refund/paypal dispute sanity check?

Posted 4 years, 1 month ago by oneironym

I got an adoptable about a week ago, and the artist posted their paypal info and I paid that day. I hadn't heard anything back from them for several days this week (like note with the file of the separate of the critter), so I went to check in on deviantArt again and discovered that the artist had blocked me. 

I messaged them at their paypal email to ask what was up, and if there were any problems with the transaction, and provided the transaction ID. I had also given my deviantArt username in the note for the paypal transaction. They responded saying that they block people who don't pay. I also saw that they had resold the adopt to someone else.

I'm willing to believe that it was just a careless mistake on their part, not paying attention to their paypal, and nothing malicious. I don't want to bring the adopt owner into any drama, and I don't care to accept another adopt or anything as compensation (just bad vibes, you know?). But I still need to get my money back, and I've not had to do this before, so I wanted to ask for outside perspective on my next step as a sanity check.

Bottom line, I paid for an item and the item was not delivered, and was in fact sold to someone else. If I say something like, "Please send a refund by this coming Monday or I will initiate a paypal dispute/back-charge", does that sound reasonable? 

Kolo

i think that sounds reasonable. it gives them a timeframe to respond and realize their mistake, while also still getting you your money back - possibly include your paypal email or name in the message so they have a better chance of finding the transaction? sorry to hear this happened to you, though, that's really bizarre! 

oneironym

Yeah, I provided my PayPal email again (and also emailed them from that address), as well as the transaction ID from my PayPal receipt.

I asked for a refund and they readily agreed, but also asked me to initiate the charge-back, since they could still not find the transaction on their end. Hopefully this will go smoothly from here, especially since they agreed via email to the refund.

In a completley unrelated transaction, I paid a commission invoice today, and I notified that artist that I'd had a problem recently with PayPal. With luck, it was just a one-time fluke/careless error, and won't cause any issues for the other artist.

216th

I think I got this same issue or a similar one with one of my recent purchases, and the artist had to call Paypal to find the transaction. It might just be an issue Paypal is having at the moment, unfortunately :c