Paypal rules? Can I refuse payment?

Timmy

Can someone who's looked into this give me some definite answers on ebay/paypal rules.

First of all I believe I'm correct in saying I have to accept credit card payment if I use the paypal logo in my listing even though I'm possible leaving myself open to chargebacks right?

If I use the Paypal logo in my listing then can I refuse payments from unverified accounts or unconfirmed addresses?

Finally, can someone post a link to the exact details as far as seller protection goes. I'm not talking just a general overview but the exact rules I have to follow to ensure I'm covered against any payment fraud.

Thanks for your help.

frivolous_fay

Timmy wrote:

First of all I believe I'm correct in saying I have to accept credit card payment if I use the paypal logo in my listing even though I'm possible leaving myself open to chargebacks right?

Correct.

Timmy wrote:

Finally, can someone post a link to the exact details as far as seller protection goes. I'm not talking just a general overview but the exact rules I have to follow to ensure I'm covered against any payment fraud.

I don't have a link handy, but the bottom line is, if you want to be covered against fraudulent item not received disputes, use trackable delivery - recorded, special delivery, etc.

If you just want to make sure you're financially covered, ensure you get a certificate of posting for any item worth up to £32. In the event of a loss, you can claim your money back from the post office.

With more valuable items, you should always send trackable.

I've begun to waffle. In summary: if a buyer files an item not received dispute with paypal, unless you can supply a tracking number, YOU WILL LOSE.

Can't help you with the second question.

jenniferpa

This is the seller protection policy
https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_help-ext&eloc=1795&loc=1793&unique_id=2127&source_page=_home&flow=
and here

https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/policy_spp-outside

bleugh

unfortunatley, paypal are very unspecific about your exact question

all they say is 'to be covered, you must ship to a confirmed address'

by simply inferring from the meaning of that sentence

'if address not confirmed, dont ship to it as you're not covered'

I think that woud stand up in court :-)



personally, i'd never ship goods worth more than £30 odd to an unconfirmed address, and i've rejected a couple of payments recently because of that

i've never had a problem yet, buyers have been ok to fund by alternate means

so, don't ship, but, do expect the possibility of the odd buyer to get aggressive and file a non performing seller

soolin

Unfortunately paypal and ebay are at cross purposes with the unconfirmed bit. Paypal say for protection use only a confirmed address, but ebay allow a non performing seller complaint to be raised against a seller who refuses to ship after receiving payment.

Since I have had blatantly wrong confirmed addresses, and blank ones I tend not to bother so much and will ship. However most of my items are sub £50 and I just build that risk into my business plan. Luckily in a few thousand paypal transactions I have never had a problem.

Soo

matto

Unless you state in your ebay listing that PayPal is only accepted from buyers with confirmed addresses you are obliged to accept payment.

Hintza

99% of transcations go smoothly and I tend to ship to anyone regardless of whether they are confirmed or not. There is problem with confirming addresses with UK Credit Cards and is something PayPal should really do something about!

I tend to check EBay and PayPal address match I will sometimes check on 192.com or http://www.b4usearch.com/ to check names and adresses match (this is not fullproof) if I am still not happy I will call them and talk to them. Also check feedback and recent buying activity. The above actions I have described happen in 1% of cases.

Generally speaking you get a gut feeling when something is not right.

soolin

matto wrote:

Unless you state in your ebay listing that PayPal is only accepted from buyers with confirmed addresses you are obliged to accept payment.

Unfortunately this does not work. The ebay terms and conditions outweigh any disclaimers you have in your own terms, if you take paypal, you *take* paypal. Hence you can put a note in your listing that you won't ship to unconfirmed addresses but the buyer can still raise a non performing seller complaint against you.

It is also worth remembering that many countries do not show confirmed addresses either.

Soo

matto

soolin wrote:

Unfortunately this does not work. The ebay terms and conditions outweigh any disclaimers you have in your own terms, if you take paypal, you *take* paypal. Hence you can put a note in your listing that you won't ship to unconfirmed addresses but the buyer can still raise a non performing seller complaint against you.

Soo

But it would I believe keep you within the law of the land.

Timmy

Thanks everyone for the replies. I've been selling on ebay for a few years and have almost 1000 feedback so I know what to look out for as far as dodgy buyers go but I've recently become very concerned with paypal. It seems that whenever a buyer mentions a problem on a message board these days there's always someone quick to tell them to do a chargeback and in a lot of the cases I've read about it seems unreasonable.

That coupled with the fact the ebay/paypal rules seem to been written with no one but themselves in mind means I've decided to stop using Paypal but it does appear to be effecting sales.

I would be very happy if buyers were allowed to accept Paypal from the balance accounts only but that will never happen as everyone would start using personal accounts and paypal wouldn't get any fees.

As it stands I think it's bang out of order that paypal have rules that we as sellers have to follow to be covered and yet we're not allowed to insist our buyers follow these rules.

soolin

matto wrote:

But it would I believe keep you within the law of the land.

Possibly, but I don't think anyone has ever spent the kind of money needed to test this through the courts.

Soo