Comment by dangrossman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dangrossman | Hacker News Reader

So:

1) Someone steals his PayPal account and uses it to buy a bunch of stuff on iTunes

2) He reports the fraud to PayPal, which refunds all of these payments to him

3) He reports to Wells Fargo that PayPal has engaged in fraud by taking these payments to fund his PayPal account, which is a false claim -- the transfer to PayPal was authorized as a funding source and PayPal was already handling the refunds

4) Three months later, PayPal gets hit with a bunch of disputes from Wells Fargo to take back money that's already been returned, double dipping and creating major hassles for them. Wells Fargo is, essentially, stealing from PayPal on the basis of this person's old false claim. PayPal flags the account.

So PayPal did everything right: they were available for immediate contact, were "courteous and helpful", promptly reversed the fraudulent payments to iTunes, and his account was left in good standing while he was made financially whole. What more could they have done?

"He reports to Wells Fargo that PayPal has engaged in fraud by taking these payments to fund his PayPal account, which is a false claim"

No, he didn't. In his own words:

"I told the representative there that I had reported the claim through PayPal, but wanted it noted that the charges made on my account that day were fraudulent in nature. The representative appeared to understand, and helped me make record of the incident."

The problem isn't with PayPal or his bank, as they'd eventually sort out the ping-pong notifications. The real problem is with Apple's draconian policy of taking all of a customer's purchases and data away from him if fraud reports occur on three or more occasions, regardless of why they occur (such as in this case with ping-ponging notifications between Wells Fargo and PayPal).

It's yet another reason to not trust your life to the cloud, and always procure a separate, pirated copy of your purchased software so that nobody can take it away from you.

Thank you. Again, PayPal got credit where it was due in the article. The problem is because one company doesn't mesh well with another, not so much that PayPal was in the wrong. If anything, I'd say Apple was the one that left me with a sour taste in my mouth. PayPal to a lesser degree, though I do understand now why people are cautious about trusting their money to it.

> and always procure a separate, pirated copy of your purchased software so that nobody can take it away from you.

Don't pirated copies of software usually come with all kinds of nasty spyware and trojans?

No, but good job on buying the copyright lobby's threat-mongering.

I'm trying to remember where I heard this before. I can't say for sure but I thought a few friends had this issue. It would seem to make sense though, wouldn't it? It'd be easy to spread Trojans by adding them to pirated software.

If its not the case, what is it that keeps botnets from abusing file sharing?

PayPal informed me that I have to file a claim through my bank for the amount that had rolled over to the bank. PayPal ONLY refunded me the amount that PayPal didn't send to my bank. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear in the article (there were two paragraphs about it), but those are the facts.

PayPal was fairly good throughout the ordeal. It's the internal policies that conflict and caused further issues down the chain. I can only do what the CSR advises.

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