Weird Paypal bug as an FYI

[Danab]

I had a customer complain that I had charged them twice for their Paypal payment and they wanted me to refund one. I explained that we only had the one payment and since we did not have their financial info, there was no way we could charge them multiple times or refund a transaction we could not see in our account.

I called Paypal and the guy on the phone was like hmmm.....silence, hes taking to someone in the background....more hmmm, hmmmm...then says everything is OK.

I called the customer in person and it looks like she went to pay with Paypal from our site. Then she thinks she got partway through the Paypal "verification process" and decided to cancel. She went ahead and paid for her order. Apparently Paypal charged $1.00 to her card as part of their verification process. They put my business name next to the verification charge then sent the charge for the order through to the card. So there were two charges from "us" on her statement and I could only see the valid one for her order.

/facepalm

Dana

[brassandsilver]

That's actually a standard part of the credit card verification process. The $1.00 charge is just verifying that the account is valid, and then that charge will fall off or be replaced by the actual purchase. If she switched payment methods during checkout, that could certainly trigger a second transaction to appear. Not really a bug, just a part of normal credit card verification that not a lot of consumers are aware exists.

[Danab]

I am guessing its a rare glitch caused by the customer cancelling the Paypal buyer verification process midway then using the same card to pay for her order in the same session.

Paypal put my business name next to the $1.00 verification charge to become a verified buyer with Paypal (instead of saying the charge came from Paypal itself which is what usually happens). So when the customer talked to the credit card company, they told her we charged her card twice for two separate transactions. To top it off, this customer had been using Paypal as an unverified buyer for a long time. It immediately raised all sorts of red flags with her since it is her first time doing business with us and I had a very unhappy customer.

I thought I would post it just in case it happens to someone else. First time in 14 years, so I'm betting I won't see it again.