After 18 years eBaying I thought I'd experienced everything but have just had a new curveball! I had a newish/inexperienced buyer last night pay for an item via PayPal and then contact me to say that they'd checked out with the wrong address, so could I please send it to a different one. Explained the reasons why I couldn't do that due to the Seller Protection Policy and said I'd have to just refund the PayPal payment and have them checkout again with the correct address.
Buyer then said with confusion "I'm not sure how that works as I don't have a PayPal account". Me, in even more confusion, said "but you must have one, that's the only payment method I accept and the funds are definitely in my PayPal account now". I asked her to explain the steps she took at checkout and apparently she just paid through eBay via her credit card, which then eBay converts to a PayPal payment for me (when I checked the payment it's coming up as an Unverified account - also something I haven't seen in years).
So the problem is, if I refund her, the funds are going to go into an account she claims she doesn't have, and is going to cause a hell of a kerfuffle. The worst bit being that, unlike in the USA from what I've read, there seems to be no way in Oz of blocking buyers who don't have a PayPal account (let alone a verified one), so this could happen at any time. It's made me feel hugely uncomfortable - and this from a seller who's been so lucky to never have a single PayPal issue in all these years. Anyone else have any insight into this and the best way to handle it? I'm tempted to just cancel the sale but don't want the ensuing headaches from that, and she seems like a lovely and genuine buyer.
