My wife has a Thai Paypal account used for running an online business.

And we had a customer chargeback 4 orders! Totaling over $1600. These orders were placed over a 5 month period. Some how they managed to get their credit card company to believe that they hadn't noticed charges on their CC for 5 months!

These 4 chargebacks must have triggered a Paypal risk system and the account got limited (we could not withdraw any money)

Anyways we were obviously quite worried and I called up the Singapore Paypal Support (the only support number listed for Thai accounts). I could barely understand the guy because of a thick Chinese accent, and he was quite blunt and rude.

I tried to explain that we weren't selling anything untoward and that if he looked at the account he'd see that actually all 4 chargebacks were from the same customer.

He just kept repeating "4 chargeback, not 1. 4 chargeback, not 1".

Anyways the account remained limited for a few days, and in the end I decided to find and call the US Paypal support number. Although i though maybe they'd just transfer me back to Singapore.

To my surprise the US tech support were able to pull up the Thai account, and offer support without any problem. Immediately they looked at the account and saw this was obviously 1 rouge customer out of 100s and within a few hours the account was unlimited.

TIP:

Call the US support for any problems with your Thai account, don't waste your time with the Singapore call center.

They then "reviewed the case" and contested the chargebacks with the customers credit card company. This process takes 3 months.

But to my surprise when the 3 months ended, they said i'd won the case, and transferred all 4 orders back into our account!

Got every cent back, plus they didn't charge us the initial transaction fees.

To summary, the Singapore call center sucks, the US call center is very good, and at the end of the day we got the money.

So if you get a chargeback, don't despair; their could be a light at the end of the tunnel.

(Orders were to New Zealand, and not covered by Paypal sellers protection)

My wife has a Thai Paypal account used for running an online business.

And we had a customer chargeback 4 orders! Totaling over $1600. These orders were placed over a 5 month period. Some how they managed to get their credit card company to believe that they hadn't noticed charges on their CC for 5 months!

These 4 chargebacks must have triggered a Paypal risk system and the account got limited (we could not withdraw any money)

Anyways we were obviously quite worried and I called up the Singapore Paypal Support (the only support number listed for Thai accounts). I could barely understand the guy because of a thick Chinese accent, and he was quite blunt and rude.

I tried to explain that we weren't selling anything untoward and that if he looked at the account he'd see that actually all 4 chargebacks were from the same customer.

He just kept repeating "4 chargeback, not 1. 4 chargeback, not 1".

Anyways the account remained limited for a few days, and in the end I decided to find and call the US Paypal support number. Although i though maybe they'd just transfer me back to Singapore.

To my surprise the US tech support were able to pull up the Thai account, and offer support without any problem. Immediately they looked at the account and saw this was obviously 1 rouge customer out of 100s and within a few hours the account was unlimited.

TIP:

Call the US support for any problems with your Thai account, don't waste your time with the Singapore call center.

They then "reviewed the case" and contested the chargebacks with the customers credit card company. This process takes 3 months.

But to my surprise when the 3 months ended, they said i'd won the case, and transferred all 4 orders back into our account!

Got every cent back, plus they didn't charge us the initial transaction fees.

To summary, the Singapore call center sucks, the US call center is very good, and at the end of the day we got the money.

So if you get a chargeback, don't despair; their could be a light at the end of the tunnel.

(Orders were to New Zealand, and not covered by Paypal sellers protection)

Thanks for posting that, it's good information. I've just started using Paypal to buy a few things and get them sent to the States (I'd never have anything sent here, too big a chance of losing it). Because I changed countries, I had to close my Paypal account, start a new one. Made a purchase, and discovered that they had to verify the same credit card that I used all along, with the same log-in name! I think I might want to call them...

If you already have a US PayPal account, can you add a separate Thai account?

Please excuse my ignorance. When you say a thai paypal account, do they pay in Baht or is it a dollar account that is simply paid into a bank in Thailand? I would love to know thanks.

Please excuse my ignorance. When you say a thai paypal account, do they pay in Baht or is it a dollar account that is simply paid into a bank in Thailand? I would love to know thanks.

Payments are collected in USD, but then can be withdrawn to a Thai bank account (USD converted to THB on withdrawal, not at a great exchange rate though)

If you already have a US PayPal account, can you add a separate Thai account?

I'm 99% sure the accounts have to be separate.

So you could have a US account and a Thai account, but the accounts would not in any way be linked.

But getting back to the main topic: in my view Paypal is a necessary evil. I certainly wouldn't accept payments for transactions for over 100 dollars unless I was posting by Fed Ex, etc. and the money came direct out of the Paypal balance. Otherwise you are subject to the grossly unfair cc chargeback rule, and the equally horrid Paypal resolutions procedure. And as the OP discovered they are quite happy to blame the victim.

Both Paypal and Ebay are notoriously bad organisations seeming to typify the worst aspects of modern business ethics. This is my honest opinion having dealt with both for over 5 years.

Dave, Thanks for posting your result with Paypal, I'll certainly bare your experience in mind in future. Fair play, I'm so glad to hear that you got a positive result.