Thought I should post the results….
Late last week I finally got my money back from the unauthorized transactions, however paypal shortchanged me. They paid me 200USD instead of 265AUD. So I had to call them. They also refused to refund the dishonour fees given by my bank ($495 in total).
I called my bank and they told me that Paypal needed to write me a letter to send to the bank explaining what had happened etc. So they were pretty efficient in doing that – letter was sent the same day (only they didn’t include the full number of transactions). I requested that paypal change it for me but got no reply (and still none to this day mind you), so I changed it myself and faxed it to my bank with all the documentation. Within a few days all the dishonour fees had been refunded by my bank.
When all this happened I also went into my bank to report the transactions. I received a letter yesterday telling me that they have refunded $1600 of the transactions back to my account. This is strange because the only one that went through was the 265AUD one. The rest bounced because there was no money in my account. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t check my account for those things but I guess I should just leave the money there in case they decide to take it back.
Anyhow I thought i’d post the outcome. I’m very surprised with Paypal. I really didn’t think i’d get anything back. I’m disappointed in the time it took though and that they told me they would refund my dishonour fees then refused to after 3 people told me they would.
Anyhow the lesson here is to always change your password. I would also recommend the keychain number password thing that Paypal now offers. It changes your password every 10 seconds or something and you can only log in if you have the number display.
Cheers