PayPal Virtual Terminal Issues and Advice

[3 MORE YEARS]

Hi, I need some advice. We have a PayPal Virtual Terminal and we take very little on card. We often use it to book jobs with new Pay As You Go customers. However, as you know in a service business you'll get 97 customers that are fine and you'll that 1 or 2 that will try and scam anything.

We recently had a job for an independent shop at a well known shopping centre. We took the card details to book the job. For businesses we charge by the hour. Our technician reported that the guy was difficult and awkward. Anyway, we did the job and charged our fees to the credit card given. Couple of weeks later, we get a claim from his card company saying that the money was taken fraudulently. We said to PayPal that we have records of incoming calls so we can show that there was a call from their shop plus it's a Shopping Centre so they will have CCTV showing the technician actually visited.

PayPal today wrote back to us saying that the card issuer has sided with their customer and "We don't control the outcome of the bank's decision. When you accepted the PayPal User Agreement, you agreed to accept this decision as final and legally binding for this type of dispute."

Basically the whole point of the card was to give us some protection. Since we are not going to get any protection at all, then I am thinking about cancelling the Virtual Terminal Service with PayPal.

Can anyone advise if there is better protection for the seller with other Virtual Terminals? Because we need to cancel this and change.

 

[Super Simon]

The real issue isn't PayPal, it's your customer who has potentially committed fraud.

Have you contacted the customer and asked for an explanation?

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

The real issue isn't PayPal, it's your customer who has potentially committed fraud.

Have you contacted the customer and asked for an explanation?

One off customer, won't take our calls. We get one off calls for support like that.

 

[Super Simon]

One off customer, won't take our calls. We get one off calls for support like that.

How much do they owe you? Do they sign a commission sheet or completion document when the work has been completed?

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

They owe £300. The procedure is to sign a completion job sheet, but in this case it was not signed.

Job sheets are not always signed. That's partly our fault. But if someone does a job, and then if a one off customer decides not to sign it you can't also do too much about it.

 

[Super Simon]

They owe £300. The procedure is to sign a completion job sheet, but in this case it was not signed.

Job sheets are not always signed. That's partly our fault. But if someone does a job, and then if a one off customer decides not to sign it you can't also do too much about it.

Send them a letter and invoice explaining that payment is now due. If they fail to pay, take them through www.moneyclaim.gov.uk.

£300 is a lot of money!

 

[Parrot Hosting]

They owe £300. The procedure is to sign a completion job sheet, but in this case it was not signed.

I think therein lies your problem. If you had a signed worksheet that PayPal could produce to the CC company they would have fought your case. I have found that in the past if I have failed to produce the right 'chain of evidence' so to speak, that they cannot help me at all but where I do, they are fully supportive.

Having said that its getting harder and harder to deal with people who genuinely want to avoid paying. Its REALLY important to make sure you adopt stringent policies to ensure that you are well covered.

 

[Bill1954]

To be fair Paypal will reverse a payment in the blink of an eye and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. We got scammed for 2 combi boilers on the first day we took paypal on board, we had never been scammed with our previous payment provider. We provided proof of delivery to the 2 addresses but Paypal reversed the payments anyway leaving us almost 2 grand out of pocket. Needless to say, Paypal went in the bin that day.