Wednesday, January 4, 2012

PayPal order destruction of WWII violin

PayPal order destruction of WWII violin:

PayPal, who made the shortlist in our Worst Companies of 2011, have been showing a wilful disregard for common sense again, this time getting someone to smash up a violin that survived WWII.


A vendor sold an old French violin to a buyer who disputed the label on the instrument. This isn’t uncommon in the violin market. However, instead of understanding what a label dispute means in the violin world, PayPal “made the buyer DESTROY the violin” as they deemed the violin to be “counterfeit”.


paypal smashed violin 499x310 PayPal order destruction of WWII violin


Is there such thing as a pretend violin? Either way, it appears that PayPal don’t have any problem with destroying instruments that have been “examined and authenticated by a top luthier prior to its sale.”


Of course, if you were a sneak, you could exploit PayPal’s system by buying a cheap, tatty violin, crying ‘fake’, smash it up at their behest and then make off with the expensive one complete with a refund. That’d invariably work with clothes and bags too, so well done PayPal.


Read the full story with correspondence and small print here.


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