Pass the vaseline; Paypal has at me again.

I am so mad right now I could eat a tank and spit rivots like in the Popeye cartoons.

Here is the skinny. Right before I joined the forum here, I landed a "job" as a mystery shopper. The pay was not the best but as I have said in other threads I have been doing whatever I could to try and keep my head above water. There were some sites I was sent to for this job where we were to sign up for trial periods and if there was an expense to do so, the company paid it to us up front.

Well, I signed up for the trials and then I would log into their sites once or twice and then cancel my membership, exactly as the company told me to do. Well, 4 of the companies decided to ignore my cancellation and they charged through for the regular monthly fees which came to a grand total of $201.35. Needless to say, I did not have this much in the account nor in the bank account associated with Paypal.

Now, here is the real kick in the groin. The way I signed up for those trials was to use Paypals secure credit card generator tool that you can download and install in both firefox and IE. They state that you can generate 2 types of cards. One that only one company can put charges on but it is good for like 3 years or something like that. The other, which is what I used, "generates a one time usage credit card to give added protection to your account." When you read that statement, would you think that they could use that card number up to 4 times? In truth, that is what the company can do is bill to that 1 time only card up to 4 times.

To make matters even worse, I caught these charges around the 1st of Feb. and called them right away to start the disputes. The guy on the phone with Paypal tells me that I need to fill out a disputed charge form. He was real quick at this point to get me off the phone and I soon learned why. Apparently personal accounts only see one dispute form. Those who have business accounts and are using the debit card see 2 and so on. I am looking at a screen with 3 different forms and no explanation of which one to use.

Finally, after a week of battling with them to get the right forms and then get all the data pertaining to the charges disputed, I am ready to submit the forms. At this point I figured I was put through the wringer enough. I just want to get this over with quickly at this point so I faxed the forms in. This was on Feb 17. I figured I would have that money back in my account and be good to go by the 20th given all the stories I have heard about speedy refunds. HAH!!!

The first of March rolls around and I still have not gotten any of my money back but now Paypal collections is calling me wanting me to pay them the amount my account is in the red by (some $160+). Every time I tell them that I have over $200 in disputes pending they tell me it is not showing up in their computers. Well, yesterday I took a preemptive strike on them when nothing was still showing up on my account and I called them. It took me threatening them with a lawsuit to get them in gear. Within half an hour I got 3 emails from them stating that they had received my documents, then that they had opened a case and finally that they needed a little more information. However, "While waiting for this information, we have issued a provisional credit of $201.35"(emphasis added by me) Well, I will tell you what; if they have issued it then it must have been with the help of Harry Potter and his invisibility cloak because I sure can't see the d**n thing anywhere in my account. I have now contacted a dear friend of the family's. Oh, did I mention that he is a practicing corporate attorney who just happens to be on the board for Procter and Gamble. He only deals in small companies.

I am just curious, has this s**t happened to anyone else and if so, how long did it take you to get it resolved? I really would like to know.