Dealing with PayPal chargebacks

Before you start reading: This is not a silver bullet, this article is based on our general understanding of PayPal's action center and dispute handling.

PayPal offers various protections to buyers, one of them being the ability to open a dispute/claim.

What is a dispute?

A dispute allows the buyer to contact the seller (you) through PayPal. You will have the ability to talk to the buyer using PayPal's action center. It is always preferred to try to talk to the buyer and handle it with them.

What is a claim?

A claim happens when either the buyer or you escalate it. With a claim, it won't be a "chat" between you and the buyer. Instead, PayPal will step in and decide who is right.

How do I know if I got a claim?

PayPal will email you about the creation, updates, and who has won the claim.

Types of claims

The buyer can select a reason as for why they want their money back. The most common ones are:

Items not received

This means that the buyer says that they did not get the items.

Items not as described

This means that the buyer says that they did not get what you promised them in your store.

Unauthorized transaction

This means that the buyer says that someone else made the transaction. Either someone without their permission (hacked, family, etc.)

How do I win a claim?

There is no clear answer here. It depends on a lot of factors. It's always best to try to talk to the user before, as getting PayPal involved is not always necessary. But sometimes required. How to proceed depends on the type of claim:

Items not received

Before responding, actually check if the player got their items. You can do that by taking the PayPal transaction ID, going to our dashboard, and looking up the transaction ID at [ Payments -> Lookup ]. This page will show the payment, its status, and the commands that were executed. You could take a screenshot of that page to indicate that the user did indeed receive their items. Servers logs of the player using the items (e.g. showing that the user has messaged while they have a specific prefix from a rank) might help.

Items not as described

For this type, we do not have much advice, as it is based on what you wrote in the package description and how you and the buyer interpreted it.

Unauthorized transaction

This type indicates that the buyer is saying that they did not do this transaction. The claim will be reviewed by someone at PayPal. They might have more information (like what IP the owner of the account used to make the claim). So we suggest you provide PayPal with information that they can use to verify if they indeed made the payment. When looking up the payment on our dashboard, you will have the ability to see the buyer's IP. You can provide this to PayPal, they might be able to cross-check if the buyer's IP matches the IP of the claimant (if it does, they did make the payment). You can also check if the email that they entered at your store matches their PayPal email. That is also a good sign that they are the owner of that account.

Keep in mind that the buyer stated that they did not make this payment. So proof like showing that they got the items and such are not relevant.

General tips

We highly recommend being polite and helpful to both the buyer and PayPal. Keep in mind that the PayPal team responsible for processing these claims probably has a long list of claims to take care of. So be as clear as possible when writing your responses.

We also recommend making sure that your store has clear guidelines, like a Terms of Service page, and descriptive packages that show exactly what they'll get. The less possibility for confusion, the better.

Closing words

Claims are hard, PayPal has to choose who is right, and who's not. Screenshots can be faked, information can be false. So make sure to share proof that cannot be faked.