Here is were things started to turn unreal. I filed a dispute and the nearest category seemed to be “unauthorized transaction”. I provided as much information as I had with forwarded emails.

The next thing that happened was that my paypal account got locked down! I was able to open it back up, thinking this must be some misunderstanding.

To my dismay, Paypal summarily dismissed the dispute. I was somehow able to talk to a live person, and she said she would re-open it and take care of it in a few hours. The catch was that since the unauthorized access dispute was already denied, they had to categorize it as “item not received”. With a false sense of relief I hung up the phone, after all, in 19 years I never really had a problem with paypal.

Days went by and nothing happened, so I called them up again and now they said that they received a response from the merchant in the form of a tracking number. To add insult to injury I had to return the item – PP suggested refusing delivery. This is the only course of action available to me they explained. This was not a major purchase mind you, but the whole premise was more than disturbing.