Paypal - Never Use Online Credit Card Payment Through This Company

Don't ever pay for an item online by credit card though paypal. 

And, if paypal is the only option of payment with credit card - alarm bells should go off. Why? It means the site you are using isn't established enough or reputable enough to have employed a proper, credible credit card payment system; and the people running the site may very well be scammers. 

If scammers manage to get some form of agreement with you via paypal you're completely screwed. Reasons for that are as follows: 

1.  Your credit card company see paypal as a reputable entity, so if payment is going to them, your credit card company will not listen to any complaints of scams. They will tell you to resolve with paypal. 
2. Paypal have absolutely no policy on who they partner and how their partners communicate pricing/Terms and Conditions to customers. Nigerian scammers can have a field day using paypal credit card as method of payment. Payment conditions do not need to be 'fair and reasonable'. 
3. If there is a dispute of some description with the seller [e.g. They keep charging you that fee on a monthly basis with out you knowing], then paypal will side with seller. Especially if there are some remote terms and conditions, hidden behind a small hyperlink at the back of the site, that they can produce. 
4. People working at paypal generally don't give a shit about scams or customer satisfaction. They don't read your emails or call you back. All you ever get from them is a prewritten, templated email that doesn't vaguely address the issue at hand. They also can't multi-think. If you put x2 or, god help us, x3 points that need addressing in your email, then they fall to pieces and communications fall over.
5. Paypal will point-blankly refuse to call you back. So if you live outside of America, and only have a cel phone, then prepare your self for a hefty toll bill. They'll put you on hold for hours.
6. Essentially, if you have a clever scammer who's worked out how to outwit paypal, and your case needs understanding and to be listened to, and you live outside of USA - then you are BUGGERED. 

Scammers take advantage of Paypal's weak policies by: 

1. Stating something completely misleading in their main pricing section e.g. 1 month membership - $40. No link to terms and conditions, no other explanation. So customer wrongly assumes they are making a one off payment of $40. 
2. The scammer then puts a cryptic, vague name as the 'sellers name' in the paypal interface [e.g. ThankU SAS] so you don't know what payment is for. 
3. They set up the payment as a monthly payment, so this comes out of your account monthly. 
4. When your credit card bills come through you see payment going to 'paypal' not name of scammer. When you login to paypal you don't see name of scammers site either. So you never know your 'one off payment' is actually a recurring payment and that you're getting scammed. 
5. They're clever, because somewhere hidden on the scammers site are terms and conditions. They manage to meet all of Paypal's sketchy and weak partnering policies, and so if there is a dispute - they win. 
6. Paypal's customer service representatives are... Let's say, incapable of thinking, reading, or problem solving. It's almost impossible for them to process a complaint so that they can understand it. And because they can't read, or think, it means they can't see how scammers websites are misleading. Especially if they are told by the scammer that there is a set of long winded terms and conditions - in a totally irrelevant place on their website. Scammers are way to clever for the people at paypal. 
7. There's nothing you can do. You've been stolen from and no one gives a shit or is capable of understanding it. 

Simple way to avoid this is to never pay online via credit card and paypal. I'd recommend not using paypal at all.

Coparents.com - Don't Sign Up, It's A Scam!

If you're wanting a sperm donor, at first coparents.com looks like a fantastic site. Truth is it has one focus - that is making money - and they scam users to do this.

They scam people through:

1. Deliberate misrepresentation of pricing
2. An extremely questionable charging method
3. An unfamiliar paypal 'sellers name' 
4. And despite their claim membership is free - they do not have a trial period where you can use their service without paying. To actually trial you must sign up to a membership through paypal with your credit card. 
5. If trialling is your goal, the obvious membership is 1 month, which costs US$35. But this is where they get tricky. 
6. 1 month membership doesn't actually mean 1 month membership - it means you have signed up to an ongoing membership that you need to login to paypal to cancel. 
7. If you do manage to work out you've been scammed, Paypal's customer service representatives aren't 'capable enough' to understand what has happened, email you back, or call you. They aren't capable of much. 

The pricing section on coparent.com website states: 

1. Prices: 

Membership 1 month: 25€/$34/£22
Membership 3 months: 45€/$59/£38
Membership 6 months: 65€/$85/£58

2. It does not refer to, or link to any Ts and Cs. 

3. It mentions nothing about ongoing membership, the need to cancel, or what happens after membership ends. 

http://www.coparents.com/help.php

These things are intentionally engineered and designed to create a situation where a user, wanting to trial, enters their credit card details, to then creates a paypal account (also part of the scam). If you have never used paypal before that works to the scammers advantage. And if you use paypal often it also works to the scammers advantage, because you won't realise what the payment is for. You see, coparents.com state themselves as being: 

Seller's Name: ThankU SAS

Seller's Email: thanku.sas@gmail.com

This is pretty generic, and not representative of coparents.com at all. So to catch them out, you have to dig pretty deep. 

General advice - don't sign up with coparents.com OR paypal. 

Contact Details for Coparents.com: 

Franz Schnelle

tel:+33.649955926

14 rue Charles V
Paris 75004
France

I was recently scammed by Paypal

I've never had a Paypal account before, but recently I naively signed up to a scam website that had creating a paypal 'username and password' as part of the payment process. Don't do this.

I assumed it was a credible site because it used paypal - and wrongly assumed that paypal would have   conducted some kind of assessment on who they partner with, and what that partners pricing policy's/terms and conditions are. They don't.

From what I can tell, paypal will partner with anyone regardless of how dishonest and misleading their website is. Being 'fair and reasonable' is not an objective. Nigerian scammers - knock yourselves out.

The scamming site (www.coparents.com) targets vulnerable people. People who are desperate to become parents due to infertility but can't. It's a sperm donor site.

You are unable to trial www.coparents.com without paying - though it claims you can. To actually interact you must join paypal and enter credit card details. So a vulnerable person like me, who's 40 and had 10 miscarriages, sees a 1 month subscription for US$35 and thinks 'ok, I'll give it a go, and see what it's like'. 

I'll detail www.coparents.com and their dishonestly in another post, but the short of it was - They converted my 1 month membership to an ongoing subscription that you had to unsubscribe from. This was confusingly explained in a very long-winded, small-fonted 'terms of use' document, accessed from a tiny hyperlink at the bottom of the site. The document and contract terms was no where to be seen in the pricing section, a small section under 'help' that says:

Membership 1 month: 25€/$34/£22
Membership 3 months: 45€/$59/£38
Membership 6 months: 65€/$85/£58

Payments are made securely through the PayPal online payment system.

To me the agreement had been simple. I was paying for a 1 month membership to use the site for 1 month. It was clear as daylight, and I felt confident to process this payment through such a credible institution as paypal.

I activated my 1 month subscription to test the site and quickly discovered it was filled with perverts who want to have unprotected sex for free. My inbox was inundated. I had to block their email address. Having been through 10 years of infertility, it was the last thing I needed.

So I stopped using the site, pretty quickly. 6 months later I notice a payment for US$35 coming out of my credit card to paypal. I didn't think I had a paypal account, so was curious (forgotten about coparents.com). I had no idea how to access paypal, or what my password was - so instantly I cancelled my credit card.

I then went to paypal, entered my email address and a likely password - bam, it worked. I had a paypal account, without really knowing it. 

I tried finding the unknown transactions - but they were nowhere to be seen. So I emailed paypal asking to be contacted. Got a reply that looked to be written by a monkey who had not read my email, and made me feel like a plastic factory part on a conveyor belt. No reply still. What kind of people do they employ at Paypal?

So I logged in again, this time for some reason the unknown transactions were there. Next to the transactions was a vendors name - 'thankU SAS' -  I had forgotten all about the scam site (coparents.com) so I really did think it fraud. Next I disputed the transactions, of which there were 5.

Soon, I was happy to receive an email telling me that 1 of the 5 transactions had been seen as a scam, and the money would be refunded - which it was. Good result, paypal must be reputable after all.

Then I got an email telling me "The payments in question was sent as part of a payment agreement you previously set up with the merchant. As a result, we're unable to consider this to be an unauthorized payment."

So the other 4 payments were not refunded.

I then discovered this 'thankU SAS' person was actually 'coparents.com' and I was furious. 

So I've been emailing and emailing paypal, and all I get back from them are automated answers. It is honestly like dealing with residents at the zoo.

Lessons learnt:

1. Coparents.com website is a scam, don't sign up with them 
2. Paypal don't have any ethics in terms of who they deal with. Honesty of their partners' business doesn't matter, nor does 'fair and reasonable' pricing. 
3. Never, ever sign up to a service where the only method of payment is paypal.
4. If you choose to use paypal be prepared to be scammed, lied to, and cheated - and then for paypal not to care or reply to your emails.
5. There is no consistency with how paypal assess 'unauthorized payments'. One day they will refund a scam, the next day they won't. 
6. Paypal is not a credible banking institution like the visa companies - yet visa companies honor paypal payments. So if there is a credit card dispute, you are completely screwed.
7. Paypal don't care about their customers or if they are getting scammed - by their own partners.
8. Don't use paypal.