About sending the payment notifications, I think Paypal would just say it's a courtesy service, and if we don't get them, tough. They make the info available on the web site, so sellers can go fly a kite.

Duplicate payments are also not Paypal's problem. Buyers will be buyers. If they want to pay 2 or 3 times, that's fine by Paypal.

What I want to know is:

-- Is eBay or Paypal sending something or doing something to trigger the duplicate payments? If they're sending unwarranted reminders or doing anything that causes buyers to be confused, even if it's not deliberate, that means legal trouble.

-- Why doesn't Paypal notify buyers when they detect a second, identical payment for the same auction ID?

-- Why hasn't Paypal made it possible to search payment history by payer ID or email address?

When I called PP Customer Service to ask about my Hong Kong buyer who paid at least 4 times (that I can determine), they would not even tell me if they could detect other payments from her. They said it was a privacy issue. The only thing a seller can do is filter for payments received and scroll down the list page by page, looking for the buyer's name.

Here's an interesting post at eBay UK (a slightly different issue, but still very pertinent to this discussion):
http://reviews.ebay.co.uk/Paypal-Allow-Duplicate-payments-WHY-Then-don-apos-t-help_W0QQugidZ10000000003639772

Here's something from a year ago on Yahoo Answers:
I made a payment for something from Ebay the other day in the amount of $44. When I checked my account this morning I noticed that they had taken two payments of $44. I called my bank and they told me that several others had called about this this morning too, but I would have to contact Paypal because it was their glitch. I called Pay pal and was told that they could only see one payment withdrawal from their end and it must be my bank's problem. I called the bank again and was told by another customer service rep that many others had called about this too this morning, she informed me on what to do, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem and if this is something usual for Pay Pal?

And this eBay discussion board:
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?tstart=80&threadID=2000576056&mod=1212074512875&anticache=1212264389768

Here's a Google search:
http://snipurl.com/2bsjz [www_google_com]

Sue