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On June 12th, I received one of MANY emails from Hockey Giant, advertising clearance hockey gear.  I ordered a couple of nice Minnesota Wild shirts for $25.98.  I decided to pay with PayPal.  Now Hockey Giant has a totally screwed up way to pay them via PayPal.  You have to place your order with Hockey Giant, receive a Hockey Giant order number, then go to PayPal and initiate a payment to Hockey Giant, inputting the order number into a Payment you make directly from PayPal (Hockey Giants web site does not link directly to PayPal).

Now, I admit, seeing what a crap job Hockey Giant did of integrating to PayPal, I should have pulled out my trusty Visa card.  But, I thought, “What could go wrong, it is only $25 dollars and PayPal protects up to $200″. (Boy was I wrong).

I followed Hockey Giants instructions and confirmed that they had received the payment by looking at my PayPal account.  30 Days later, I thought “Man, even with as slow as Hockey Giant is, I should have received my order by now”.  So I called Hockey Giant.  The “gentleman” I spoke to on the phone informed me that I was “mistaken”, and that I NEVER payed Hockey Giant for my order.  Even though I could produce payment information to them, he basically told me to f-off (he did not use the f-word, but it was in his tone).

Disheartened, I decided to issue a chargeback via PayPal.  I have done this with my Visa card several times, and it has always been an easy and straight forward process.  It was easy with PayPal as well, I submitted a complaint that was forwarded to Hockey Giant, Hockey Giant did not respond, so I escalated the complaint to PayPal, they emailed Hockey Giant, Hockey Giant did not respond, PayPal found in my favor!  Great, right?

Well no.  It seems that PayPal will only refund your money if the merchant pays them back.  PayPal basically said “We have found in your favor, but the merchant did not pay us, so you are out of luck”.  What a bunch of crap.  Hockey Giant ripped me off.  They committed theft and PayPal just endorsed it.

By the way, Hockey Giant still advertises that they except PayPal, and PayPal does not give a crap.  I will NEVER EVER EVER EVER use PayPal to purchase anything that accepts ANY other form of payment.  PayPal allows merchants to rip off consumers and they just do not seem to care.

Update 9/10/08 @ 9:45

I got so pissed reading what I had written that I decided to Google “contact PayPal by phone” and I called them.  The first call I made, hung up on me after I asked to be transfer to an “operator”.  Man, was I more pissed!  I tried again, and this time I connected with “Jeremy”.  Now, fortunately for Jeremy, while I was ready to tear someones head off, he was actually clear, precise and polite (he was quite good actually).

He did inform me that PayPal offers $200 or $2000 protection only on Ebay purchases, and any other merchant, they try to recover the money, but they do not guarantee anything (quite a bit different than the Visa protection policy).  I then asked him why Hockey Giant (aka Sports Giant, LLC) was still accepting PayPal.

He looked at their account and I guess he saw that they still had activity.  He placed a call to the “fraud department” and had me on hold for ~10 minutes.  He came back and said “Even though your claim says closed, there is an ongoing investigation and you will be notified via email”.  When I asked him for an ETA, he was clear that he was given no other information and was told to inform me “We will let you know via email”.  I think he was frustrated that he could not resolve this for me.

For now, I will wait, but I may try calling PayPal everyday.  If this really bugs me, maybe I will sue Sports Giant, LLC for theft.