When is a refund not a refund? When PayPal has its way

[letscleanupmycupboards]

Surely thought they would have fixed this loophole by now but no.....

Pay with PayPal in USD based on seller settings, get refunded and lose out getting back less than you paid because of exchange rate changes. 

Shouldn’t even come into it. Should be your original purchase amount refunded not 10% less. 

How would you react if the B&M store  went on sale and you were told you’d only get back the sale price not what you paid. 

[katistrophik]

Sorry this happened, but your analogy is not really relevant.

When we purchase O/S we are aware of currency exchange fee's, and choose to purchase with full disclosure or are you referring to the daily currency exchange rate changing?

[letscleanupmycupboards]

The item was $77 USD

When I paid for it the amount I paid was $104 aud or so. When I was refunded I got back $95 aud. So I think the analogy is pretty accurate. I spent money and through no fault of mine the item didn’t arrive so I’m now down $10. That doesn’t really seem right or fair. 

I didn’t have the option to pay in aud. The sellers location sets the funding amount. 

I’m wondering what the financial ombudsman would make of the idea. 

[katistrophik]

Contact them.

I would be interested to know what they would say also, but an off shore transaction does not really  fall under their jurustiction AFAIK

[davewil1964]

Nothing. The FOS (or whatever it's called these days) deals with AUSTRALIAN transactions.

If you don't want to be subject to the vagaries of exchange rates, don't buy from dodgy overseas sellers. It's not like you are unexperienced in buying online.

[gutterpunkz05]

Paypals exchange rate, also incorporates a non refundable foreign transaction fee, which for refunds

more than 24hrs after original payment, is  4%

[digital*ghost]

It's also built into the initial payment amount, so essentially what they have done is make it so that the exchange fee is non-refundable after 24 hours. 

It's not a loophole as such - when you pay for a purchase in another currency, PayPal has to take enough from you to give the seller $X in their currency, according to the current exchange rate, in this case they needed to take enough to give the seller USD $77. 

If the seller refunds, they can only  refund US $77 and then convert that into the buyer's currency, which means if there is a shortfall, the only way to bring it up to the original payment amount is for it to come out of PP's pocket (which they did for years, but also retained any overages, too, so they were in a win some / lose some situation for a long time), but now the buyer is in that position instead, i.e. of potentially gaining back more or less than what they had originally paid (there will be cases where the exchange rate favours the buyer, but they'll still lose that initial 4% conversion fee). 

If you had paid with a credit / debit card, the same thing would have happened, and I don't think AFCA hasn't had anything to say about that, so I'm guessing the practice is "kocher", if you will. 

[letscleanupmycupboards]

But doesn’t PayPal now also pocket the fees paid by the seller when a refund is processed?

It just strikes me as wrong that this can happen at all? And that it’s not better publicised. 

And when you buy from a foreign seller in aud it does not apply at all. 

[letscleanupmycupboards]

Dodgy overseas sellers? 

Im not talking bulk listed china stuff here I’m talking used items purchased overseas. I hardly think you can blanket that all in as dodgy. 

Dodgy sellers dont offer to refund when an item doesnt arrive. 

[papermoon.lady]

I see your point. This happened to me too. I got a refund for an item that had not arrived from the USA (about the same price as your item), I got less money back due to the exchange rate, and on top of that the item then arrived and the exchange rate had gone up again by then, so I ended up getting less for my refund, and then paying more again when the item arrived...