Using Paypal on the forum

[Altitude]

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Well I was a little late sending out a record a few weeks ago and the buyer after 3 weeks from payment filed a dispute and then immediately a claim for it.

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3 weeks is a little late? I can ship a car by ship to Europe in less than 3 weeks... I would have done the exact same thing as the buyer. There is no excuse for being lazy, you are making money off your buyers and as a result you are held to a standard set by paypal i.e. if you sell something and the customer does not have it in 3 weeks, they get their money back. They didnt screw you, you did it to yourself

[KLAXON]

This is very important. As you can see, the first post of this thread is wrong. The only way you will not get charged a fee when receiving a personal payment through paypal is if the person sending you the payment is doing so either through their bank account, or through their paypal balance.

In my experience, the majority of people who use paypal just to send payments, and not also receive payments, fund their paypal accounts through their credit or debit cards. If this is the case, you will be charged the normal fees, regardless of if they use the personal payment tab or not. (unless the sender agrees to pay the fee, but if that is the case, they'd be better of just using the normal method and adding the fee into the amount they are sending so they can have the same protection)

So, if you don't want to be charged a fee, you better ask how they are funding payment and make sure it is through their bank account, or else the fees still apply.

[space6oy]

my experience has been the exact opposite, hardly ever wind up with buyers using credit or debit as their funding source. but still a good point.

[pricklyrobot]

PayPal protections—or lack thereof—aside, it's much easier to dispute charges with your credit card company (you're only legally liable for the first $50 of a demonstrably fraudulent charge) than it is to try and get your bank to put missing cash back into your checking account.

I would never link anything other than a credit card to my PayPal account.

[SynthatticCA]

Paypal has no buyer protection policy whatsoever if the transaction wasn't made on Ebay. They also don't have seller protection (they say they do, but they don't!) even if the transaction IS on Ebay.

Paypal also places random holds on peoples' accounts, regardless of the transaction type. So, personal transactions can still be held. My own mother sent me $300 through Paypal a few months ago and Paypal held 20% of it!!!!

[rapfreak]

Paypal has no buyer protection policy whatsoever if the transaction wasn't made on Ebay. They also don't have seller protection (they say they do, but they don't!) even if the transaction IS on Ebay.

Paypal also places random holds on peoples' accounts, regardless of the transaction type. So, personal transactions can still be held. My own mother sent me $300 through Paypal a few months ago and Paypal held 20% of it!!!!

Not true, I got $500 back from a non-ebay paypal transaction when I didn't receive the item.

I've never been hit with holds on my account. Occasionaly I've sent money to people and it was held but they typically had very few transactions with PP. I've had a PP account since like '99 so YMMV.

[ColdTrinity]

Guys,
I wanna know how can seller can be on the safe side if item is picked up locally by the buyer (on ebay or off ebay) who can claim that he never received the item?

[space6oy]

personally i wouldn't do that unless you arranged the sale outside ebay.

[ColdTrinity]

That's what I thought would be the best. Thanks.

[synthparts]

For local sales I would always recommend cash and meet in a public place.

[marc61]

Guys,
I wanna know how can seller can be on the safe side if item is picked up locally by the buyer (on ebay or off ebay) who can claim that he never received the item?

Pretty simple - make a receipt and have him/her sign it. Explain to them why. It should be a problem.

[marc61]

Ebay and Paypal handle things very much differently. With Ebay you have an item listing, and there can be additional corresponding through messages etc. All of which Ebay can see. They usually decide their cases based on all of that.

Here's two recent experiences of Paypal only transactions I had as buyer and seller -

As seller - I sent clock to recipient. His claim...it arrived broken and was not as described as in the Ebay auction(I stopped the auction to sell to him). Paypal response - Too bad. He received the item, and it wasn't subject to the auction terms. I kept the money.

As buyer - Guy claimed he sent me concert tix. I never got them. 10 days later, money was back in my acct.

One thing that helps a lot is communication. I sent a bass guitar to UK. Took almost a month. I was tracking all the time, and let the buyer know. He stayed cool about everything and ended up loving the bass.

I've sent and received money under "personal" but only with people I really trust. If it's a known poster on these boards, I'd have no problem with it.

[gizmophile]

Ebay fees are way too high which makes it so interesting to sell through forums.

[jxalex]

thread bump

Personal transactions are not eligible for seller protection, so I recommend only using it with people you trust. I've never had an issue with any transaction here on VSE. Also, the personal payments do not provide a shipping address (might be why no seller protection), so be sure to get the full address (and phone number) of the buyer.

my experience is that only thief is afraid of thiefs. read my reasoning below...

during 2006..2009 and 95% of my synthesizers I have bought without paypal through e-bay and these synthesizers arrived from around the world all different places. I paid with bank transfer and in every moment I did so.
And on couple moments I had problems, but I got lucky, becouse JUST THEN I had paid with paypal, and the reason? Becouse the salesman on his auction said too "paypal only".

At the same time I have had several problems with paypal AND ebay buyer protection programmes last several years. It is like this -- ebay treats like package will be delivered is buyers responsibility, while the SENDER is the only one who can affect the shipping process. To me it happened that signed package got returned due to postal service fault but e-bay did not refund to me. Only human sensible situation was the reason why i still got the money back.

Problem with paypal: there was a dispute with one chinese salesman that their shipped chips were fake (MN3009 on chips, but inside was MN3007) the paypal required all kinds of documents and via fax (hey, on 2010! why not telegram too?)... yes I faxed, AND 2 TIMES. 3 days later they messaged that they solved the case for seller becouse I did not sent the document they asked.

[ninja6485]

my experience is that only thief is afraid of thiefs. read my reasoning below...

This is naive advice. Everyone should be appropriately cautious about getting ripped off. If you're not taking the responsibility to take caution where caution is due, then do not be surprised if someone takes advantage of you. If you're dealing with someone you don't know, it doesn't mean you're a thief if you don't trust them the way you would a close aquantence. It means you're street smart.