You should of made a ticket with ZoS first, giving them the PayPal (copy of the transaction, explaining what happened:
"You sent a payment of XXXX USD to Zenimax Online Studios
(
[email protected])"
. If that didn't work
THEN go to paypal and dispute it.
* PayPal gives you plenty of time to resolve the situation.
And the issue here for both is us (I think) is that to all appearances there was a failure somewhere between Paypal taking the payment and ZOS receiving it, as there was no notification of the transaction.
I assumed that the payment/transfer had failed and Paypal would refund me the money.
this...the error message looked EXACTLY like what happens when the payment system fails to process my amex properly, or if i put in the wrong CC number or something...which happens a SHOCKING number of times because amex is amex. In fact happned last week at McD, swiped my card and it said that the card was invalid/could not process the card etc.
Honestly I get ZOS' point here, fair enough...what they SHOULD do is a very simple fix: edit that error message that happens when payments fail and add "If you do see a payment or transaction on your card or bank account please contact our support and give them this reference number <number>. Do not attempt to reverse the transaction on the banks or paypal side." I have seen similar warnings in other places before, it's not new.