind of like using the same key for everything you own (house, car,...)
