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Online e-Commerce Issues w/ PayPal?
A concerned entrepreneur submitted this question for your consideration: "I run a very small online company and the main method we obtain payments for products is via PayPal. In this digital age having an easy way to accept payments for goods is critical to small business survival. Have you had problems with PayPal freezing your accounts, have you had any issues with PayPal harming any of your credit? Neither has happened to me but it
it still is a concern. Recently, I was sent this site, became concerned and wanted to ask Slashdot readers for their input on security and any problems they may have had with this service." If you send your money to a website for safekeeping, you expect it to be safe, and a large part of this perception is based on dependable customer support. According the warning site, it sounds like PayPal might be a bit deficient on this end. Have any of you experienced similar problems?
"I don't necessarily trust the website I linked to, nor PayPal's statements. PayPal requires you to register your credit card AND your checking account and could conceivably and legally(?) remove any and all funds and stop you from withdrawing a dime from your PayPal account as well as your own checking account at their whim. What is a small business to do?"
Just an aside, if you are signing up for a personal account, you only need your credit card. It's merchants who want to use PayPal's premium features who have to specify banking information as well.
I know lots of people who have never had a problem with PayPal, everything runs smoothly. The people I've talked to that have had a problem all have had a complete nightmare with it. Every one of them.
Now it is possible, prehaps likely that people that have a problem that is resolved quickly are less likely to complain about it. This could be why I've never heard good things about their customer service but I don't think it's the case. Banks have sets of rules and years of experience dealing with problem transactions. They aren't perfect (I have stories, that would make you ill) but because PayPal is a pretty new concept I think they still have a lot of kinks to work out.
Having your customers pay with credit cards... that way if anything happens they can dispute the charges.
Most customers aren't very savvy. If you tell people "Don't use a check when you do business with me, use a credit card, because I use PayPal, and they might rip you off", they are going to hear "Don't... do business with me... because I... might rip you off."
They don't wanna hear from "this other company is at fault", they're gonna wanna give you money and have you give them goods and/or services, period.
One of the serious flaws in the Paypal setup is that once Paypal believes that a visitor is you (i.e. logged in) that credentialed visitor has complete access to any accounts that Paypal knows about.
About a month ago, I logged into my email to find email "receipts" for nearly $12K in payments, all of which were made while I was sleeping during the night before. Someone had gotten into my account and transferred to several other people various sums of money ranging from $75 to $5000 per transaction. Most of them were against my credit card, but several were against my personal checking account (used mostly for hobby spending so it didn't have much in it) including the $5000 one. I called my bank to protect the checking account and they were very helpful. The credit card company's fraud detection department called me before I even had a chance to call them. Paypal's fraud detection??? Nothing. When I called them (and getting that phone number is no easy task), that sudden burst of activity hadn't even made anyone curious.
My paypal account was put in restricted status and I detailed exactly which transactions were fraudulent. I moved the remaining checking funds out of the path of paypal and had the credit card number cancelled. You'd think that this would stop anything from going forward and efforts could be concentrated on reversing the transactions. Nope. The middle of the next week brought me a series of automated messages from Paypal indicating that my transactions to withdraw all that money from my checking account failed, but not to worry, they'd try again in 3 days. I called paypal and was told that those attempts were automatic and *nothing* could be done to stop them from completing their course.
My bank has been great, letting those transactions bounce and not charging me a dime for stopped payments or overdrafts related to this. The credit card company is treating it like any other fraud, and while it may take a bit to work out, they're working with my refusal to pay for these transactions. As for Paypal? Their handling of this was totally unprofessional for anyone handling money.
The icing on the cake was the emails I started getting once Paypal took the money back from the recipients. I was being accused of cheating them and being asked to resubmit the payments I owed. When I asked to what address they sent the merchandise (hoping to get the mailing address of the perpetrator), it was implied that it was for something related to warez in an IRC channel. At least one of the recipients still thinks I am just out to cheat him out of his money. So, whoever set this up screwed both sides over.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
The easy answer to that is to use a credit card via Paypal, not a bank account. They tried to screw me once like they did you. I paid the guy and never got the goods. After 2 weeks of no contact, I called them and asked to have the transfer nixed. They gave me the run around and kept transferring me to different people. I seriously think that they do what a cartoon I once saw did. In that cartoon was a helpdesk. One person had an irate customer on the phone demanding the supervisor of the tech they were talking to. The tech put them on hold and looked around at his colleagues in the cubical farm and asked who wanted to play super. Someone said I'll play super for you if you play super for my guy on line 6. I swear they did that to me. I know I got a couple of those people twice and they played super a couple of times too. After a couple of weeks of getting jacked with by them, I threatened to call my credit card company, contest the Paypal charge, and let my card carrier sort it out. The person playing super that time bucked up and sent me to a person whom I think really was a super, or the designated person to call when that happened. He told me in a really pissed voice that if I did that, they'd "turn the matter over to our legal department and sue my ass off". Yes, I can quote those exact words. I told him to [censored] and hung up. My next call was to my Visa card carrier. I told them what was going on and that I wanted to contest the charge in the amount of $abc.de. They happily responded. They contested the charge and credited my account. They said they would get back with me if they needed more information. A few months later I received an official letter from my card company saying that they had investigated, received little cooperation from the and that they were siding with me and the credit to my account. It worked like a charm. I absolutely do not use bank account transfers from them. I use my Visa Check Card that withdraws straight from my checking account. It affords me all the protection from Visa like contesting charges and fraud protection. However I should use a card with a limit so that if it's stolen, my real $$ funds aren't possibly in limbo while I wait on a credit. I hope this helps someoen.