Paypal Run by Mafia Thugs?
I have a question for some of you who do Ebay and utilize the Paypal Service as a seller: How many of you have had Paypal raid your account to pay a buyer who claims not to have received an item, or a defective item?
We have two instances in our family: a year or so ago a woman claimed that my wife did not send her some magazines she ordered. The package came but was "tapered with", with some of the magazines missing. My wife's policy is that her responsibility stops at the post office, that she provides a receipt, and recommends the buyer purchase insurance. My wife provided the receipt for this particular item, showing that all the magazines were included (by the weight of the package) when she mailed them. Lo and behold, Paypal raids her account for the item and the shipping, never informing her of their intentions. They claimed to have sent her an email but she never received it.
We found out yesterday that the same thing happened to my daughter in another state. She sent an item on the last day of February, and about 8 business days later she was told the item was not received. That same day, my daughter noticed her account had been raided by Paypal without going through proper channels (their dispute process) and without notifying her of what they were doing.
When this first happened, I was shocked. Then I found out that because Paypal is not a bank, it is not under the same federal regulations as a bank and can more or less make their own rules. We can fight, gripe, complain, or threaten suicide and they don't care. Paypal is a monopoly run by another monopoly (Ebay) and they know there's no where else you can go.
Our solution? Not really a solution, but an idea - keep your Paypal account as low as possible, and then let them fight you for the money. They can't raid your bank account (at least to my knowledge), and at worse they can kick you off Ebay or Paypal.
Another possibility is to offer buyers a shipping discount if they pay via check or money order. Most of us pad our shipping anyway to cover the Ebay and Paypal fees. Anybody else have ideas? If there was another viable service, I would drop Ebay and Paypal in a heartbeat.
We have two instances in our family: a year or so ago a woman claimed that my wife did not send her some magazines she ordered. The package came but was "tapered with", with some of the magazines missing. My wife's policy is that her responsibility stops at the post office, that she provides a receipt, and recommends the buyer purchase insurance. My wife provided the receipt for this particular item, showing that all the magazines were included (by the weight of the package) when she mailed them. Lo and behold, Paypal raids her account for the item and the shipping, never informing her of their intentions. They claimed to have sent her an email but she never received it.
We found out yesterday that the same thing happened to my daughter in another state. She sent an item on the last day of February, and about 8 business days later she was told the item was not received. That same day, my daughter noticed her account had been raided by Paypal without going through proper channels (their dispute process) and without notifying her of what they were doing.
When this first happened, I was shocked. Then I found out that because Paypal is not a bank, it is not under the same federal regulations as a bank and can more or less make their own rules. We can fight, gripe, complain, or threaten suicide and they don't care. Paypal is a monopoly run by another monopoly (Ebay) and they know there's no where else you can go.
Our solution? Not really a solution, but an idea - keep your Paypal account as low as possible, and then let them fight you for the money. They can't raid your bank account (at least to my knowledge), and at worse they can kick you off Ebay or Paypal.
Another possibility is to offer buyers a shipping discount if they pay via check or money order. Most of us pad our shipping anyway to cover the Ebay and Paypal fees. Anybody else have ideas? If there was another viable service, I would drop Ebay and Paypal in a heartbeat.
posted by Jeff at 3:44 PM
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