Best Hong Kong never responded again to the claim/dispute process; and when their time ran out last Saturday, PayPal decided in my favor with this message:
We have concluded our investigation into your claim.
We have decided in your favor and have recovered funds from the seller. You have indicated that a partial refund amount of $6.00 USD would be satisfactory.
If the seller’s account has insufficient funds to complete the refund owed to you, please be assured that we will take appropriate action against the seller’s account, which may include limitation of the seller’s account privileges.
And both PayPal and Citibank show that $6 has been transferred from Best Hong Kong back to my credit card, so I guess we’re done here.
Curiously, PayPal’s dispute resolution center has a rather different message when I view the closed case:
We have completed our investigation of this case. We have denied this claim and a refund will not be issued.
Now, I know it’s already been issued, but that kind of message is troubling. So I’ve submitted this to their customer support:
I recently received an email from you saying you had completed your investigation of buyer complaint case #PP-179-609-629, had decided in my favor, and had provided a partial refund as I requested.
However, I just went into your Resolution Center to view the ticket online, and it says you denied the claim and no refund will be issued.
I’m a little concerned by that. Can you explain the discrepancy between the two messages?