My Nonprofit Reviews

In January 2023 PayPal gave me a partial refund for a defective item. The refund was sent to a Chase credit card I had used for the original purchase (via PayPal). Unfortunately, I never received the credit on my credit card. Between February and July 2023, I contacted both PayPal and Chase multiple times. Each party accused the other one (PayPal said Chase had accepted the refund, Chase said they never received anything from PayPal). I escalated as much as I could within each company's customer service to no avail. In August 2023 I filed a CFPB complaint against Chase (unfortunately, a joint complaint can't be opened). Chase responded in October 2023 with the same information as before: "work with PayPal to resolve this". Next, I opened a CFPB complaint against PayPal, attaching the resolution of the Chase CFPB complaint. PayPal responded within 12 days reiterating that they had successfully transferred the funds to Chase. I used the CFPB response from PayPal to go to Chase again (in their response they provided the email address for their executive office) asking to reopen the case. They response did not change. After that, I used their response to reopen the case with PayPal’s executive office. I spent the remainder of October and all of November 2023 going back and forth multiple times with the executive office from both companies without getting anywhere. I requested evidence (i.e. a screenshot) from the PayPal system that Chase would be able to accept. Sadly, I got nothing. At that point, I received a few calls from both Chase and PayPal in which I told them that they were using me like a ping pong ball and that both companies should get on the phone together. But they were not really interested in a joint call. It was clear that I reached the end of the line using my resources.

That’s when I contacted Elliott Advocacy. I had the first contact on Dec 8th. I shared my story and all documentation (luckily I’m very organized and I had a very good paper trail). I don’t know exactly what Chris from Elliott Advocacy did, but within days both Chase and PayPal’s executive offices were calling me, though they repeated the same thing (talk to the other company). I only asked one thing: can we have a three-way conversation to sort this out? Chris kept working in the background. Eventually PayPal called me and said “let’s have a call with the Chase’s executive office”. The coordination took some effort on my part, but it finally happened on Dec 18th. It was a surreal conversation. The lady from PayPal was very professional and explained how a trace number works (many different Banks know what it is), but the lady from Chase was very confrontational saying that the trace number provided by PayPal meant nothing to them. After 20 minutes in which I simply watched them go back and forth, the conversation came of a deadlock. The lady from Chase in an extremely unprofessional way excused herself and hung up. The lady from PayPal stayed on the call. Very calmly she said that she disagreed with how Chase dealt with the matter, but understood I had no more recourse. Despite not admitting any guilt on PayPal’s part, she offered me a courtesy refund given my long-standing relationship of 22 years as PayPal’s client.

I don’t think this final favorable outcome would have been possible without Elliott Advocacy’s critical intervention. Chris’ deep knowledge on how to contact key customer advocacy departments within companies was fundamental. I am so thankful for what they did and accomplished! I think I should have contacted them earlier. I wasted 10 months getting nowhere and Chris fixed this in two weeks!