Accepting payment via paypal...is it SAFE?

[vpower]

Hi everyone,

just to clear thigns out. I have a pyapal account and i've traded like 45 times via paypals (buying and selling things). So I know about fees when you sells things.

My paypal account is linked to my Credit Card.

I have something to seel, but the seller want only to pay via paypal. The difference this time is, the amount. I never sold anything that high.

What kind of things (bad things) can happen to me? And can I do anything to avoid it?

Example, what if he pays with a fraduing credit card, am I covered?

Thanks!

[deuce]

not from my experience.
i had someone buy somethign from me for ~2k.
a week or so later paypal reverses the transaction saying that the credit card they used was stolen.
they then accused me of stealing the card, opening the other account and paying myself with a stolen card.
i hate paypal.

[kai]

I will never ever trust paypal anymore and avoid it like the plague.

[Hellfire]

Paypal Suxs

[vpower]

I will never ever trust paypal anymore and avoid it like the plague.

Ok, fine, you dont trust paypal, so you deal with money order?!
What you do when you shop on ebay? or maybe you dont shop at all on ebay....

Paypal Suxs

That doesnt help me much.

Thanks

[Jon Lai]

I agree wiht everybody else here, Paypal is dangerous, HOWEVER as long as you know what you're doing, you should be fine. ie, there's always a fear of someone reserving a transaction with Paypal. To prevent that from happening, always withdraw the money to your bank account as soon as you have more than $150 in your Paypal account, and don't ship the item until you have received the money.

[Hellfire]

That doesnt help me much.

Thanks

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

[fireguy9]

Use common sense,,,, I am at 780 transactions and of those,,, over 700 have been with paypal buying and selling. Think I have had one minor incident.

I usually have my auctions set so anyone with low rating or negative cannot bid or pay via paypal

[Paksis]

Investigate the buyer. Check the white pages to see if his/her address matches to the name. Do a phone number search to see if the person has a listed number. How many tranactions does the person have and for how much. If he/she has fewer than 10 to 15 transactions and or any red flags. Politely decline to paid that way and ask for a money order and allow 2 weeks for it to clear at a min.(MO's can be forged).

If the buyer balks, then just say sorry and explain why. Don't be afraid of the buyer leaving poor feedback because you can go to Ebay about it. I have a lot of Paypal transactions and have heard of mistakes happening. Be cautious and carefull and it should work out.

[Drew_W]

I do tens of thousands of dollars of business by PayPal every year, and aside from a minor issue or two, I have NO complaints. And buyer side, it's the best payment service to use.

All these 'PayPal sucks' scenarios are first off the 'victim''s account of what happened, usually not objective. Then of course we have no idea of all the red flags these people ignored - if PayPal was SO bad, big name merchants wouldn't be signing up for it, and people would stop using it. All those with problems make up like 0.00000001% of the entire PayPal user base.

[jda]

I do tens of thousands of dollars of business by PayPal every year, and aside from a minor issue or two, I have NO complaints. And buyer side, it's the best payment service to use.

All these 'PayPal sucks' scenarios are first off the 'victim''s account of what happened, usually not objective. Then of course we have no idea of all the red flags these people ignored - if PayPal was SO bad, big name merchants wouldn't be signing up for it, and people would stop using it. All those with problems make up like 0.00000001% of the entire PayPal user base.

This is partially true. If you know what you are doing, you can avoid most of the scammers. But it also depends on what you sell. If you sell low price items you are less likely to get scammed. Scammers like to rip off people on expensive /popular items such as PS3/laptop etc. So if you are selling low price items I don't think you should worry about it too much.

[Drew_W]

It doesn't matter what you sell, it's who you sell TO.

I got ripped off once selling something on eBay - guy in the States didn't even wait a week to file an item not received on a DVD he knew was coming regular mail with no tracking. PayPal instantly granted him his claim. I hope he felt better about getting his $5 DVD for free. I certainly don't care, that makes almost no difference to my bottom line. It's just funny when you sell high end equipment you can pick and choose your customers so you don't get ripped off (and I haven't), and then when you get ripped off, it's by some schmo on eBay over a $5 DVD he clearly wanted to get for free. :?:

[netriones]

Last time I sold something on Paypal. it charged me total around 10% fee(Ebay fee, paypal fee), ridiculous

I strongly against selling expensive item on Ebay. They are not trust worthy. Anything goes wrong, either buyer or seller always got screwed.They always win.

[marc_t]

netriones; x2, ebay & paypal are expensive, 10% fee combined

as for merchants; Google checkout is out to seduce you
this can only bring paypal fees down

[Drew_W]

Last time I sold something on Paypal. it charged me total around 10% fee(Ebay fee, paypal fee), ridiculous

I strongly against selling expensive item on Ebay. They are not trust worthy. Anything goes wrong, either buyer or seller always got screwed.They always win.

You don't sell things on PayPal. And you expect eBay to be free, and for PayPal to be a charity absorbing credit card merchant fees and also be free? If it's ridiculous, sell on RFD!

And what exactly is wrong with selling expensive stuff on eBay? I'm a Gold Powerseller....please try to convince me that eBay is bad. It does wonders for my business.

[netriones]

You don't sell things on PayPal. And you expect eBay to be free, and for PayPal to be a charity absorbing credit card merchant fees and also be free? If it's ridiculous, sell on RFD!

And what exactly is wrong with selling expensive stuff on eBay? I'm a Gold Powerseller....please try to convince me that eBay is bad. It does wonders for my business.

Enjoy :)

http://www.paypalsucks.com/forums/

[newbie7]

Last time I sold something on Paypal. it charged me total around 10% fee(Ebay fee, paypal fee), ridiculous

I strongly against selling expensive item on Ebay. They are not trust worthy. Anything goes wrong, either buyer or seller always got screwed.They always win.

When you sell something in a store (assuming you have a store and selling something you are selling right now on eBay), the overhead will be around that %, plus if you accept CC such as VISA and AMEX, they'll charge you 2.5 to 3.5%. So in essence, eBay and PayPal are providing similar services with a similar charge rate. Note that I'm not commenting on the quality of service for both, but simply from a business point of view, you need to understand the equivalent basic fees to running a business in real life.

[masalma]

personally my monthly invoice for ebay comes to around 400 dollars, and it does seem like a HUGE amount, but it is the same concept as paying rent :) and as the previous poster said, paypal is just like the company that comes and setsup the credit card processing machine in a store, as for it being safe, i always ship with confirmation and tracking, and keep ALL my receipts and transactions just in case that people try to reverse payments, because once it happens it takes a LOOOONG time to get it taken care off.

but in the end, there is nothing like having a WHOLE business on a tiny ass notebook.

one nice thing that could happen is ebay allows the use of google checkout, and google actually adds more features and lower fees. or google actually coming out with their own auction site with lower fees.


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