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Paypal purchases are getting immediately refunded

A topic by Wunkolo created May 09, 2019 Views: 3,244 Replies: 11

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Ive been taking PayPal payments for years through my itch.io store but for about the past 5 days, all of my customers are getting this error out of nowhere:

and on my end, I get a payment and an IMMEDIATE refund with zero implication as to what is causing this. I did not change any configurations on my account or do anything differently in the past 5 days and this seemed to have started happening out of no where. Stripe payments are going through just fine but I've lost all of my PayPal income for the past 5 days now.

I want to ask here in case it is an Itch.io issue and not a PayPal one since PayPal is notorious for having a terrible customer service issue(I've sent them an email but they got me running in a totally automated loop where I'm unable to talk to an actual person at the moment and keep redirecting me to prefab help pages.).

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No Time To PlayModerator moved this topic to Questions & Support 5 years ago

Hofmeier5 years ago

Experiencing this, too. I'm also seeking an answer thru paypal but have none right now. Let's keep one another updated, shall we?

This headache is probably related to these recent policy changes: https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-sign-up-for-a-paypal-accoun...

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Wunkolo5 years ago

This looks like a lead to what the cause might as I did notice I had an "Accept this payment" prompt before this started happening a few days ago until it just straight up started auto-refunding stuff. Though it should at least continue to give me this "Accept this payment" prompt and not just flat-out auto-refund them. Paypal customer service themselves told me `At this time I was unable to locate an issue within your account causing a hold.` so there's seemingly no reason for it to at least reach that point.

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Hofmeier5 years ago

Howdy, W.

I hope you've found a route past this volleying refund problem. I caved and setup a p4yp4l c4sh acct, which eliminated these refund hiccups (how strange).

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Wunkolo4 years ago

The thing is I think I already have a paypal cash account and I'm still getting this.. Even stranger

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Wunkolo5 years ago

I messaged PayPal about this and got this as a response. Not sure what to make of it. I am using the "direct to me" payment method and not using the itch.io payout system.

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Wunkolo4 years ago

Do any itch.io mods have any insight on this.

I sent them a link asking about this whole PayPal cash policy stuff and keep getting this loop about adaptive payments which I have no control or insight over. I've lost a lot of customers and money from this already and would like literally any insight from the itch.io team at this point...

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I am trying to do some research to figure out what is going on exactly. Would it have anything to do with this?
https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-sign-up-for-a-paypal-accoun...

I recall having an "accept money" prompt just a day or two before this started happening before all payments started to get refunded

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Thank you for contacting PayPal Customer Support. My name is Seth and I am happy to assist you.

I definitely see how that can be concerning! When prompted to "Accept the Money" and choosing to, that's you stating you accept the Adaptive Payments that was sent to you. However, if anyone else that also took part if receiving that Adaptive Payment has issues receiving the payment, the whole Adaptive Payment is reversed, even for those that were able to receive the payment successfully.

Given this, I suggest either reaching out to the other parties that were recipients for the Adaptive Payments to make sure they are all able to receive the payments; or for you to reach out to the sender of the payment and have them send a payment to you directly without sending an Adaptive Payment.

I'm glad I was able to assist, and I hope you have a great rest of your weekend!

Don't forget, we're always around if you need us. Just click "Help" in the top right corner of any PayPal page to visit our improved Help Center.

Add your mobile number to your PayPal account so we can reach you right away if we ever need to verify account activity with you. Simply log in to your PayPal account, click "Profile" near the top of the page and then click "Update" beside "Phone."

You can also make and receive payments with your mobile phone when you add it to your PayPal account. After you confirm your number and create a PIN, you'll be able to get money, send money, check your balance, or manage your account from your phone using simple text messages.

Sincerely,
Seth
PayPal Customer Solutions Support Specialist
PayPal

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firecat4 years ago

I see what happen, the "direct to me" means you have to do the work. That means making sure you know what you doing with paypal and Stripe. So in a nutshell. you are the marchant of record, you are the one that hads to work with the problems and make sure everything runs well. Never pick this if you are not experince with payments from many places.

You said you were using paypal cash account which is a personal account not a merchmat account: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant

https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/what-is-the-difference-between-perso...

So what you want to do is switch to "Collected by itch.io" otherwise follow these steps to make a merchant account. BUT you will have to be responsable for everything, the tax, following laws, liable for chargebacks, VAT, etc.

https://transferwise.com/us/blog/paypal-business-account

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Wunkolo4 years ago (4 edits)

This mitigates and avoids the actual problem at hand and does not solve it at all. I had been using the `direct to me` configuration for years before this issue started. I was handling tax and charge-backs and customer refunds and such on this platform just fine these past few years and would prefer the `direct to me` option moving forward. I was getting the "accept payment" prompt before this issue started as well which means my account was already in a standing to receive payments before this started happening. Hofmeier above even mentioned that they had upgraded their account into a PayPal Cash account and that solved their particular instance of the problem. My stripe payments are working just fine at the moment as well.

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firecat4 years ago

Maybe its the currency convert problem. It says in their TOC for cash accounts that money may be needed in the balance to convert it.: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/cashagreement-full?locale.x=en_US

"To receive money in a currency your Cash Account is not currently configured to accept, it may be necessary to create a balance in your Cash Account in that currency or convert the money into another currency. Certain currencies can only be received by converting the money into another currency that PayPal allows you to hold. If the money is converted, PayPal’s transaction exchange rate (including our currency conversion spread) will be used."

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Wunkolo4 years ago(+2)

I got the issue fixed

To anyone coming up here from google searches, it had to do with my identification info in particular and the PayPal UI basically tucking away a lot of the settings involved in getting this fixed. Do not use the message-center based customer support. It will run you through the biggest loop in which you will strictly get copy-paste answers until they just tell you to call them. Save yourself the time and just call PayPal directly right from the get-go to talk to an actual person.

itch.io has adaptive payments where if any of the parties has something misconfigured(between you, itch.io themselves, and the person paying you through itch) then it will cancel the transaction and refund the entire transaction. So be sure your account is carefully configured and if nothing in the UI directly implies this then call them directly and they can tell you the actual statefulness of your account to guide you and tell you what is missing. For me it was literally my date of birth and to confirm the SSN I already put in, but due to the PayPal interface not having any way to get to these prompts I had to call them directly and they were able to configure my account to be able to set myself up with a proper PayPal Cash account.

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leafoAdmin4 years ago(+1)

Glad you got it figured out. We'll point anyone else having issues to this topic. Thanks

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