DealTree Sends Phone Trade In Money To Imaginary PayPal Account
What's going on with DealTree? They handle Nokia's "Trade-up" program, which reimburses you cash for your old phones. It says clearly on the "how it works" page as well as in their terms and conditions that they'll mail a paper check to you after confirming your phone's value. In Paul's case, they say dumped his money into a PayPal account—and Paul says there's nothing in his account and PayPal has no record of a transaction.
OK, here's the story. The wife and I decided to get new phones. We went to Nokiausa.com and read about their trade up program. The program works like this: You estimate the condition of your phone. You print out a shipping label and send your phone to the company, which is operated by Dealtree. Phone 1 and Phone 2 were assigned a value of $134 each. Fast forward to June 19, 2009. I get an e-mail stating the following for each phone:
Thank you for using the Dealtree trade-in process. We have processed a payment to your paypal id xx@xx.com. Details of the transaction: Dealtree Trade-in: 1595xx Payment amount: $134.00 Paypal Userid Paid: xx@xx.com Paypal Transaction ID: 3001154 Dealtree Customer Support NokiaTradeup@eztradein.com
I was curious, I never gave them my PayPal account e-mail address. I was expecting a "paper check". I logged into my PayPal account, no money. Where is my $268? I added the e-mail address listed in the e-mail to my account, no money. I call PayPal, they state that no such transaction ID exists. It is not looking good.
Paul contacted DealTree to ask what's going on, but he's still waiting for a response.
(Photo: faeryboots)
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Comments:
I'm guessing that xx@xx.com belongs to the guy who handles incoming equipment's paperwork.
DealTree is owned by Best Buy - there's your problem.
What the email listed as the Paypal account his real email address, or some other one? That wasn't made clear in this.
If it was really his, then HTH did they get it if he didn't give it to them?
I wonder how they would have handled MY business since I don't have a Paypal account at all, anymore.
I had this problem with Paypal once. I decided to change my email address to a new one. I had an eBay auction still in progress at the time though. When the auction concluded, I didn't know where my money was. I called PayPal and they told me to add the old address back into my PayPal account. That worked!! PayPal associates transactions with email addresses NOT with user accounts. Make sure that the email address they sent the payment to is associated with your account.
A real PayPal transaction ID would be much longer and have both letters and numbers.
@Muhammed T Prophet:
It's surprisingly difficult not to lay all the world's faults at the feet of PayPall, but they actually seem to not be the problem here.
I'm not sure why this story was published before DealTree responded... even if it was a useless automated response. I'm going to say Dealtree prob screwed up here, maybe this e-mail shouldn't have gone out? Maybe paypal payments might be something they offer in the future and they are testing the system? How long as it been since you tried to contact Dealtree? A Week, Hours, 20 minutes ago? The OP doesn't say, so it's hard to really blame anyone yet.
most likely the email was generated in error and the OP will receive a check in the mail.
@wrjohnston19283: Dealtree is not owned by Best Buy. They do a lot of "business" with Best Buy. Dealtree misleads their customers AND their employees. I used to work there. They will scam anyone and everyone out of their money. Garry Heath and Paul Fletcher are scam artists that sell used and broken garbage that they bought from Best Buy's customer returns that are too broken to return to their vendors.
It states "Receiving Payment Dealtree will mail a check for the final value of the mobile phone within 4-6 weeks of receiving both your old phone and proof of purchase of your new Nokia mobile device.
The estimated value is not final until the item has been verified. " on the website.
Nothing wrong with using Paypal to process these trade-ins. I think it's not a bad idea (you get the money, they still don't have your bank account info, even off of a cashed check).
However, I seriously doubt there was any actual Paypal activity going on here.
Could be worst.. the could be owned by circuit city
@GC: Most useful comment on this article yet! I'm wondering if they're planning to make Paypal an option in the future and someone accidently left a test auto-responder on. It's happened before...
I sent in 2 handheld game systems for my son to Deal Tree...talk about "bait and switch"! One was now magically worth $0 (and would cost $20 to have returned...and the other was worth 20% less than the value they quoted on the website. Also $20 to return. No combining shipping even though I sent the units to them TOGETHER! I have yet to even get the 80% offered on the one unit....delay after delay, each time I call. SCAMMERS!!!!
I want to blame PayPal for this one, but DealTree and eztradein.com reek of scamminess.