My terms and conditions state that the trial lesson is non-refundable, client wants a refund.

My terms and conditions clearly state that the trial lesson is non-refundable. A client wants a refund and filed a complaint to Paypal. What can I do about it?

Whether it’s for a trial lesson or other, the scenario you described is not so unusual. Some buyers just exploit the Paypal complaint system, since Paypal’s reputation is to be on the buyer’s side. Online payment companies do not care about your terms and conditions, so your terms and conditions have little to no value in the dispute. From your question it is not clear whether the client paid for the trial lesson and then decided not to have it, or he had a lesson and complained about it later. That could be a very important point for the outcome of the dispute. The Paypal complaint system has somewhat changed recently. Whenever a buyer files a claim, the buyer and seller are first given a chance to settle the dispute without the involvement of Paypal. If the two parties do not reach an agreement within a certain time, usually on the order of a couple of weeks, either of them can escalate the dispute to a more formal complaint, where at Paypal, some staff is going to examine the complaint and eventually reach a decision.

For the specific case of a trial lesson, as a tutor you must prove or are expected to be able to prove that the lesson took place, that you showed up at the agreed time and ideally show that the client did not complain about it. If the client refused to have a lesson, even if it was a no-show and they kept the tutor waiting for a long time, you won’t be able to prove that the lesson took place, as a consequence Paypal will almost certainly resolve the dispute in the client’s favour since a lesson not given is usually interpreted as ‘the client has not received the agreed service’. There may be some exceptions to it, depending on the client’s and tutor’s track record and the nationality of the two. Paypal can, in fact, be nationality biased and one can find a lot of bad stories about disputed on Paypal, on the internet. For example, a client in India claiming they did not receive the agreed service from a tutor in the United States, will have a much harder time getting a refund than a client in the United Stated claiming that they did not receive the agreed service from a tutor in India. If you are trying to protect your business from clients who try to take advantage of your services and scammers, Paypal is probably one of the worst payment methods you can use, though their complaint review system has somewhat improved over the years. Note that some clients may appear serious at first, pay the agreed amount in advance, and later claim with Paypal that they simply were not happy with the service. Even if the tutor is clearly not a scammer, Paypal will either block your account or the disputed amount until the dispute has been settled. Until some time ago, Paypal would also take the right to settle disputes by withdrawing straight from the seller’s bank account. That has been ruled unlawful in court and since then Paypal can only settle disputed by using amounts presents on the two parties' Paypal accounts. If the amount present on the account is not enough, Paypal will wait until more payments are received, and settle the dispute afterwards. In order to protect your business from scammers, make sure you do a proper screening of your potential clients before agreeing to provide any service to them. This is particularly important if your clients are non-local.

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