Visa chargback claim rejected

Only Orange knows the identity of the registered owner (who presumably reported it stolen) but they won't tell you. Equally only Ebay knows the identity of the seller (who may or may not be the same person as the registered owner) but they won't tell you. *However* both of them would have to tell the police - so your best bet is to get the police involved.

There are two procedures you can use for credit card refunds. Charge back is a contractual procedure, S75 of the Consumer Credit Act is a statutory procedure. The latter is bound by the rules of the credit card issuer and varies between issuers.

As far as both statutory and contractual procedures are concerned the position so far as e-money institutions such as Paypal are concerned are set out in the 2005 "wider implications" decision "Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and payments through electronic money institutions" at

With your contract with Paypal you bought e-money, you did not pay for a product. The e-money you bought was used to pay for the goods. A better comparison would be someone who, rather than paying a shop by card, went to a cash machine and took out cash to pay for goods. The card issuer has no responsibility for the goods bought using that cash.

The phone problem you face is a very common one amongst phones bought on Ebay. The usual scam is that person A gets a new phone and sells their old one (perfectly legally) to person B. Person B sells the phone to person C on Ebay. A few weeks later Person A reports the phone lost or stolen and submits an insurance claim. If A and B are working together they will delay this claim to avoid eBay/Paypal clawback.

Shortly thereafter person C finds their phone won't work. If B is a private seller buyer C has no claim against them. The phone worked when they sold it and they had (or will claim to have) no knowledge of the person they bought it from "in a Pub". Similarly PayPal and eBay have no responsibility, they funded the transaction as requested, nor does the credit card company as the transaction was ostensibly perfectly legal.

The buyer is left with no phone and no prospect of recovering their money.

I don't understand. Mike has been in possession of the phone since April, so any theft could not have taken place after that. How could the original owner "make it so"? Are you suggesting the owner sold the phone and later lied about it being stolen?

Chris

I don't really have any better ideas other than those already suggested by others.

If there's good reason to believe the phone may have been stolen then it may be worth involving the police. If they can be persuaded to take an interest an inquiry to Orange from them may be more productive than one from an ordinary member of the public.

Chris

Thanks for the most impressive and convincing reply. That seems like quite a clever scam. You wouldn't think anyone that smart would need to be a petty crook. They could join the establishment instead.

It could be a slightly less convoluted situation though. A person could sell their own phone and then claim it was stolen or lost, possibly with more risk of being found responsible though.

Yesterday I was told by an Orange representative that "The only way to have a handset registered against your own account is to be the person who has purchased the handset from Orange whether via the Orange Online Shop, an Orange Retail Store or through a third party retailer as long as it is not an already unlocked phone."

I've seen a lot of locked orange phones for sale on eBay. Does this mean that ebay is participating in the sale of goods that are not fit for their intended purpose?

Regards, Mike

Scrotes are often cunning, but not necessarily very bright :-).

The advantage of the double sale is that it makes prosecution (assuming you can interest anyone in bringing one) very difficult. The person who sold the phone on eBay has, on the face of it, done nothing wrong and can simply say they don't remember who they bought it from. The person who it is registered to simply says that hadn't seen the phone for ages so eventually reported it lost. Neither activity is an offence and proving they were out to defraud is very difficult indeed.

Many PAYG phones are unlocked.

Quite possibly, the locked/unlocked status is irrelevant but it is certainly true that a number of the phones offered will stop working some time after purchase. This isn't anything new - mobile phones from eBay have long been a high risk purchase.

This seems like quite a significant point to me. Someone told me recently that 20% of the phones sold on eBay are dodgy in some way. If this is true and the good ship eBay just sails on, filling its hold with the resulting booty, something (else) is seriously amiss.

In message , Chris Blunt writes

That is a distinct possibility, report it stolen and claim on the insurance for a new phone. As you can see Mike is having problems proving that he purchased it and Orange have said that the owner has reported it stolen, so that could be what has happened..

almarack

For the phone I've got a paypal receipt defining date, price, seller and buyer's name; also an eBay receipt with similar information, plus emails from the seller explaining the condition of the phone and asking for positive feedback. :-) If that isn't proof of purchase then I don't quite know how I can further prove it at this stage.

Orange have said the phone is blacklisted as lost or stolen but have also said that this could be mistake due to a keying error.That's why I'd like written confirmation of the cause of the blackliing from Orange before I proceed further.

Orange say they aren't allowed to give me any details because of the Data protetion Act, so it seems we can't compare notes. But I can send them copies of the above mentioned receipts and other communications which will provide Orange at least with the ability to compare the phone seller's name with any customer information they have related to the phone. More data for Orange to protect perhaps. Regards, Mike

They should be able to quote you a crime reference number which you can comfirm with the police. Also a date when it was claimed stolen.

I didn't know I could do that. I thought you had to have a PayPal account to pay another PayPal account?

It depends on the type of paypal account the seller has. If it's an ordinary personal account, then it's as you say: the buyer also needs a paypal account, into which he transfers funds from a bank account or a credit card, and can the use those funds to pay into other people's paypal accounts.

But if the seller has a business paypal account, the buyer can pay into it directly from a credit card without needing to set up his own paypal account (or without using it if he has one already).

Even when it looks like you are paying directly, paypal sets up a virtual account for you, the funds are first transferred there and from there to the seller. Don't ask me why, but this is how it works. If you wish, you can convert this virtual paypal account into a real one later.

It has to work that way, because that's the way Paypal is regulated. Paypal is, in law, a provider of E-money, not a credit card gateway. See clause

Indeed. Paypal remembers one-off transactions associated with a particular email address and credit card, and will show them as part of the transaction history should the user of the address and card subsequently create a full account with that data.

Mark

I know it is an e-money provider. I don't think these documents make it clear how paypal works if you are just using it to pay someone by your credit card and you probably won't see any of T&C unless you go out of your way to look for them.

Are there any legal reasons why paypal could not credit the seller's paypal without an intermediate step? Would this help with the credit card companies, or would they still claim all they provided was a credit to an e-money account?

In message , Mike Halmarack writes

The fact that you can prove purchase should at least cause them to check the information that they have been given. It could always be a keying error and at least that would solve your problem with no doubt a suitable apology. If it isn't a keying error then a Police report may be in order..

They can't at the moment, as their regulatory framework doesn't permit it. To act as a full-service payment gateway (like Sagepay, Netbanx, Worldpay, Datacash, etc) they would need to be regulated as a deposit-taking institution and come under the auspices of the relevant investor protection schemes. That would be expensive and complex, and quite possibly impractical given that Paypal does its best to be location-neutral - it doesn't matter where you are in the world, Paypal works in pretty much the same way, but full-service payment gateways tend to be country or region specific.

If Paypal did set up a payment gateway system, then it would mean that payments made through it would be considered by the card company to be made directly to the vendor, just as with other payment gateway systems such as those mentioned earlier. It wouldn't stop Paypal running both e-money and payment gateway systems in parallel.

Mark