Paypal refund from seller less than what i paid because of currency exchange rate change

[fergua3]

i made a largeish payment to a seller in Euro via Paypal a few weeks ago.  Seller was not able to get the items i paid for and refunded me.  But the amount i am getting back is about $20 less in Canadian dollars than what i paid due to the fact the Euro has dropped in value vs the Canadian dollar.

What's up with that?  Every time i have received a Paypal refund in the past, i get exactly the same amount back that i paid, regardless of currency fluctuations.  Is this some new scam from Paypal?

[marnotom!]

My understanding from the days when PayPal was eBay's payment processor is that PayPal has always done it this way.  The only exceptions were when the refund was issued shortly (say, 24 hours or so) after the original payment.

https://www.paypal.com/ca/cshelp/article/where-is-my-refund-help130

[fergua3]

hm....well over the years i've had to get a handful of refunds from Paypal and they were all in foreign ie non Canadian dollars and i always got exactly to the penny back what i paid.  These refunds were usually weeks after the original date of payment.   Hard to believe that in every case the exchange rate happened to be exactly the same.

Anyway, i phoned Paypal and even though i've used them for over 17 years, was at one time a decent sized seller using them, and still use them for all my online purchases, those cheap sob's wouldn't even give me a one time courtesy refund of $19.72.   I pointed out that if Paypal was not going to fully protect me, like i thought they would, what do i need to use them for?   Still nothing.

So,  now i'm looking for a new online payment method that does fully protect.  Anyone know of any besides just using a credit card?  I prefer not to enter my credit card info on a bunch of different online sites.  Google Pay?  Apple Pay?  Others?

[marnotom!]

I use Apple Pay to make purchases online with my iPhone and to make purchases in person.  It's basically a system where you can store your credit cards, bank cards, and even loyalty cards in a virtual wallet and use an semi-anonymized version of your cards by paying with your phone.  I can't make purchases on my PC with it, but I do have my credit card information saved on Chrome, the browser I use on my PC and iPhone, so I don't have to enter it for every site that I visit and make purchases from.  I just have to remember my CVV.

My understanding is that Google Pay works in a similar fashion as Apple Pay but has more features and Firefox supports saved credit card information as well.

I'm surprised that you're suggesting that direct credit card payments are subject to full refunds when currency exchange is involved, but maybe my recollections of the few refunds I've received for foreign currency purchases are fuzzier than I thought.

Just out of curiosity, do you recall if the "full" refunds you received from PayPal were for purchases that used the same payment source as the one where you didn't get the "full" refund?

[fergua3]

the Paypal refunds in the past, where  i received full, exact refunds regardless of currency fluctuations would have been from my credit card.   The most recent one where i didn't get the full refund due to currency fluctuation was paid from my debit card,  so my chequing account was the funding source.

I remember once several years ago i bought something directly with my credit card and had to call my issuer for a refund when the seller ghosted me....i got a full, exact refund on that and i know that the currency exchange when i got the refund was less favourable towards me but i still got what i originally paid back.

i'm trying to imagine what would have happene on my most recent Paypal refund if the foreign currency had gone up instead of down.  Do you think Paypal would have refunded me an extra 20 bucks?  I don't.  Not for one second..

[marnotom!]

I just stumbled on this page and found it interesting. It suggests (a ways down) that how your credit card issuer handles refunds involving currency exchange may depend on the features of the card:

https://creditcardgenius.ca/blog/foreign-currency-purchase-exchange#return-purchases-foreign-currenc...

[fergua3]

i was wondering about that.  Makes sense.   Also, back in the day i had a higher ranked status on Paypal because i was doing much more activity than i am now.  So maybe that higher status gave me perks like protection against currency fluctuations on refunds?  However, it could simply be Paypal policy changes over the years that caused me to lose the $20.   They have been becoming bigger tightwads with each passing year.

Whatever the case, i'm activly looking for a Paypal alternative so i never use them again,  and am planning on bad mouthing them to anyone that will listen.  They no longer have a friend in me....

[marnotom!]

When you funded those PayPal payments with your credit card, did you have PayPal do the currency conversion the way it did for the payment from your chequing account or did you let your credit card issuer handle that?  It sounds as though had your card issuer do the currency conversion, which means that it would have handled the currency conversion for the refund, not PayPal.

The thing with funding a payment through a bank account is that I don't believe bank accounts have a "refund" function the way that credit card accounts do.  What you're receiving as a refund is actually a funds transfer that's "from scratch."  That is, there's no link to the original transaction the way there is for a credit card payment.  I'm guessing that's a big reason why PayPal refunds of bank account-funded payments are subject to currency exchange fluctuations.

Having said all that, I do have to wonder if things would have been different had you gone through the Money Back Guarantee process through eBay rather than going through PayPal, assuming that this was an eBay purchase, of course.

[fergua3]

in all cases Paypal did the currency exchange, not my bank or credit card company.

But your point about Ebay's MBG... I just realized that this transaction has nothing to do with Ebay.  It was a purchase i made directly from a site in Gemany.  I forget sometimes that this is an Ebay forum and not just a forum for discussing online shipping and shopping.

So this entire thread has been off topic.  oops.