Complaint Review: Janet's Babysitting - Internet

WHAT HAPPENED

On Monday, July 3rd,2017 I discovered to my suprise a $3,050 charge to my PayPal credit. I viewed two notifcations in my email, a seller invoice and the $3.050 payment.

PROBLEM - MYSTERY SCENTSY DIRECT SALES PAYPAL TRANSACTION

The seller's PayPal account is with the name Janet Cervas. The sale information on PayPal leads to a website that sells Scentsy products. Scentsy is a direct sales company. I have never been interested in direct sales products or companies. I do not follow this business model and am not interested. In fact I feel there is a problem with this business model. I cannot afford to buy any merchandise at this time. I am seriiously behind with my rent and am working on preventing eviction by focusing on work search and clearing out my place to sell my stuff. This purchase is therefore the worst thing to do when in debt. This has added to my distress and one more thing to take up my time.

INVESTIGATION

My next step was to do research online and on Facebook to look for any messages or posts to help me find anything that might have led to this mystery PayPal transaction. There have been numerous security breaches in the past including Yahoo and a Teamviewer based scam. I do get mystery processes running on my computer. I think it is safe to presume that this is either a malfunctioning web script or a secuirty breach. I did give out my driver's license to a Facebook group to check out an online job which I decided to decline after reading the description.

ONLINE SALES SERVICE SCAM?

The best thing I could find was this captured bit of a tutorial I found from a Facebook group. Do not sign up for this. It might be a way to hack in to or mess up your PayPal account or that of your customers. It could appeal to desperate MLM direct sellers who want to sell their wares. I aware of many types of scams. This is a new one for me.

Recruit Info

Please make sure all recruits follow these requirements BEFORE adding them to chat:

- 18+ years old

- Lives in US

- Paypal Account must be 7+ months or older with 10+ transactions over the last 60 days…

- Paypal Account 2+ YEARS or older, and transactions don’t matter as much.

Or

- Has PayPal business debit card gray one

RESPONSE - ALERT PAYPAL

So my response, as what most would do, was to file a PayPal dispute to report an unauthorized transaction. After I did that, Janet on Facebook started to attack me through Messenger. I never communicated with this person before though she was on my friends list (not now, however). I was unable to understand this behavior. It was very unplesanant and unprofessional. If there is a transaction error and if a transaction will causse a buyer a hardship, then a professional merchant acts to refund the purchase.

EVIDENCE OF SALES SERVICE SCAM

Added to that, Janet spoke highly of a person named "Kevin", who appeared to be helping her sell her products on her website. However, the transaction was not a legitimate sale of products to a customer. There is no shipment of products. There is no detailed list of products. The tracking information is not there. Just one payment of $3,050. It did not make any sense.

It looked to me from the information I found is that Janet is using a very aggressive and shady sales and marketing service. She is loyal to her client who may be helping her with the technical PayPal sales process. She may be the victim of a scam, too but refuses to see that this is not a proper way to sell online.

PAYPAL RESPONSE

When I called PayPal that day, it appeared that PayPal had my back. I reported my distress with receiving continual emails from Janet to pay her. My credit was restored. It looked good for me.

Then the next day I received a notification that the dispute case was changed to closed, something I did not do. Someone had to get in perhaps by phone and changed the dispute status. This is not right and is evidence of account breach. I called PayPal again to report unauthorized dispute status change, but I am not sure that the security team will see this as a bad transaction. It does not fit under current list of PayPal based scams. This appears to be something new. I fear that this will not be resolved in my favor and that PayPal will side with the seller.

SUMMARY

It is my best hope that PayPal security team examines the transaction as a whole and realizes that is is not legit. There are no shiipped products. It appears that an aggressive, shady sales service is running this sale on behalf of Janet. I have tried to lock down my security the best that I can do. I am overwhelmed with distress and feel ill about this. I feel for Janet who may be relying on this service to make sales, but it is not right. No one can force a customer to buy products they do not want. Learn to do sales the right way through normal marketing and sales channels. I have to protect my financial status and security because it will end badly for me if this $3,050 credit is allowed to stand.

HOW TO FIX THIS

This has to end now with an agreement to refund the sale and to seek compensation from the owner of the sales service, Kevin. Do what is right.