<human>: I'm asking on behalf of my girlfriend - basically, she sold something on ebay - and it didn't get to the buyer - so he claimed a refund around 10 days later. That's all well and good - but my G/F couldn't give him the money back - naively she'd taken it out of paypal and spent it- asumming after so long it'd got there. She told him to wait - but because he went straight to filing a claim it automatically went to ebay that said, "Look you have to pay him, otherwise we'll pay him and you'll owe us after X days."

X days came around, and ebay said that he'd been paid etc.

Now a couple of days, maybe a week or two, my girlfriend sends ebay the money through paypal - which is "confirmed" by paypal. Ebay then sends a string of confusing messages - two lots - one saying "Thanks for the payment, your account is now unrestricted" or soemthing like that - and then another saying the next day, "Your account is restricted, You owe us **£0.00**, update your payment method"

Now, that's confusing, but according to the messages, she didn't owe anything, and it's all been sorted - assuming it was just an error.

However, after now the three or so weeks since the last message, she received a written letter from a debt collection agency, saying that she owes the agency the sum of money that she'd sent through paypal, and if she doesn't pay in two days, they'll take further action. She just doesn't really want to hand over £26.00, that she's already given to ebay themselves.

I'm totally at a loss to know what to suggest - the money came out of her bank account and through her paypal to ebay. When she logs in, she gets a message, unlike the others, saying that she actually owes the £20-odd they originally asked for (as opposed to the *£0.00* from previous messages)

Any ideas?

Summarize the given text in a few sentences.
<bot>: She's paid ebay, but it's been conveniently been lost - through ebay's own systems. Debt Collectors follow