Did I screw up over a PayPal transfer?

So last night I received notification that a $3,800 payment was sent to my Paypal account. It wasn’t anything that I was expecting. Immediately, I grew suspicious and thought somebody was trying to phish my account for a password so I logged into my desktop and lo and behold over $3,800 was deposited into my Paypal account. The payment was from some real estate company and when I did a quick google search of the address that was referenced, it was a home that was just sold within the last couple of weeks in Illinois. 20 minutes later I got an email from the President of some the company acknowledging the commission check for the aforementioned home. The kicker in all this? It was a personal payment. Not some purchase transaction over Paypal. Basically, just like as if you sent $200 to mom for dinner.

I was in disbelief that somebody would have been so careless as to send such a large payment to the incorrect Paypal account. My conscience immediately felt it was wrong to do nothing as I had no claim to it. So I refunded the payment back to the sender and sent a note to the email address it came from. A few hours later the President responded and apologized about the confusion and thanked me.

This morning I felt a little conflicted/remorseful that I literally threw away a windfall. Why? This wasn’t an authorized goods/services transaction over Paypal. Personal payments are not covered and won’t be supported by any buyer protection that is afforded to transactions that require proof of service/delivery. My conscience feels good because I did the right thing but my brain tells me I could have kept the money scot-free. It’s not like I couldn’t use the money. Actually, a personal situation has come up for me in the last couple of months where I’m in need of as much money as I can get so the money could have gone to a really well intended purpose. So now, a part of me thinks I just ed myself over and went all Joker on the city of Arkham. Did I just screw this up? $3,800 we’re talking here. #FML

Donut2922 said:

So last night I received notification that a $3,800 payment was sent to my Paypal account. It wasn’t anything that I was expecting. Immediately, I grew suspicious and thought somebody was trying to phish my account for a password so I logged into my desktop and lo and behold over $3,800 was deposited into my Paypal account. The payment was from some real estate company and when I did a quick google search of the address that was referenced, it was a home that was just sold within the last couple of weeks in Illinois. 20 minutes later I got an email from the President of some the company acknowledging the commission check for the aforementioned home. The kicker in all this? It was a personal payment. Not some purchase transaction over Paypal. Basically, just like as if you sent $200 to mom for dinner.

I was in disbelief that somebody would have been so careless as to send such a large payment to the incorrect Paypal account. My conscience immediately felt it was wrong to do nothing as I had no claim to it. So I refunded the payment back to the sender and sent a note to the email address it came from. A few hours later the President responded and apologized about the confusion and thanked me.

This morning I felt a little conflicted/remorseful that I literally threw away a windfall. Why? This wasn’t an authorized goods/services transaction over Paypal. Personal payments are not covered and won’t be supported by any buyer protection that is afforded to transactions that require proof of service/delivery. My conscience feels good because I did the right thing but my brain tells me I could have kept the money scot-free. It’s not like I couldn’t use the money. Actually, a personal situation has come up for me in the last couple of months where I’m in need of as much money as I can get so the money could have gone to a really well intended purpose. So now, a part of me thinks I just ed myself over and went all Joker on the city of Arkham. Did I just screw this up? $3,800 we’re talking here. #FML

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Not exactly the same thing, but I bought a snes games from someone on ebay and he sent me the game I ordered plus Kirby Super Star for the snes. I debated keeping it because I doubt he even knew it was sent to me, but in the end I messaged him and he sent me $5 to send it the person that actually bought it. Years later I got Kirby Super Star at a yard sale for like $2 (ironically, it costed $3 to ship so the guy had given me the extra $2).

I dunno. I mean, you did the right thing, but $3800...damn. Personally, as the monetary value goes up I feel worse about keeping the money. If I found $10 on the street I'd keep it for sure. If I found a bag full money that was $5000 I'd probably take it to the police. Plus, this isn't $3800 you found on the street, they would know exactly where that money went.

I think you made the right choice and that isn't from a morality standpoint. I think the smart choice was either to return it or wait for them to ask you to return it, then return it. It's a lot of money and they know where they sent it. You really could have had legal problems. You made the right choice.

EDIT: All that being said, if it was my money you returned, I would have kicked you back $200. I really would have.

There may be legal liability depending on the seller sending you the funds.  You don't know who they actually are.  If someone was paid to look through their financials, and inquire about that amount, that will be extra headaches for you that you will probably not want to deal with.

I would be more concerned why they have your email, as opposed to the correct email.  Is your easy enough to get confused with another person's?  Or is there an ulterior motive there?

Also, you can still dispute Friends & Family payments.  In the dispute, you can actually file that claim for an unauthorized transaction or error, and Paypal will still investigate it like any other transaction.  It's just that buyer protection doesn't apply, but it's a different system of looking at claims, and much more expedient if this was in fact a purchase.  There is still a pretty good chance the person would have been able to recoup those funds anyways, so you're basically just saving yourself the headache.

Better safe than sorry.

You did the right thing. That's more valuable than the money. And you can't get it back now, anyway.

this is what is wrong with this country, you get something that is not  ours but you go   its mine now....

im glad you return it but  99% of the people would not do it today

If something illegal was connected to that money, you could have been implicated and forced to prove your innocence. That could cost you legal fees you would not get back. As someone else pointed out, you didn't find it on the street so everyone knew exactly where it went.

Like everyone else mentioned lots of scenarios where you cause yourself a lot of headaches over keeping it so you did the right thing. If you had just found it on the ground then of course you keep it.

Could have been money for a hitman! Nah, just kidding, you threw away $3800.

Ok thanks for the responses guys. It does make me feel a little better. As for the Paypal claims, I was never aware that personal payments can go through a Paypal review process if the sender was to complain to CS about that. That’s news to me. The payment was for a legitimate transaction. It was for a property that recently sold so the real estate agent was getting their commission for the deal. Somehow my email address was mixed up in it and my guess is somebody just had an email address that was similar to mine. I’ve used mine for years and this was the first time a mixup has ever happened to me. It’s not a generic branded email like houses@gmail or something like that. There are numbers in my email so I think it was just something like house1234 vs house 123. So I was never worried about the activity behind it but for awhile I wondered if I could have gotten away with it scot-free - doesn’t matter as I already refunded the payment.

I wouldn’t refuse a free gift though if the sender wanted to kick some money my way for taking the initiative on the refund but he never bothered and I feel a little sleazy if I was to ask. But personally, I would actually give somebody money if they returned my wallet just for the sake of good gesture. Also agree the amount of money makes a difference about how I felt about it. If it was $10 I wouldn’t care but for something that big I did feel morally guilty about it. I’m not an attorney but I thought that since it was a personal payment through Paypal which is unregulated, the guy would have to get some small claims court order to get it back. In the end, he probably could get it back but he’d have to do some legwork and track me down because Paypal is not going to just divulge information on anybody over somebody’s honest mistake. So he probably would have had to pay someway or another to get it back but that's interesting about the claims process. In the end, I agree I was better off just saving myself the headache down the line and taking care of it immediately. Square I enjoy your anime gifs.

Same thing happened to me once.  I had a random $80EU payment sent to me via PayPal from some European dude.  At first I was going to keep it because I figured maybe it was a refund or something.  But after reading the actual payment information and then realizing it was a mistake, I kicked it back to the original sender, and sent him a note saying something like "Hey I think you sent me a payment by mistake, blah blah".  Never did hear from the guy with a thank you or anything.

In your case though, $3,800 is a lot of coin to kick back.  Kudos to you for doing so, but if you had kept it, I wouldn't have thought you were a bad person.  People need to pay attention when it comes to large sums of cash.  To make an error like that is pretty ridiculous.  At the very least, he should have kicked you back some sort of reward for his stupidity.

Donut2922 said:

Square I enjoy your anime gifs.

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Karma's a b**ch anyway, so you did the right thing original poster.  Reminds me of those times when someone deposited money, at a bank in the wrong account.  The account owner went on a spending spree and was later arrested.  

You 100% did the right thing. Karma has a way of working itself around so I would imagine you will have some good luck coming your way. That $3800 could have been someones life saving...it could have cost someone their job, so on so forth. Your a good person for refunding it. 

You did the right thing. I commend you for it.

You did the right thing. I would have done the same. Now if I found $3,800 in a bag or something just laying on the side of the street, well um 

$

I'm going to take the more central route and say you did an acceptable thing, and almost definitely saved yourself some trouble later. $3,800 is not a small transfer, and someone was going to notice it missing eventually. By the chance that you had made off with the money, I would say at the very least you would owe PayPal $3,800 if they were to try and reverse the transaction and the money wasn't there. And take my word for it, PayPal will send you to debt collectors if you owe them and do not coordinate something with them to pay it back.

It is possible through some legal ery that you could argue in court that you should be allowed to keep the money (stranger things have happened), but that would then likely mean going up against PayPal, and using every last bit you gained in legal fees. So congratulations for not being stupid about it.