I just received a £40 paypal payment in my paypal account. Transferred by friends and family and from an email address I do not recognize. 15 minutes after this transfer I received a money request for the £40 to my paypal account with a note saying "I sent payment to you by mistake can you refund it back please".
The email my paypal uses is pretty unusual and so pretty unlikely it could be accidentally mis-typed by someone and the email account is only used for purchases and bills, not personal emails,
I have no desire to keep the money, but is it possible I could be opening myself to a scam if I issue a refund of the money.
The email my paypal uses is pretty unusual and so pretty unlikely it could be accidentally mis-typed by someone and the email account is only used for purchases and bills, not personal emails,
I have no desire to keep the money, but is it possible I could be opening myself to a scam if I issue a refund of the money.
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sorted byMy suggestion would be to talk to Paypal on Chat to get their commitment a) that it isn't a scam and b) that you face no risk from issuing the refund AND c) keep a copy of the conversation. For preference, I would ask Paypal to make the refund, not myself.
regardless how unique you think your email is there are billions who have multiple email addresses so chances are there will be some similar ones..
The fact they asked you to refund it via invoice indicates it is indeed a scam and yes there are known scams via this method.
As I said above you pay them the money and they then claim the transaction was unauthorised. (edited)
Never manually refund them yourself. Don’t touch the money, it will most likely be claimed back at some point. The money generally comes from stolen cards.
Here is a bit more info on the email addresses. Mine is of the format f******@hush.ai which I have never seen anyone else use. The senders email format was johnsmith1970@talktalk (not the actual address, his is another english name and date) so did not seem to be a scammers type of address but you never know.
Thanks again all.
If they refund the refund will go back to the original payment source. Unless they manually issue them £40 as opposed to using the refund option.
That’s my point. Lots of people will think a refund is both of those options. Eg led by a scammer. The OP mentioned the person had asked them to refund it via an invoice….SCAM.. (edited)
I do have a refund option under the payment, just very suspicious about how it was paid and whether using the refund option is wise.
From reading online PayPal staff cannot refund the money as it is now yours. It was a gift from the sender, accident or not. The money is now legally yours.
I would consider refunding, but I would make sure there is no backfire on your end for refunding (potential scam - I doubt this. I think it's a genuine mistake). (edited)
Just thinking aloud here, but from what you say, if the money can't be refunded, that means the op will need to actually pay the person the £40 with their own money. And then if the real bank account that provided the original £40 appears saying it was an unauthorised transaction, who returns the original £40? If it's the persons bank then op will be fine, but if it's paypal, then possibly the op will be out of pocket.
If it was me, I would wait a while and refund the money later (much later, 2 or 3 months later).
op states it’s a friends and family payment which can’t be claimed back only refunded..
First they know it’s an active account as money and message went to it, how do you issue a refund on a refund.. (edited)
Was a payment for a freelancer that did some IT job for an American firm. I know this was a genuine mistake though as there is another person that has the exact same email as mine but with .co.uk instead of .com on their hotmail email.
I think there's been a miss understanding.
I believe the OP said above they can hit refund to sender.
With my comment above. PayPal staff cannot go onto your account and issue a refund as this would count as a 3rd party using funds not associated to them (stealing).
Others have suggested asking PayPal to get involved and let them deal with it, which they cannot do anything as it was a gift of funds.
You can only get in writing that if you refund the sender that it won't you aren't out of pocket.
Edit:
I'm I had modified my previous comment to be clearer.
And seems the OP has solved the issue. (edited)
Ooh, this is a good call
I’ve seen in previous PayPal discussions, people have said this can be done
PayPal has the worst customer service don’t believe anything they say they just shove you off.