Open an arbitration claim. Seriously.

The terms you agreed to states claims can be settled with arbitration. Opening a claim will cost a couple hundred dollars and will move them to action immediately.

Here is a great thread how this worked out for another person on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31567673

It sounds scary but it's seriously worth doing & getting the hang of a legal (or legal-ish) process if it's new to you.

Is this a US specific thing, or is this kind of advice also valid in the EU? Excuse the ignorance...

Aside from the filing fees, what financial risks are there?

For example, counter claims for damages, including but not limited to, the attorney fees of the opposing party.

Had to do this too. Worked out great. Considering doing it again against another company which is a year past providing payment promised.

Do you have any alternative suggestions for people who are opposed to legal prosecution, under religious objections?

I am an Anabaptist, and we are strongly against legal proceedings outside of extreme circumstance.

I'm not sure if arbitration would be considered a "legal proceeding" - it's a defined process that both parties agreed to upon entering into the agreement in the first place.

It's "legally binding", yes... but so is the initial contract.

Hmm, that's a point I hadn't considered. Thank you.

I don't know if this document applies to you but it pretty directly suggests arbitration or mediation as opposed to a full-fledged lawsuit:

> 7. In seeking to achieve a settlement, the Christian is committed to going the second mile. The Christian should support various alternatives to litigation such as arbitration and meditation.

http://www.anabaptistwiki.org/mediawiki/index.php/The_Use_of...

For anyone else reading, the link might explain some of the philosophy.

I am not familiar with what 'extreme circumstances' would be to a practicing Anabaptist.

However, when a corporation as large as PayPal blatantly ignores a significant financial claim from a singular individual rendering the individual helpless, it seems a bit extreme.

In this case you can use the system the Corporation set up to suppress your ability to fight back against them.

It varies from church to church, but outside of extremes like arson or murder, is probably not something that most would endorse. We do not endorse retaliating against violence, or holding a high value on money.

However, it would be nice if there is a means to recoup losses outside of a court system, whether it be through a system like the BBB, or similar.

This really seems bizarre to me. Isn’t the whole point of this aspect of you religion that you are supposed to turn the other cheek? It sounds to me like you are trying to do an end run around that principle. If you’re going to do that why not just convert to a different denomination?

> holding a high value on money

> recoup losses outside of a court system

So your religion discourages going to court (because of money, and not of the court itself) and you are trying to find a way around that? Seems like you have to re-evaluate why you are in this faith in the first place.

Huh? Finding a way around the rules you find inconvenient but still ostensibly want to follow is the heart of religion!

See: sabbath elevators

There is a reason there historically have been so many Catholic and Jewish Supreme Court justices. Nothing says established large scale religion like rules lawyering! Hah.

>> it would be nice if there is a means to recoup losses outside of a court system, whether it be through a system like the BBB, or similar

That is exactly what arbitration is. It is an alternative means of dispute resolution from regular courts.

Can you explain how this worldview works? How would an alternative means to recoup losses here not just be a clone of the court system?

(Sorry, I kept hitting a post timer. I might have gotten temp banned for using an alt account, or something.)

Thank you for the kind reply. I certainly understand why you may be confused, and I appreciate that you did not ask in a nefarious manner. (Honestly, I regret bringing this up given how negatively people have already responded, but there isn't a means to delete this thread. Lesson learned. I'm just relieved I used a throwaway account.)

Anyway

---

Court System:

I am furious with company. I demand money from company and take them to court. If they do not appear in court, they may face coercion from the police. They very well may be hurt or killed in that process. If they still do not show, they will face jail time. In the event that they do show up to court, there are massive court fees on each side. The plaintiff demands more than what they are owed. The court process puts great emotional burden and financial strain on both parties. Both parties are unlikely to ever work together again, under any circumstance. Everything that is said in court is made public record, and can be used against either part in future cases. Both parties risk severe communal damage as a result of the case. "Did you hear that company lost? They must be criminals!" "Did you hear so-and-so won that legal case? He must be going on vacation with his winnings! He still owes me $300!" Etc. Additional parties are incentivized to "go after" the company for their own recompense, justified or otherwise.

Recoup losses:

I am unhappy with company. I approach the owner, the business (or in this case, some 3rd party, like the BBB) in a private setting. I inform them of my grievances. I ask them for the amount owed. If they do not comply, the police do not become involved. There is no chance for coercion, violence, or death. There is no chance of jail time. There are no massive fees. The amount I request is the amount I feel I am owed - it does not include court fees or lawyer-related payments. There may be minor embarrassment on each side, but the embarrassment is shared, and more crucially, is not made a public spectacle. The interaction is not recorded, or, if it is, is not easily remembered. Neither party will face long-term or devastating public disgrace as a result of the outcome. There is no incentive for additional parties to seek payment. I very well may work with the party in the future. (I have a specific ISP in mind, for example.)

---

I am, of course, leaving out a lot of scriptural elements as well, but I have been accused of "preaching" on previous occasions, so I will save my breath on that matter. Besides, given how horribly vicious people have been simply by mentioning a denomination, I would not wish to give them more coals to chew.

It is a hard thing to put to words, but the core difference is this: It is not merely getting the money owed to me that is important, but instead doing so in a way which does not harm the community in the process. Being given what I am owed is nice, but it would be better for me to receive nothing, than to do so in a way which would harm them in the process. I have no qualm holding my hand out and asking, but it is up to them to do the right thing.

I suspect that some of my Eastern brothers and sisters will know what I am talking about when I say: collectivism (culture not politics) trumps individualism. The body of Christ is made up of people not person ; I'm not sure how else to express it.

Hopefully that made some sort of sense.

> Being given what I am owed is nice, but it would be better for me to receive nothing, than to do so in a way which would harm them in the process.

Hopefully I don't come off as rude, but this seems like a very privileged position. I don't know OP's financial situation, but 1.2k is a lot of money to a lot of people. What should OP do if they were relying on this money to feed themselves, or their spouse/children?

Not everyone has 1.2k to throw away because they don't want to harm the person/company that stole it from them.

Your method probably works in situations where the issue was a genuine accident, and the company would right the wrong if they knew about it. But it seems, to me, to fall apart if we assume any actor in a situation is malicious, as you effectively give the thief the power to say "No" and then get away with their theft.

There was an episode of The Good Wife where a dispute was settled using Christian arbitration. Not sure how realistic it was, but it was kind of interesting.

https://ew.com/recap/the-good-wife-season-6-episode-3/

I‘m pretty sure Matthew 5:38 was written before the advent of corporations, much less the completely deregulated capitalism of 2022 corporate America.

So if you insist applying 2 millenia old wisdoms to your everyday life, consider adding some Matthew 7:12 as well and sue them if they would have sued you in the same situation.

That sounds like a religious question - cue joke about fate or acceptance or higher purpose? But thank you - I appreciate learning about parallel social systems.

The obvious answer is to either avoid getting in the situation or to suck it up and account for getting ripped off as the price of learning. Vet your choices more carefully, use prepay, avoid systems where you don’t control the direct debiting of your accounts.

More generally, ask the question of your social group who will have specific knowledge and strategies that fit in with the rest of your social rules. Asking here seems like you would get poor advice because we don’t have much motivation to have learnt appropriate hacks for your issue, and mostly will have little experience of your issue.

You what

There is this religion that douses people with water or immerses them in water as an initiation ritual. This is called "baptism". If you think it is okay to do this more than once when it was first performed by the wrong people, you are an "anabaptist".

> when it was first performed by the wrong people

That seems a bit reductive. From my understanding, it's not so much by the wrong people but rather without deliberate, conscious choice. Chiefly, anabaptists reject the notion of infant baptisms because an infant can't meaningfully repent and freely proclaim their belief in Christ. Which, as far as religion goes, seems like a reasonable position.

My formulation was indeed not accurate. I should have said "wrongly", instead of "by the wrong people". (To leave it open, what the exact reason could be, because that can vary.)

Aren’t there many Protestant denominations (my former church being one of them) that do not do infant baptisms? Baptism is a voluntary process after counseling and an interview with someone at the church.

I didn’t know this is what set anabaptists aside.

Outside a few tiny movements, the Anabaptists were the first to object to infant baptism. Infant baptism was universal in the Catholic church, from the fifth century through the sixteenth, and even the Protestant Reformers adopted the practice. The Anabaptists were the Reformation's Reformers, and were named (by both Catholics and Protestants) after their most distinct and objectionable practice, that of insisting on adult baptism. (In fact, "Anabaptist" means re-baptizer -- they were named that in criticism by those who saw universal infant baptism as valid. This alone tells you something of the world they lived in -- a world that saw adult baptism mainly as "re" because infant baptism for everyone could safely be assumed.)

A lot of distinctive Anabaptist beliefs have gotten mainstreamed over the centuries, and what they were once best known for is now much more widely practiced. But the name sticks for historical reasons and the group still exists. You can read a summary of beliefs here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleitheim_Confession In the modern mileu, I would say what is most unusual and distinctive about them is pacifism.

Abitration is a private process that exists expressly as an alternative (though some contracts make it a mandatory alternative) to legal prosecution.

I can understand reading 1 Corinthians 6 as reason to avoid legal disputes between individual Christians, but what Biblical justification is there to avoid suing non‐Christians, especially a secular corporation?

Turn the other cheek, sure, but even Paul appealed to Caesar.

People who don't want to do paperwork are unfortunately at the mercy of those who do.

Hey there, I'm currently banned from PayPal, and I actually went through what you did.

I filed an arbitration using a service called FairShake (https://fairshake.com/), and finally they decided to settle with me. They said they will give me my money, but I can no longer use any of their services including Venmo. I agreed and took the money.

Happy to answer any questions regarding my experience, feel free to telegram me @tdpae

I’ve gotten around venmo bans with a new email address, new card, and staying under the KYC transaction size limit

actually not necessarily even a new card if you’ve used AMEX Send thats valid in lieu of the exact same AMEX Card it was linked to

What you're doing may be considered "structuring" [1], which under the demented laws of the US can land you in jail.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring

Cute, fortunately structuring relies on avoiding regulatory thresholds for reporting and the KYC threshold that venmo sets is a completely arbitrary company policy that has nothing to do with the law and has nothing to do with reporting that a licensed financial institution needs to do or for reporting to a regulator

Thanks for your concern, this is just circumventing a dark pattern of poor UX

The law on structuring (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5324) is about evading the $10,000 reporting threshold for financial institutions taking cash deposits or businesses taking cash payments for goods/services. If they are perpetuating some kind of fraud on Venmo making multiple accounts to do so in violation of the ToS is maybe wire fraud (so is just about everything) but by itself is probably not illegal.

Did they ever give an explanation for the ban or was it some no answer like "please review the terms and conditions"?

Bought a game service from the company. It was down/not functional. Asked the company for a refund, got death threats in return.

Went to paypal. Attached death threats from company.

Paypal sided with the company.

I managed to get like 800€ back through PayPal after the company I bought something from went into bankruptcy, although that was probably because they never actually answered PayPal's inquiry. No idea what would've happened if they did.

Does anyone know if there's real human review in these cases, or are they just an automated response?

I don't know which would be worse, you have no chance of winning because their automation sides automatically with the large customer, or a human actually read those death threats and still sided with the large customer.

Probably some idiot who didn't realize the death threats were evidence, not your action. E-mail based support (anywhere, not just Paypal) is generally terrible for actually understanding the whole thing being presented.

I'm assuming you are no longer working with OVH. Care to provide the death threats via screenshot or file dump? I'd be interested to hear the specifics on this.

Sorry, this wasn't OVH, it was a different company (small minecraft host).

Try your credit card dispute, if you charged it.

I know we submitted evidence that a car we rented was a minorly damaged vehicle (it was marked on the sheet during the checkout) and then tried to bill us for the repair after taking the car back. We submitted pictures of the damaged car in the rental lot, the paper work indicating the damage. The car company rejected our dispute. The credit card company didn't. I even enlisted our french intern (native speaker) to call said company and ask what is going on. They got the run around ("French bureaucracy is the worst")

They even blocked when said car company tried to charge again after the rejection. Good times.

I had a similar problem with a criminal complaint. It's impossible to get a hold of anyone at Paypal, and if you do, they will play dumb, or transfer you to an "account specialist" where you are just left in hold limbo (I've left the phone connected for about an hour before it was forcefully disconnected). In my case I had to talk to my credit union and credit card provider and both sided with me against Paypal and blocked the charge. Paypal is now trying to collect the money through a third party, so I have to go to arbitration. Paypal is on the side of criminals - not intentionally - because they make money on the fees and don't have to pay much for customer support to handle edge cases.

The FTC recently took Walmart to court over similar behavior, essentially profiting off of crime.

Your post is confusing.

It sounds like PayPal is asking you to prove you did not receive the cloud credits.

But what you should do is say you did not purchase cloud credits.

There is a difference between an unauthorized charge and goods not received.

I opened as "order not received" because I canceled the instance before it got delivered.

OVH argued that the charge was a credit and not the service itself and that I still have the credit (hence, it was delivered).

Then I said that the reason should be charge unauthorized, as I canceled precisely because of the unexpected amount of the bill, and I didn't perform a credit. The reason switched mid claim.

PayPal finally said that I didn't prove I had credit on OVH, which is indeed confusing (meaning I didn't spend it?). If I didn't order it shouldn't matter what's on their platform.

> I opened as "order not received" because I canceled the instance before it got delivered.

If the order was canceled then how can it be claimed not received? The charge occurring on a canceled order is an unauthorized charge. I'd recommend to file that type of claim. They are different and OVH is being terse. It's something you can do before you call Saul.

PayPal doesn't allow to open another claim on the same charge, though.

Same thing happened to me over an eBay item many years ago. I bought a used SLR. The seller said two batteries would be included but the package contained none. It was an expensive camera with special batteries. I contacted the seller but they refused to ship batteries and refused to issue a partial refund. I opened a dispute with Paypal to obtain a partial refund. They denied my claim citing lack of evidence.

How can I provide evidence for an item I never received? All I had was the listing and the contemts of the package, yet Paypal sided with the seller. I quit using Paypal then and there, and won't touch them with a ten foot pole. A very consumer-hostile company.

Probably videotape the unboxing of the item and document that whole inspection process. I’ve heard about people doing that on used clothing websites like poshmark and eBay. The sellers document the condition of items before shipping to have evidence to dispute with. These sort of online deals became hostile in the past so now there’s like inventory documentation overhead to deal with.

I've been on both sides of this table, and somehow I've lost both sides.

At this point I've given up using eBay due to it. The scammers on both sides know exactly what to say and do to somehow win even if you can prove you shipped the item / the item could never have been shipped to you (ah yes, a 13oz package somehow contained this heavy equipment).

Something similar happened to me. I bought something on eBay for about $50 and then the seller never shipped it at all. I messaged multiple times and finally got a response saying something weird like "I didn't think you still wanted it." Of course I did...

Eventually he sent me a $7 partial refund and then I was locked out of doing anything at all. I even tried contacting eBay and because it had taken so long they were no longer liable. Frustrating, but I just let it go.

>How can I provide evidence for an item I never received?

you could start by forwarding "I contacted the seller but they refused to ship batteries "

Based on some of the follow-ups you've posted here, it sounds like the crucial factor is the 1200€ authorization and capture from PayPal.

With your initial dispute of "order not received", they pointed to the 1200€ credit and said, "here's what you ordered". This credit does indeed disprove any claim of "I didn't get anything for the 1200€ I was charged".

The problem is you don't want to receive any order; you want there to be no order at all, and no exchange of 1200€.

Which version of PayPal checkout did they use? I think there's a standard PayPal checkout, where you complete the transaction at a PayPal-hosted page. And there's an "express" PayPal checkout, where you login to a PayPal-hosted popup to complete some initial authorization, then complete the checkout process on the merchant-hosted site.

I think there would have been some point where you authorized a 1200€ payment on a PayPal-hosted site, do you recall that step? I think that step is critical to your claim here that they should return your money.

You mentioned "They had authorization for recurring payments, so they pulled those 1200 without my interaction." And also, "at no point that amount was shown to me" How did they get that authorization? Could you reproduce the checkout flow up to the point of PayPal authorization to see if the 1200 amount is shown in the PayPal-hosted part of the checkout flow, and whether it's hidden in the merchant-hosted portion of the flow?

I'm not surprised at either OVH's or paypal's behavior.

OVH has been on my shitlist (and email blocklist) for years, because of their tolerance of spammers on their network; abuse notifications are ignored.

As for Paypal, there are so many stories of Paypal scamming companies out of money by closing their accounts on some pretext, and just keeping the money. Just google it, this goes back decades.

Both are awful companies, avoid them like the plague. Dispute the OVH charge with your credit card company, generally not a scammy outfit.

I was a paypal customer since the 90s. I recently had an issue where a site using paypal sold me something and blatantly lied about the product. I filed a dispute with paypal. It was only for $30, was a digital item, and I had pretty conclusive evidence. I expected paypal to side with me, especially given how long I had been using them and had never once filed a dispute. Nope. Immediately sided with the scummy company. I've tried to avoid using them whenever possible ever since.

I too just recently ran into a scam seller. Classic scam where they charge you then ship something to your zip code (they won't should the full delivery address with the tracking number) and have someone else pickup/sign for the package. Figured Paypal would side with me. Nope! And they are still allowing the scammer to "sell" things and charge people's credit cards. PayPal is useless for buyer protection. Caveat emptor. Buyers beware.

> Classic scam where they charge you then ship something to your zip code

More commonly, they just somehow have access to a list of packages shipped recently and provide a tracking number that shows as shipped to your zip code.

I had one use a tracking number from before I even ordered as their evidence...PayPal accepted their evidence...

They must have usernames and passwords to UPS and FedEx accounts of larger sellers/shippers.

All these stories are worrying. Paypal used to always side with the customer (who is after all the one paying them) but it seems there has been a shift in policy.

I think that's when they were part of ebay. ebay used to side strongly with the purchaser, even when the issue was obviously insane (don't get me started). Paypal has always been a hive of scum and villainy, and now they're unshackled from ebay they have nothing to break their streak.

Your history with any company is a non-factor these days

I wonder why one's history with a company stopped being a huge factor? Aren't credit scores still heavily based on a history of on-time payments of your bills? The OP says he had never filed a dispute before in his long history as a PayPal customer whereas the scummy company has probably received many claims against them. That should be one of the easiest metrics for PayPal to use to judge the validity of a claim. It's so odd that it's not an important factor.

Communicating with big tech at least keeps the word kafkaesque alive.

There are exceptions. I was recently double-charged for Apple Care. I could get someone on the phone very quickly. They also set up a communications channel between me and someone from their administrative department (IIRC you could e-mail or SMS them through a form). They called me twice to check if the refund came in.

We had similarly good experiences with them a few years ago. They were easy to reach and they'd call back to check if everything was handled in an satisfactory manner.

(Booking.com on the other hand was terrible, we never got back the 120 Euro or so for a hotel room that we cancelled with agreement from the hotel. Only Kafka-esque support mazes.)

I find your description vague and don't understand what happened.

How was OVH able to pull €1200 from your PayPal account? Did you go to PayPal's website (for example via a popup triggered by the OVH website) and told PayPal to let them pull €1200?

Now that they got the money, how is Paypal still part of it? Do you expect Paypal to go to OVH, knock down their door and demand the money back?

I would think that if you want your money back, you need to involve the authorities. The government has a monopoly on violence. If you want somebody to go and knock down OVH's door, thats a job of the authorities. Obviously, OVH would probably already give you your money back if the authorities demand that. Nobody likes to get their door knocked down.

> Do you expect Paypal to go to OVH, knock down their door and demand the money back?

Normally that's what Paypal is for. They're not going to burst through any doors but if a vendor wants to keep using their services they surely have a lot of leverage.

Their dispute process is weird. I sold a few items on ebay and one of the buyers filed a dispute under a ridiculous pretense (sending pictures of a pulverized item that was a different color than what I had in my ad and claiming I sent them that). PayPal sent an email claiming they were investigating, apparently that was my cue to send in evidence or something but I assumed it meant they were investigating this ridiculous fraud on the part of the buyer.

Not so! They said since I didn't send in evidence in response to their very subtle prompt the decision defaulted to the claimant and I was out a bunch of money.

It was the last time I used PayPal or ebay for anything.

They had authorization for recurring payments, so they pulled those 1200 without my interaction.

PayPal said I didn't provide evidence that I provided: that the credit is still there unused, siding with them as arbiter against the evidence.

It's interesting because I had to integrate Stripe's dispute API for a client once and I'm sure the opposite was true - we had to prove the customer was lying, as Stripe would side with the customer by default, not the other way around.

I might be wrong though, this was years ago and I had no involvement in the dispute process itself, but that was my recollection. I'd have thought PayPal would be more pro-consumer if anything because of how consumer facing it is - it's not like they're just doing anonymous CC processing on behalf of the merchant, which is largely what Stripe does.

Stripe doesn’t rule disputes. The card issuer does.

if you're EU based, may be worth treating this as a consumer right to withdrawal

https://www.europe-consommateurs.eu/en/shopping-internet/14-..., instructions at the bottom for contacting your local european consumer center to complain. (Have heard this complaint process is very good + nearly automatic for airline refunds; not sure right of refusal cases).

If you're US based, you may be able to frame this as a gift certificate under the CARD act https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1693l-1, and at least dispute the expiration date. (But I'm not sure if this section gives you power to sue; you may have to contact your state AG).

(I'm not a lawyer)

Any chance you might have entered 1200 thinking you were entering 12? I've run into this situation more than once where there is/isn't a decimal where you think it isn't/is.

OP ordered a 1200 euro service and then cancelled before it was delivered. Instead of a refund, OVH gave him a 1200 euro "credit".

No, I have a separate charge for the 12.

The inconsistency of money amount inputs in web forms is infuriating.

Some will automatically enter a decimal and if you type "12" then it only enters 0.12. If you want 12.00, then you have to type 1200.

Others are the opposite. You enter "12" and you get 12.00. You have to manually enter the decimal if you want 0.12.

This is interesting because I run a SaaS service that uses PayPal for subscription payments (we don't do recurring payments, users must initiate each payment explicitly). Anyway over the years we have had various customers who for whatever reason decided they regretted paying us after the fact. Generally we just refund them but in a few cases the situation was pretty egregious and we felt the customer was not by any reasonable viewpoint due a refund. Guess what? in no case were we able to keep the money. In every single case PayPal gave our money back to the customer. So I wonder what magical power OVH has to get the opposite treatment.

Request a chargeback at your bank and accept that PayPal will close your account.

Unfortunately I used straight charge to my bank account, which limits the options in my jurisdiction.

Some banks are able to reverse charges as well, worth asking them

What jurisdiction?

If you’re in the US, Regulation E provides some protection from unauthorized charges. Though paying with a bank account is still silly because you’re losing out on cashback and credit cards always side with the customer in these disputes.

I have never once gotten a random invalid charge from OVH and it's been years. Do you actually have a 1200EUR VAT invoice with line items from them or was it just a charge out of nowhere?

Yes, in the moment I ordered a GPU instance with per hour billing an invoice for about 1 month of that instance was charged as "credit". They say I did it, but at no point I filed such order, and if I did, at no point that amount was shown to me.

Maybe a bug or some UX/UI shenanigans, since I also got errors to cancel such invoice and obtain a refund. But since I complained through PayPal they've been acting in bad faith (like contesting my dispute the very last day without getting back to me, or changing the reason why I I'm not eligible for a refund).

Does the invoice say 1 month? The last time I used the public cloud GPU instance there was a very explicit setting to bill hourly or to get a discount by getting a month in advance.

It just says 1200€ in credit, but it's exactly the cost oof that instance if you have it hourly for a month. Ordering the month would have been lower than that.

I wonder if there are shenanigans involving whether you're paying with a credit card with credit and a bank account that they might not be able to preauth. Has OVH phone support been of any use?

Even if you had ordered it, it makes no sense for OVH to act like that. It hasn’t been used, so why not refund it? It will cost them a lot more in reputation damage.

I didnt realise my ovh server was set to auto renew. I didnt want it. Ovh happily refunded my card. Just ask ovh to refund the unused credit and close the account.

They're refusing despite all my insistence.

Do they give a reason?

I had similar issue with Venmo. Venmo told me it's my fault. I went directly to my credit card and after 2 month and a lot of evidence, credit card company sided with me. Venmo said I can't use their products ever again. Fine by me, I use ApplePay now (until they screw me over I guess)

PayPal is garbage. Every interaction I have had with them has been miserable. At a previous ecommerce company we basically had to accept that 95% of our fraud claims would be denied without reason, just denied and closed and money lost, disregarding our proof.

I run my PayPal account from a dedicated bank account. If they try and take more than authorised then they will fail because the funds are not present.

They can take me to court if there’s an issue.

I have been burned before. Unless it’s a bank and are heavily regulated they are not your friends.

Unfortunately, a 1200€ loss is nowhere near the threshold to get legal involved (usually around $50k is the cutoff). OVH may however, become more attentive to your complaint if the lawyer asks nicely with a letter on your behalf.

One thing I did notice with PayPal... is one often has little success if you are international account and deal with a rare crooked American seller. We literally had sand shipped to us before, and still ate the loss. lol...

In my country, Slamming or unsolicited services are illegal, and people are not obligated to pay the invoice. It is one reason a credit card payment through a merchant is superior to paypal in some situations, as they tend to play by rules set by the local account laws. ;)

The moral of the story is 1. Use credit cards that has limits based on your top ups. COMPANY CANNOT CHARGE MORE THAN WHAT CASH AVAILABLE IN THAT CARD. Card app can also temporary disable the card at any time as you like. 2. As public, dont give advice about seeking arbitration help. Do like BLM, boycott and viral spread the issue. Dox if possible. Bombard their c-suite with hate mails. Now I've seen this way more helpful and powerful than ANY legal means.

Company these days are way more powerful than individual in legal arena. They have the advantage of corporate lawyers and cash to burn you out. The only way is exactly what BLM did effectively.

You will get nowhere with PayPal, sorry. If you try to arbitrate your claim, they will spend obscene amounts on lawyers to make a point.

PayPal is literally one of the very worst payment processors out there. I really wish people would stop using them.

> Now I'm stuck with an absurd amount of credit on a cloud service I have no use for (and worse, it expires in a year), and apparently there's no UI option for me to contest this PayPal ruling. Phoning them I found no option to talk to a person.

Your best bet is getting OVH to refund your money. If the credit amount is in dollars, you should be able to withdraw it.

Whenever I can I use SEPA payment for subscriptions (which it looks like OVH accepts, most debitcards are SEPA in Europa), because it allows you to withdraw within 2 months directly from your bank application directly, no questions asked. (SEPA is EU based)

Much better then credit cards and paypal, where you have to open a request for refund etc. You only have this in the EU, but it's the best option.

I also had the flip side where customers would withdraw a few months in payment because the couldn't make their mortgage. Which we ended up resolving in a nice way.

Maybe someone can recommend CC companies that tend to side on the Consumer side, American Express maybe?

SEPA sounds like a nice way to move cash around, don't get me wrong. But personally given the chance to use a credit card versus an even-smoother-than-US debit transaction, I'd still probably choose a credit card from a decent issuer. The biggest reason is because then its never my money getting tied up in any kind of investigation for any amount of time. While with SEPA/debit, if there's potentially a dispute its your money on the line. So for this example, I would have never lost the 1,200€, because their charge wouldn't have been trying to take my money. I would still have all my money, just a bit less of a line of credit on potentially multiple lines of credit available to me.

And that's before things like extra warranties, cash back benefits, etc. which I realize are a bit more complicated.

I've never used SEPA, but I'm curious how it would have played out here. The OP would have disputed the charge, what recourse would OVH have here? Would they be able to assert they did deliver the product and thus should be paid? Not saying I agree with OVH on this, but that appears that's OVH's position allegedly.

In your instance, you had customers refund legitimate transactions. What recourse would you have in that? Would you be able to dispute their refund and thus tie up their funds, or are you just out those funds until lawyers get involved?

Requesting a SEPA withdrawal you just get the money back instantly. They would have to use other ways like send reminder invoice and then threaten legal action. So it puts the burden of proof on the company instead of consumer.

By the way requesting a SEPA transaction at the moment is as easy as submitting a IBAN (bank account) nr. and that's enough to deduct money from that account via for instance a stripe account (or directly request it to a bank). That's probably why it's also very easy to refund it as a customer. In case of complaints they will check you, but it's based upon good faith. Not really sure why this works, but it does.

Officialy you need a mandate, but there is no electronic format, a paper and signature is also valid, so the banks in Europe just accept every SEPA request. But then customers have the power to refund and block on-demand.

There is even a risk of a fine if a consumer complains a withdrawal was made without proper authorization.

From a preventative POV, my thought was to use privacy.com with vendors. You can lock “cards” to a specific vendor, set monthly limits, etc.

Paypal has been literally doing stuff like this for over 20 years. paypalsucks.com was registered in 2000 but is apparently down now.

This isn't an excuse for their bad behavior but I don't understand why anyone continues to use them.

I really hate PayPal, for close to the full 20 years.

I still use them mainly because of eBay. I know that's but required now, but it was until pretty recently.

It's still often easier to use the PayPal checkout instead of making a one-off account at a random place.

Probably not worth it as a whole, but feels worth it sometimes to delay my cancellation a while.

This recently happened to me on PayPal with another company. I don’t think they read anything.

OVH support is pretty terrible. In other news, they have had an outage for over 24 hours now and it took them around 10 hours to provide any update after it began. https://status.us.ovhcloud.com/pages/incident/59dd23da8827c8...

OVH's support is not so much terrible as largely non-existent. However, they have been rather generous with free credits and I've never had a billing issue with them despite having used their various services for 13 years across at least three entities.

I actually have had really good support from them. Used to have a few servers with them which were getting DDoSed all the time.

Their free support was good, but we decided to pay for the ~60usd a month premium support and we even had some video calls with one of their engineers who worked with us to help mitigate the issues.

Yes, support is abysmal, but they are good at refunding and fixing billing issues.

Based on the OP, I'd say this is false.

Yes you're right, I meant in my own experience.

In general is there any reason to use PayPal? I think 15 years ago people were no used to using their credit card on the web but now its normal.

Because I don't like to enter my card details into a random site. Even if I trust the company in general, I still don't know how secure their infrastructure is.

Having a dedicated card/account for just paypal is easier.

I'm the same way I like paypal to mask this. However some credit cards now have "virtual cards" that give you a temporary online number that you can use for specific transactions. It's another great way to avoid your data getting out there. I use one from Citibank as I have a CC from them.

I highly recommend that instead of Paypal too if you suspect a site will have a much higher chance you'll need to reverse a charge. Paypal has longer wait times for disputes than the CC companies. CC companies will also have your back a bit more, typically.

If you set up a wise account you can create virtual cards - achieves the same outcome (minus paypal).

Some services demand PayPal if you want to receive money - for example BandCamp.

You can link it to your IBAN, which lets you pay using SEPA Direct Debit. This is pretty useful if you don’t have or don’t want to use a credit card.

PayPal doesn't have foreign transaction fees while most credit cards (at least in the US) do.

Paypal doesn't assess a forex fee as a separate line item, maybe. They document[1] that the "conversion rates" they give are 3-4% worse than wholesale, which is at least as bad as every credit card I've ever held.

[1]: https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/where-can-i-find...

Currency conversion is different but I'm not sure if it is necessarily worse with PayPal, although I haven't compared that as closely (I think credit cards often don't give great currency conversion rates either in addition to the foreign transaction fee). I sometimes make USD transactions outside the US (GOG, some donations) and for this PayPal doesn't charge me anything (not sure about the other side) while credit cards do (there are some that don't, but those have other issues for me). I'm not certain I've tried Bandcamp payments without a PayPal account, possibly there isn't a fee there since PayPal still processes the payments. I think I have made credit card payments to Canadian companies that accept USD without being charged the fee but I'm not sure if Canada is exempt or if the payment processor manages things so it doesn't apply.

It used to be completely rediculous how much PayPal would charge for conversion at the time of a transaction, but recently (I think in response to a lawsuit) it is only somewhat unreasonable (probably the 4% you mention). You can still get a better rate if you have funds in PayPal and do the conversion first and pay in the correct currency. However, then you risk a lengthy pain if PayPal decides to close your account randomly or block your access to it.

this happened to me. Part of an order wasn't sent as described. The merchant wouldn't accept a return. I opened a claim with evidence and they basically submitted a blank form for me. It was rejected. I called them again and explained that the evidence I attached wasn't considered. They resubmitted with a detail writeup on paypal's side and I was sided with.

Funnily enough, if you actually just send the order back, with signature required by recipient, then file a claim saying it wasn't as described, they will automatically side with you regardless of what the merchant says.

How did you get in touch with a human? Here it's canned or robotic responses as far as I can navigate through the menu.

At least for US paypal I logged in and clicked support and was given a (custom?) phone number to call from my registered number to the account, US based human answered within a minute and asked for the temporary code on the screen.

I recently got in a fight with GitLab of all places. I setup SSO on my self-hosted instance so people could sign-up and report bugs in my applications.

I never even noticed that a bunch of accounts was created until GitLab wrote "we noticed you are X licenses over your limit. Will will charge your credit card on <todays date>". I didn't know it worked that way, and I honestly didn't think users with no permissions to do anything would count as a full license.

I nearly shit my pants. It was a lot of money. I contacted support and asked them to remove my payment details. They declined and forwarded me to a sales person.

I told the sales person about my issue, but she said I accepted their terms and conditions, so now I had to pay. But hey, if we had a quick call with some sales executives, then maybe we could resolve the matter...

Suffice to say, now I use one-time credit-cards for all online services. It is not the first time I've been hogtied by an online service with no recourse.

PayPal also refused to help me out when i was defrauded. I went to my bank and reversed the PayPal charge and then PayPal sent me to collections. I had previously spoken to them multiple times including the day of the fraud, when they could have stopped the transaction and refused. Fuck PayPal.

What ended up happening with the collections?

I paid the $200 to not have to fucking deal with it

I’m in a situation where I have a half open account, they want me to provide ID which I won’t and they won’t allow me to close the account without providing ID. PayPal is a ridiculous company and in no way to be considered a serious partner or service in finance.

Post on BBB website, send the details and all relevant information to whatever your equivalent of the attorney general is and the one in Paypal and OVH's jurisdiction. Your best course of action is not to focus on PayPal but OVH. Send certified letters to both PayPal and OVH informing them of your contacting of the attorney general. Send to corporate offices and address of general counsel.

You can open arbitration but it costs money.

Be sure to clearly state what happened, why you think it is wrong, and your preferred remedy.

And this is why I closed my PayPal and Venmo accounts and will never do business with this awful company again. I had the same experience. Only lost $600 but lesson learned.

Take to social media. Plead your case to the masses. If you are cute enough (I suggest a puppy in the screenshot) it may go viral and get noticed by PayPal's marketing people. They have actual decision powers. That is how consumer service works these days.

These guys did eventually get they money after the morning news shows featured thier song. https://youtu.be/5YGc4zOqozo

https://us.ovhcloud.com/legal/terms-of-service "EU Consumer Policy"

OVH have a 14 day cooling off period for EU customers as required by EU consumer law. If you meet the criteria that might be a more fruitful avenue to approach OVH with, and to pursue enforcement.

In what country are you located? In France there's a "médiateur" https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F14373 It might apply in your case...

Credit card fraud protection? Try calling them and tell them how your credit card was abused by ovh?

What happened here is theft. OVH abused your connected service account to steal money from you, then claim you ordered a service that you did not order.

The correct proceeding from this point is legal restitution.

OVH blocks me from accessing my account because I used a virtual credit card (they demand a picture holding the card + ID!) AND a day later they proceeded to charge the card anyways.

The classic "I got ripped off by PayPal" thread is as old as the internet itself. It's amazing what you can get away with in this country with enough money.

Many of us have had similar experiences. My best advice is to move on and avoid using PayPal in the future.

wtf is this on the fairshakes.com website?

> DO I HAVE TO ARBITRATE?

> Many companies require you to resolve disputes with them through individual arbitration. The companies listed on FairShake’s website all include a clause in their contracts that prohibit you from filing a traditional lawsuit or joining a class action against them.

What? How is that valid/legal?

By accepting their terms and conditions the user accepts the arbitrage clause.

Why not restrict arbitage too in the terms, so users can do nothing after they accept the terms? I can write anything in my terms, doesn't mean it's valid.

Oh dear. Both Paypal and OVH, in one claim!

If there is a small claims court in your jurisdiction, you might try that one...

I use OVH. Any interest in selling me that credit for a fair discount (if you cant get your $$$ money)

I'm assuming you are a consumer since consumer protection organisations were mentioned.

I would start by sending a GDPR subject data request for any personal data they have. There is a definite time limit for the response time. In case of inaccurate data, then there is right to rectification.

If there is no appropriate receipt for the 1200 EUR charge showing value added taxes charged I would ask for the receipt. Some tax agency might be interested if there is no such receipt.

Stop. Using. PayPal.

CFPB

If your country has sensible laws, you should have the right to withdraw any credit. In that case you should ignore PayPal and deal with OVH.