PayPal declined customer payment

[lizzys-allsorts]

Just logged into my PayPal to withdraw my funds & noticed a customer had tried to purchase an item 3 times & each time PP have refused the payment. I certainly didn't decline it. Has anyone else had this happen?

[digital*ghost]

Do the payments look like they were credited and then fully refunded immediately after (including the 30c flagfall)?

I've had that happen quite a few times - not too recently, but a few months ago it was happening a couple of times a day. It seemed to affect the same buyers over and over, while others never experienced any issue at all. Most times, the item wouldn't be purchased on ebay so there was no record of the attempted purchase anywhere but I would still get payment notifications as if the item was properly purchased and paid for, and it also showed as paid then refunded in the PayPal account history, so I presumed it was an issue involving the eBay cart since using Buy It Now would purchase an item before payment is attempted (I did have a couple where the purchase actually went through on eBay, one showed as immediately refunded, the other showed as fully paid, never refunded, and unfortunately I actually sent that one. Never recovered the funds from the buyer ). 

The issue just seemed to resolve on its own - eBay and PayPal kept blaming each other for it, so one can only presume they each left it for the other to fix - but it hasn't happened for a while.

If it's not the same kind of issue (eg the payment is simply declined) it could be they are using a credit card that PayPal doesn't like for some reason. 

[*sparklz*]

Yep had the same thing and like dg ebay and paypal blamed each other so paypal lost fees as the buyer paid with bank dep in the end.

The buyer kept trying to pay and it would do auto refund within 30 seconds.

[lizzys-allsorts]

The same customer has tried to purchase again today & yes, the payment is accepted & then cancelled, There is no record in my ebay dashboard of an attempted purchase. It's weird, as it has the customers address & everything.

I clicked on the link in PP to view the transaction on PP classic site & found this ...

We declined this payment.

We have reason to believe it is in breach of our policies.

Who knows what PayPal are up to !!!

[digital*ghost]

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@lizzys-allsorts wrote:

We declined this payment.

We have reason to believe it is in breach of our policies.

Who knows what PayPal are up to !!!

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In this case, I would say they are possibly protecting you / themselves - there was never a reason provided for the reversals when it happened on my account, they just seemed to auto-refund, so this would suggest it's something more specific, eg they might be using a card that's expired, or even stolen. 

Or it could be something completely harmless, sadly you can never know for sure with eBay or PayPal. 

One thing I will say is that when PayPal rejects a payment for these kinds of reasons, best to just leave it at that. A couple of years ago a buyer's payment was pending while PayPal investigated it, then declined the payment. The buyer contacted me and said they had no idea why, and they really wanted the item, so I sent them a direct invoice from PayPal. The payment cleared immediately and I sent off the item. There was never any issues with the buyer, thankfully, but PayPal froze my account and requested documentation related to the item they bought from me,because they thought the activity was suspicious. It was sorted in less than 24 hours, but I wouldn't knowingly risk it happening again.