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[Biz Talk] Paypal

#1

was: Amex or not?

PayPal has a rather doubtful reputation in ecommerce circles. Not
only because it is expensive, but mainly for their, what they call
it, buyer protection. Chargebacks are too simple and the seller is
almost always on the losing end.

The reason why we know PayPal is that it is an eBay company with a
giant marketing funding in the back. We don’t know PayPal because of
it’s service quality.

Fortunately, there are alternatives. Personally, I prefer
MoneyBookers. Created by a german group, regulated by british banking
laws, it offers more services at slightly lower rates. And it has one
big advantage in my eyes: There are no chargebacks possible. You
receive the money as if someone gave you cash - and if there is a
dispute over the goods or services, buyer and seller have to find a
solution together or take recourse to legal option. But there is not
a unilateral: “I am not satified, I take my money back”.

Usual displaimer, just a happy camper…

#2 
I currently use PayPal, and, frankly wouldn't consider anyone else

Just remember that there are people who won’t use PayPal, or
anything associated with it.

Al Balmer
Sun City, AZ

#3 
I currently use PayPal, and, frankly wouldn't consider anyone
else.

You forgot to mention that the funds are available immediately after
the transaction is approved. You can get a PayPal debit Mastercard
too and a lot of online businesses are accepting PayPal along with
traditional cards. A transfer to a bank account takes 2-3 business
days. Longer if you request a check. I don’t know how $30 a month
plus the discount rate compares to other processers. My eyes start to
cross reading the fine print and tallying all the other fees they can
tack on.

“I like simple. If it’s complex I don’t understand it.” – Seymour
Cray the father of the Cray Supercomputer (Unverified just something
I remember from hearing him speak.)

Rick Copeland
Silversmith and Lapidary Artisan
Rocky Mountain Wonders
Colorado Springs, Colorado
rockymountainwonders.com

#4 
I don't know how $30 a month plus the discount rate compares to
other processers.

Dunno what anyone else charges, but my regular bank (Chase) charges
me $10/month.

Noel

#5

Paypal is great UNTIL someone initiates a chargeback thru their
credit card company. The business owner is 99.9% of the time the loser
in the deal. Take it from me, I lost over $230 dollars this year in a
chargeback dispute that I had a papertrail 10 miles long on. I spent
an entire afternoon on the phone with PayPal’s so called “customer
service” and got hung up on once and then was fed 4 different stories
from 4 different people. The money should have been technically put
back into my account by now but it hasn’t yet. They said I have to
wait 75 days to get it. That was about 70 days ago. But the
chargeback is marked settled not in my favor on my account. Go
figure. I finally had to let the entire situation just go because of
the amount of stress it was bringing me.

PayPal is surely NOT the best payment solution out there. But it is
widely used. It works great until someone decides that they don’t
want to pay for all of the hard work you did and then they demand
their money back and PayPal gladly gives it to them without any
second thoughts what-so-ever.

Laney

#6

Paypal Amex etc

There seems to be a misconception in many of these posts. The credit
card processors are required by law in the US to treat consumer
customer complaints as gospel. The law is set up to always favor the
consumer not the merchant. It does not matter if the credit card
company is VISA, MasterCard, AMEX or Discover any card holder can
call up the credit card company and instigate a chargeback and any of
the processors can and will go into your bank account and suck that
money right out. Even if you protest it the most likely scenario is
they will institute the chargeback and then it is up to you the
merchant to then try to prove it is a fraudulent or improper
chargeback, good luck with that. The whole system has been setup to
encourage the consumer to use the credit card without thinking. The
banks and processors and credit card companies don’t give a damn
about the individuals involved whether they are consumers or
merchants only the continued vast flow of transactions that they can
then siphon off their cut from.

Paypal gets a bad rap because so many of the transactions on Ebay are
questionable either from the seller being a little less than truthful
of the condition of the item to outright fraud and many of the buyers
are frauds as well. This is not a condemnation of Ebay just that it
is a very large virtually unregulated marketplace and it attracts all
kinds of people some of whom are there with criminal intent. So when
PayPal came along and allowed just about anyone to accept credit
cards for their transactions many less sophisticated and not so well
informed “merchants” never bothered to read the fine print about
chargebacks. So when they started to be involved in a marketplace
with a high number of chargebacks (Ebay) they started screaming
because they had never had a bank suck money out of their account
before thus resulting in the “bad reputation” of PayPal. Paypal
charges a high discount rate but in return just about anybody can
have all the benefits of a merchant account. If you have a business
that will allow you to go to your bank and get a merchant account
then yes you will get a better rate but you may be required to have
things like a store front, some history with the bank, provide
financial statements etc. Not too difficult but for many who are
just starting out or are too small PayPal is a great alternative.

The thing you must realize as a merchant any card processor can and
will run a chargeback against you if you have a unsatisfied or
fraudulent customer. So it is part of your job as a merchant to know
your customers and insure that they are satisfied and to be on the
lookout for the frauds. Even then you will still sometimes get stung
but that is a part of the cost for doing business.

Jim

James Binnion
@James_Binnion
James Binnion Metal Arts


360-756-6550

#7 
Just remember that there are people who won't use PayPal, or
anything associated with it.

When you use PayPal as your credit card processor the customer sees
nothing referencing PayPal. They just see the transaction show up
with your business name and phone number on their monthly credit card
statement.

Rick Copeland
Silversmith and Lapidary Artisan
Rocky Mountain Wonders
Colorado Springs, Colorado
rockymountainwonders.com

#8 
When you use PayPal as your credit card processor the customer
sees nothing referencing PayPal. They just see the transaction show
up with your business name and phone number on their monthly credit
card statement.

In that case, the customer is not using PayPal, you are. Other than
a bad experience in the early PayPal days, my main reason for
avoiding it is that it’s a favorite tool for spammers and scammers.
Rather than worry about it, it’s very simple just to filter or delete
anything purporting to be PayPal related.

Al Balmer
Sun City, AZ

#9

Ditto to what Laney said,

PayPal is surely NOT the best payment solution out there.... It
works great until someone decides that they don't want to pay for
all of the hard work you did and then they demand their money back
and PayPal gladly gives it to them without any second thoughts
what-so-ever.

My experience exactly, Judy in Kansas, wishing everyone a pleasant
Labor Day and so glad to hear that Gustav hasn’t been as awful as
predicted.

Judy M. Willingham, R.S.

#10

We like our paypal merchant account, it’s really the only way we
have found as street vendors to take credit cards without big fees
or having to waste time on the phone when we’re trying to sell more
stuff… We write down the info (card number, name, billing address)
and process it when we get home. We ask for phone number and email
from our customers so if the card does not process we can call them
and arrange another type of payment. We have been burned a few times
but mostly it’s been our fault, forgetting to write down a crucial
bit of info, etc. Some folks don’t like to give out all that info to
a stranger, in which case we assure them that the paper is shredded
after the payment is recieved and that we’ll only call them if their
card does not process. 95% of all our transactions process with no
problem, though that 5% can hurt, we eventually get most of it. We
did have a charge back scenario one time when selling loose stones
on ebay. Somebody specially requested ALL of our 4mm rubies, which
they said ALL must be TOP COLOR. We told them we had around 60 cts
and they were whatever color they were. So they bought them, they
paid for them, we sent them, and the box arrived “opened and empty,
with a 1"x2” hole in the side of the box". We knew this was
impossible because they way they were packed there was no way they
would have gotten through a hole that size. So we went to the post
office and got all the forms to file a mail theft claim. Then we
called our customer and told them that we had contacted the
postmaster in his town and to keep the package because the
postmaster would probably be paying him a visit, since mail theft is
a federal crime they take it very seriously. We did our best to
scare the pants off this guy and sure enough, an hour later, we get a
call. “Guess what? I found the stones. My 3 year old was playing
with the mail and I guess she must have opened the box and taken the
stones out before I got to it.” "Right, then, all’s well that ends
well we said…

#11 
We like our paypal merchant account, it's really the only way we
have found as street vendors to take credit cards without big fees
or having to waste time on the phone when we're trying to sell
more stuff.. We write down the info (card number, name, billing
address) and process it when we get home.

Just in case anyone thinks you need PayPal to do this-- I do exactly
the same and I have a merchant account at my bank. Actually, I use a
knuckle buster so I don’t write the info down, but I don’t run the
charges til I get home. I ask customers to fill out their name,
address and phone in my receipt book. A few don’t want to give
phone, but I also tell them I will use it only if the charge fails
to go through. No one has refused.

I hate typing all those charges in on my phone, but it is a cheap
way to do things. And in the case of a large or questionable charge,
you can do it then and there with a cell phone.

The one time I tried to do that, though, when someone who looked
like a bag lady wanted an $1100 ring, I got flustered and
confused… so she just whipped a wad of bills out of her pocket and
paid me in cash.

Noel

#12 
The one time I tried to do that, though, when someone who looked
like a bag lady wanted an $1100 ring, I got flustered and
confused... so she just whipped a wad of bills out of her pocket
and paid me in cash.

Love this! My late father-in-law was like your bag lady. He went to
buy a new Lexus, in an old zip up one piece jump suit. Looked like a
bag man for sure. The sales folks would not even talk to him. Had no
idea he had the cash for the entire purchase in his pocket!!! So he
went and bought a Lincoln instead in a huff.

Just goes to show you can’t tell how much money folks have by how
they look!

Beth in SC

#13

I have used several card processors over the years, including my
local bank, and found them all rife with hidden fees. I ended up
using Paypal because they are straightforward about their fee
structure and less expensive than the other alternatives I have
tried.

Janet Kofoed
http://users.rcn.com/kkofoed

#14 
We did have a charge back scenario one time when selling loose
stones on ebay....... So they bought them, they paid for them, we
sent them, and the box arrived "opened and empty, with a 1"x2" hole
in the side of the box"

The details of this and similar issues are of great concern to me
because when I start selling what I make, I want to have the details
down pat.

So - I have a few questions.

  1. Why would a package of that value not have been shipped
    registered mail, with signatures required, etc?

  2. I don’t understand why you describe it as a PayPal chargeback
    issue when it sounds as if USPS was the agency that you would have
    used to settle the dispute?

Thanks!
Lorraine

#15

Ok, I would like to hear as many feedback comments as possible- who
do you use for online payments? I recently noticed come negative
comments about paypal here, and so now I am concerned to use it.
Paypal? Moneybooker? Pro pay? MS Global services? EDigiCash?

Is there others??

Andes Cruz Designs

#16

Beth is right. One cannot tell how much money folks have by how they
look. I always treat every potential customer with respect. A couple
of years ago a rather unkempt looking couple came to my booth. They
looked over what I had, mainly my most expensive items. They chose 3
pieces, and paid cash. Since then, they have been regular customers,
always paying cash. I have since learned that they are both
Biochemists, and highly respected in their fields. Fancy clothes are
not of interest to them, and the jewelry they buy are given as gifts
to family members.

Alma Rands

#17 
Had no idea he had the cash for the entire purchase in his
pocket!!! So he went and bought a Lincoln instead in a huff. 
Just goes to show you can't tell how much money folks have by how
they look!

Ah, prejudice - what a horrible thing that is. That reminds me of
when I went into a motorbike showroom with my husband (then my
boyfriend). I wanted to buy a limited edition bike they were selling.
When the salesman approached to ask if he could help, I expressed my
interest in the bike. He looked me in the eye and spoke to me for
about four seconds then started talking to my husband. He kept saying
"it’s Helen who’s buying the bike" and he’d address me for a few
seconds more. This happened repeatedly until we got so mad we walked
out. He lost a sale and I bought my limited edition bike second hand,
just a few months old, from another dealer because of his rudeness
and prejudice.

Although a negative experience, it was a great lesson. Hopefully
I’ll never treat a customer like that.

Helen
UK

#18

I’ve used Paypal for years and haven’t had any problems at all.

#19

Orchid,

Since my original post on PayPal last week, there have been some
very good comments, questions & suggestions made on the subject of
PayPal. Andes, while entrusting your CC processing is a decision only
you can make, you should know that PayPal goes the extra mile for
your customers peace of mind. Comments were made about the
relationship between Ebay & PayPal & the resulting issues that that
created. No doubt about it…in the beginning, they made some serious
mistakes & ultimately it cost them in customer confidence & overall
satisfaction. I know…I was one of the early naysayers. Since then,
PayPal is no longer the “red headed step child” of Ebay. For
suggested reading go to www.darkreading.com & start reading up on the
latest in IT security (including PayPal). It pays to stay current on
internet security.

Those of you still using the tried & true “knuckle busting” method
of CC sales, make sure that only your customers last 4 digits are
visible. I’ve been informed, that, legally, you must make sure this
info is protected at all costs, otherwise YOU could be left holding
the old liabilty bag. As previously noted in my first post, go to
David Geller’s website & start looking into the “Quickbooks” program
he offers. You can also check out “Consumer Reports” online ($26 per
year) & look up their archived articles on CC processors & who they
recommend. Whatever road you take, put in the extra time to make sure
your customers is protected.

Walt Teats
American Goldworks
www.donranddesigns.com
www.spencerandquigley.com

#20

Hello Helen,

Your experience described here:

He looked me in the eye and spoke to me for about four seconds
then started talking to my husband. He kept saying "it's Helen
who's buying the bike" and he'd address me for a few seconds more.
This happened repeatedly until we got so mad we walked out. He
lost a sale and I bought my limited edition bike second hand, just
a few months old, from another dealer because of his rudeness and
prejudice.

depicts a rather obtuse salesperson - who missed all the clues. I (
and I mean ME) just bought a car and my husband went with me
initially. We both had ideas about what we wanted and the salesman
listened to each of us. He included both of us in his questions.
Somehow though, he picked up that I was going to be paying the bill.
As the conversation went along, he began directing more toward
myself, but never ignoring my husband.

Point being, a good sales person never dismisses anyone. Judy in
Kansas, where the student picnic yesterday evening was perfect!
Faculty “grill meisters” flipping burgers & brats, students eating,
lots of visiting and playing yard games, and gorgeous weather to
enjoy.