Within the past few hours, many people got money from Paypal to compensate for the cash advance problem that plagued those who bought gift cards from SVM on eBay. Most people got $20 compensation.
Interestingly, getting the cash was not tied to having complained to Paypal, and not even tied to having been hit with a cash advance fee. Some people used an Amex or Chase card that wasn’t charged a cash advance fee and still got the $20 credit.
Many others, myself included, have not gotten this $20 gift. There might even be some people who did complain and didn’t get the cash. It’s not clear if they’ll still be sending it out in the future or if some other criteria dicate who gets it and who doesn’t.
The weirdest part about this whole thing is that we still don’t even know for certain that the cash advance problem is fixed! As of a few days ago, it was not. It seems fair to assume that if they are issuing refunds then they’ve already fixed the problem, but I said the same thing when they sent out an email indicating it was fixed and that turned out false.
On a different note, we now have reason to believe that SVM was likely correct when they said that this problem is entirely of Paypal’s making, not due to SVM switching the Merchant Category Code.
