PayPal Tells Buyer To Destroy Purchased Violin Instead Of Return For Refund
Found on The Consumerist on Wednesday, 04 January 2012
Oh PayPal... will you never learn how to resolve a situation without having everyone hate you? Mere weeks after enduring the wrath of the internet resulting from its war with Regresty.com, PayPal has once again hit viral vitriol gold. This time, a seller claims that she's out $2,500 and an antique violin after the company told the buyer to destroy the instrument.
Alas, someone at PayPal apparently is an expert in old violins, because the company determined the instrument was "counterfeit" and told the buyer he needed to destroy it in order to get his refund.
Actually that's a pretty easy way for scammers to get items to sell. You just buy, let's say, a violin worth $2,500 and then complain to Paypal that you've been screwed over by the seller. Paypal in it's unlimited wisdom sides with the buyer (as almost every single time) and tells him to break it into pieces. That's where you get the cheap $10 knockoff made in China and smash it to send the photo to Paypal as "proof", and voila, you get your $2,500 back and can keep the original violin as a bonus which you can prompty sell again. I seriously hope Paypal gets sued for this: they were at no time the owner of the violin and so ordering its destruction should be definatively an illegal act.