Fucking Paypal and criminal buyers!

[ohtobemeagain]

On NYD I received an Email from Paypal to say that a buyer was disputing a payment. She purchased an item from me on the 25th September, and has just told the bank that the transaction was unauthorised. Interestingly enough, it was just over the 90 days that the transaction remains on Ebay.

I have 3 choices -

1. I can provide PoD (well no I can't as I do not charge for P&P, and cannot afford to pay an extra £1.10 for an item giving me 50p profit)

1. I can refund the money (why should I? She isn't claiming she hasn't got it)

1. I can accept full liability for the transaction (what does this even mean?)

I have explained to Paypal that this is fraudulent and that I am their customer as well, so what can they do to protect me? Fuck all would appear to be the answer!

So to all of you who rely on Paypal to look after your money - DON'T

I guess I have answered my question on another thread as to whether I should sell on Amazon or Ebay!

Sorry you are wrong - you should have sent with online proof of delivery - without that you lose all seller protection and will have to refund in full. You leave yourself wide open to scams otherwise.

Can you claim from royal mail with certificate of postage, how much was the item?

incidentally if you send with collect + or MyHermes you get online proof of delivery without having to pay extra for a signature.

Tell paypal to get the police involved.
The seller is implying that her ebay account was hacked, and a delivery made to an address not hers. This is a criminal matter.

This isn't about getting a signature or not. The evidence of that buyer making a purchase will still be able to traced by ebay/paypal.

the police won't do anything - where is the proof that fraud has been committed??

The buyer not seller, is saying they didn't authorise the transaction. Where does it state their account was hacked?

Well if the transaction wasn't authorised it is either fraud or theft surely?

Sandy - I think that is implicit in the fact that she has told her bank that the transaction was not authorised. If it wasn't authorised, then it implies someone else made the transaction, or even that I "stole" the money.

So maybe when she received the goods I sent in good faith, then she should have queried why she was receiving them at that point if she had not bought them.

To the posters that say I should have paid for Signed For. If I have to pay an extra £1.10 then I will need to charge an extra £1.21 (cost of Recorded plus the extra in fees I now have to pay Ebay for the pleasure of posting an item, roughly). So next time you are looking on Ebay for stocking fillers, small items for the kids or for your hobbies, please forgive all of us sellers who now cannot offer you these items for much under £5, whereas before we were happy to sell them to you for a couple of pounds.

It is not the cost of the item that is annoying me, it is the whole principal. If instead of £2.99 I said I sold a service (hence no proof of delivery) for £2999, and the customer decided further down the line that, although they had received the service, they now want their money back - would you be saying the same?

What is to stop me going back through all my purchases (man at Paypal said claims can go back years) and ask my bank to query all of them as they were all unauthorised? Few of my purchases have signatures as a) they are too small to pay the extra or b) Postie rarely asks me to sign for them. I could make a fortune!

I'd ask her to send it back to you first.

Then you refund.

Then you leave an explanatory note on her FB.

Have you asked her why she left it so late and why she didn't immediately wonder why she received an odd item not ordered by herself?

I'd be tempted to tell her to fuck off and leave a note on your EBAY page/store explaining why you acted as you did and why she is hacked off. Is it possible to do this?

Mignonette - she waited until the 90 days were up so there is no record left on EBay. I cannot amend the feedback I left for her after 90 days and she didn't leave me any.

Oh, maybe I should mention her feedback score is 15

Maybe I should contact all the other sellers she has bought from and ask if she has tried the same with them!

you can't leave a buyer neg feedback or neg statement. As I told you, you have to send with online proof of delivery as per paypal agreement - if you don't do this then you are leaving yourself wide open to being scammed. You have to take responsibility and send with proof of delivery - and I say that for an item of any value - those are the rules and if you don't adhere to them then yes you lose seller protection, that is your choice. You can't ignore this dispute.

Her feedback score is irrelevant. Have you messaged the buyer and asked them why the dispute?

Yes, twice. First one I asked nicely why she was doing it, the second, not quite so nice.

The mention of feedback to to show that she was a newbie. Ebay had a terrible reputation for dodgy sellers. I'm not saying there aren't still dodgy sellers, but there are a lot more very good sellers now, and I like to think I am one of them. On average I have to start 5 to 10 NPBs every week, a damn site more over the Christmas rush. In the 2 weeks before CHristmas, I had several complaints that the item they ordered 2 days ago wasn't with them yet (I post same or next day). Of all these issues 90% of them come from buyers with feedback of less than 30.

not necessarily a new buyer, could just be a new account. May have been on ebay for years under different names.

Do you post through PayPal? You can even buy standard second class postage through them now, so you get a record of the transaction for no extra cost.

It is incredibly unfair that this is being made your problem though! Either the Buyer was in the wrong & did authorise the transaction (most likely scenario) OR their account was hacked into and a third party is responsible. I may be naïve, but I can't see any way that this can possibly be the Seller's fault .

Just another example of how eBay & PayPal are now so weighted against the Seller!

but posting through paypal via standard 2nd class postage does NOT give proof of delivery and is utterly worthless. Proof of postage if you go to the PO, but that only enables you to claim for the lost item.

It is the sellers' fault if they don't have proof of delivery though. That is the rules of seller protection which everyone agrees to when they sign up to sell and accept paypal.

Sandy is right that buying postage through Paypal doesn't give you any greater protection, but I can't use it anyway. I have a business account with RM that allows me to save on postage, savings I then pass on to my buyers.

Sandy, do you buy through Ebay? I sell crafting items. In this case, we are talking about gemstone beads which I sell at £2.99 with free delivery. They are priced at this level as that is around the same as other sellers.

I make approx 80p profit on them.

If I was to pay for signature I would be losing 30p

If I was to charge the buyer for signature, I would have to charge £4.20. So, either I lose out as no-one will buy from me, or the buyer loses out as they are have to pay more.

Or the buyer loses out as I decide it is now not worth selling small items on Ebay, so they now have to go and source this elsewhere. Also, without these small, bread & butter items, I couldn't afford to sell the bigger items on EBay, so the buyers lose another source of products. Maybe not such a big deal, but for at least 1 of my items, I am the only seller on Ebay, and my prices are cheaper than the national company that sells the same item on the internet - and they charge postage.

I appreciate it is in the T&Cs on Paypal, but let's face it, we all ignore this sort of thing for common sense reasons. As discussed many, many times on this board, we all have a limit above which we start sending things Recorded. My limit is £20, which covers the usual things such as lost in post or the buyer lying about it being lost in the post etc. For International, we have had to lower this to £15 (one of the disadvantages to the business post system I use is that I cannot claim for lost International parcels unless they are signed for). And on this note, Malta would appear to be the new black hole, having taken over from Italy.

So, if ALL sellers abided by the posting all things signed for rule, then the next time a buyer wants to spend £2.99 on beads, they will have to drive to a town, pay parking, and go to a shop. Not good for their finance or for the environment! (and my prices are still cheaper for these items than the shops even with the postage)

yes of course I do buy - all you can do is claim with your proof of postage for lost item then. And add buyer to your blocked bidder list.

I don't make the rules - ebay/paypal do, but if you decide not to send with a signature then you are risking fraudulent buyers. I am not saying I agree with it, but as a buyer if I purchase something and don't get it then I want ebay to refund me.

But she didn't say she hadn't got it - she said it was an unauthorised transaction. If she hadn't got it, I would refund her or replace the item, as she wished, and then claim from RM.

It might not be the buyers fault. Sometimes paypal dispute a transaction at random and contact the buyer asking them to confirm it's legit. If the buyer doesn't reply then PayPal takes the money off the seller and claims it's unauthorised. Happened to me to something I sold on etsy. I contacted the buyer, she ha received the item and was happy with it an never saw the verification email request from paypal as she was away travelling at the time. 6 months on I still don't have my money as they won't even accept the email from the buyer as 'proof'. Sadly auspost failed to update their records confirming it had been delivered (though we know it has) and say they can't do it now, so paypal are refusing to give me my money. The buyer would just pay me gain however paypal never refunded her - just took my money and kept it! They make hundreds of pounds off me each year. I hate them! I've filed an official complaint but they have a 5 week response time As soon as it is though I will never use them again.

notone I think that's even worse! With my case, they told me that the buyer instigated it. If she didn't, then why isn't she replying to my emails? (they are still at the polite stage )

1. You can name & shame her here (so I can add her to my BBL & so can other people).

2. Of course it would have been absurd for you to send it signed for.

3. But must admit I'm really surprised Paypal have made this into YOUR problem. I would have thought fraud was handled differently other than deducting from seller. It's their problem to make sure the payment is valid; you haven't done anything wrong.

4. Are you sure you actually get 80p profit? Sadly, I suspect it might be less. Do you include all the fees?

This happened to me too. Again, just after the 90 days. It's a total scam. I got ebay & Paypal involved and both of them cared not one jot and said there was absolutely nothing they could do without proof of postage. I keep my Certificates of Posting until I receive positive feedback from the buyer and then I chuck it. Now I'm keeping them all. The buyer left me positive feedback and I thoguht this would be proof enough but apparently not :( Frankly I decided to do the same thing to the buyer, to sort of get my money back from her, but she's no longer a registered user.

You expect Paypal to look after you and offer seller protection, when you did not send it trackable. Paypal rules are quite clear, to get seller protection, you must send it using a trackable means.
If you choose not to then its a case of having to accept it, and learn ny mistakes.

I have got the same problem I sold a big bundle on ebay three months ago, the buyer paid via paypal and arranged a courier and sent me an email to confirm that she had received. I have had an email today to say they have took the money back automatically as it was unauthorised

you must never let a buyer arrange a courier - you now have no tracking to give paypal to prove delivery.

OP I see your point for business reasons you can not possibly send low value items signed for like paypal want for seller protection, no-one is cheaper than royal mail is large letter size which i presume these beads are

looking at it cold it is better to have to refund 1 out of 100 x £2.99 even if like this you suspect a scam, than to potentially loss sales for the other 99% it has to be factored into your costs so if you sell at 2.99 and 1 in 100 get lost in post or need refund then you have to add than 2.99 cost to the your price using this illustration it is 3p per item to cover 1/100 losses,

as a business seller it is simply not viable to send signed for when to have top seller status you must offer free postage the cheapest you can send anything signed for is £1.60 for a small envelope and £1.79 for large letter as opposed to 50p and 69p sending unsigned for, this increases postage costs by about 200% obviously completely non viable

my sympathies but as it is a small sum for quickness i would just refund and move on and add her to blocked bidders list expediency winning over what is probably right but life sucks sometimes

I also run a service company that takes credit card payments. I'm looking to reduce our costs and Paypal would appear to be good value for money.

Guess what though?

I would prefer to use a slightly more expensive company, based in the UK, abiding by UK rules as, with all the will in the world, I cannot provide ANY tracking for financial advice provided over the phone!