Need Paypal Advice

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Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:56 am

I just started using paypal to process paypal and credit card transactions online for my business. I offer services so there are no issues with shipping. I'm not worried about the standard kinds of fraud we deal with here, just wondering if anyone with experience in this area has any advice - what kind of problems would I face if a customer told paypal that I didn't provide the desired service? Would they likely withdraw the funds be withdrawn from my account? Hopefully someone has experience with this and can give me some sage advice.

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:00 am

What kind of services do you offer? Depending on what they are, I'm sure that there are ways to prove that you provided the service.

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

I read something the other day about someone offering services, someone made a complaint to Paypal or something, resulting in the service providor having $24,000 frozen in their accoun for a long time, was it 80 or 180 days, can't remember.

Have a look at this site:

http://www.paypalsucks.com

I have never had a PayPal account, how exactly does it work? Is it you transfer money from your bank account to your PayPal account, or can Paypal withdraw money from your bank acount. some of the stuff I read suggests they can?

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:16 am

I sell investigative services, process serving, skip tracing etc. Occassionally, people aren't happy with the results. For example, I may do 10 hours of surveillance, and no one goes anywhere. Or maybe someone might just try and scam me outright by getting a good service and then making a complaint to paypal anyways. We always get payment up front. I just want to ensure, so far as is possible, that a disgruntled customer couldn't try and jerk me around. Basically, they use their credit card or paypal account to transfer funds to my paypal account, which I then transfer to my bank account. BUT it takes 5-7 days for the transfer from my paypal account to my bank account to go through. I'm worried that during this period someone could try and get paypal to nix the transaction. Thanks for the advice guys, anything else is appreciated.

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:58 am

It would be difficult to prove that you did provide a service like surveillance. PayPal is not always fair, and the dispute process is pretty much one-sided. Once a dispute is filed, neither party can add to it, even if something new comes up that is related to the issue. PayPal can dip into your bank account to refund the customer's money if a customer disputes the transaction. Do you have the customer sign anything that says that they can't dispute the charge for the service even if they are unhappy with the results? I know that some investigative services do this because they can't guarantee what the results will be.

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

From my own experience very recently paypal seem to be making so much money they became a law unto themselves.

I had not been accused of doing anything wrong - all i did was try to register my cards which caused by a mistake at there end locked all the cards till someone on the monday fixed it.

Paypal is full of good people and bad people, the fact they do respond is good, but the fact of how they do it is bad, the onus really is on the person offering goods or services via paypal to make sure they can "prove" beyond any reasonable doubt that they acted in good faith and delivered or at least tried to deliver goods etc, paypal really has two unwritten slogans

Seller - beware & Buyer beware, but because of what paypal is its a victim of its own success, im not defending paypal i was fairly unhappy with them too, but they do have an appeal section but there still a pain in the bottom to deal with for example calling you have to work out how to get a real person then get shoved round the system to the right person, criminals seem to get favoured treatment as they seem to get there money back and reading the site posted it seems the problems are not going to go overnight, i even made a post about protecting yourself from being accused on paypal hoping it would save someone from exactly this falsely accused.

Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:26 am

I'm sure the best way to (try and?) protect yourself is to always make certain you have a signed contract before beginning work. This could specify that investigations sometimes go nowhere, but you still expect to be paid. Ask the client to initial each page if you want.

Or... just take cash upfront! Wink