Please sign in to post.

Cancellation refund using PayPal?

Sadly, due to the Corona virus, we have to cancel our Portugal vacation. I just canceled a Porto wine tour. The company responded right away but they are saying they cannot process the refund to my cc at the moment and don't know how long it would take to do so. However, they would be able to process it to PayPal. I don't have a PayPal account but am willing to create one. i just am not sure if I should be careful going this route. Any experience or thoughts on this would be helpful.

Thank you in advance.

Posted by
99 posts

If you didn’t pay thru PayPal, you shouldn’t accept a refund through PayPal, particularly since you don’t even have a PP acct. You should insist on your refund going back to the original credit card you used.

I understand that they would be slammed with cancellations. I would ask how long they think it should take to get your refund, and depending on their answer (for me, two weeks is reasonable), check back with them again.

Posted by
4540 posts

I'm not sure what the concern would be with using PayPal for the refund. Basically, you create your PayPal account that accesses whichever bank account you want to use to send and receive money. You give the Porto wine tour people the email address that you've used to register with PayPal and they direct the refund to that PayPal account, without having any direct access to your bank accounts.

It is curious, though, why they wouldn't be able to process the refund back to your original form of payment.

Posted by
8258 posts

There can be a great deal of grief, literally grief, associated with PayPal accounts. It is almost impossible to close one upon death of your spouse without going to ridiculous lengths beyond any other account I know. I ended up leaving it open thinking it couldn’t really be a problem. Then an Air BnB owner decided to refund my money to an account that had my email address without checking with me first. I , of course, had paid by credit card. The account had been my late husband’s and not used for several years.

I could not get this money from PayPal, I sought once again to at least close the account so no further mistakes could be made. Their requests for documentation would have made a probate judge blush. Even more painful when once again you live through the process and grief. I let it go. No amount of money would be worth what PayPal wanted to put me through.

What could it hurt to use PayPal? Let me tell you it can hurt a lot.

Posted by
34 posts

Thank you for your replies. I will see if they can give me a timeline of when they issue a refund back to my card. They also suggested a bank transfer via Swift. That bothered me even more. Carol, that PayPal experience sounds awful.

Posted by
11055 posts

Go ahead and have the Pay Pal process refund your money. That is what I do. Then cancel your PayPal account. It is basically safe.