Wondering whether to accept Paypal

[Tom McClelland]

Hi Barrie,

we took an order for a customer (over £500) and the courier company were late in delivering. In our terms and conditions we have a set procedure for reporting non deliveries and losses, mainly because we need to know all the details, customer etc.

by the customer using paypal, they went right to paypal from the start, and paypal took the money from our business account without us even nowing about it, I didn't find out until a further 2 days, but by that time i'd also found out that the courier company finally delivered the order, now we have No Goods and No money - Thanks Paypal,

We finally recieved a cheque for the goods 3 weeks later from the customer after we told them that we were taking them to court to recover the money due.

I've written to paypal 3 times without them even bothering to reply to me, as for emails, forget it they don't even answer them

If you have a business account with them (which is a free upgrade to the basic account) you can just telephone them, and you'll get to speak to someone straight away. I've found the business support people on the phone to be very good and helpful. I have never once, in over 3 years and many thousands of transactions, felt the need to write to them.

I've never heard of Paypal instantly ruling in a customer's favour the moment that they get a query from the customer. They have a fixed procedure that they follow invariably in our experience. Paypal notify you of the query, then you get 10 days to respond, then Paypal look at the evidence and decide whether to argue your case for you with the customer or their bank. (We have a low rate of such queries, and we win about 50% of them. The one annoying facet is that we never have the slightest idea of why we won or why we lost. We supply an identical set of evidence and argument in every case, because we're selling digital licences to people that we've never met)

The circumstance where Paypal immediately take the money back is out of Paypal's control. This is where the buyer's card issuer reverses the transaction before talking to Paypal. Not the same thing as a Paypal chargeback. Card issuers should only do this where fraudulent card use can be proved, but some issuers seem very lax about this and let buyers use this route to get out of paying or where the buyer just has a query. When this happens Paypal have no recourse other than to reverse their payment to you and you have to go back to the buyer.

 

[Tom McClelland]

Incidentally Paypal always answer my emails, but the email answering system appears to work on some kind of "canned" basis that looks for keywords in your question and spits a pre-prepared answer back at you from an answer library that they've got.... Pretty much invariably this is completely useless as the answer doesn't apply to the question that you actually asked.

So I gave up with emails, particularly as the phone support for merchants is so excellent.

 

[beauty21]

Hi,

We've recently added Paypal as an option to our website (we did just have HSBC) and I have found that it definately has increased conversion. I think it adds credibility to the site, if people are a little unsure.

The fees are really high and that is a negative.

Also, we've seen alot of our repeat customers, who were using HSBC, now use Paypal, which isn't good as the fees are greater.

There definately are negatives, but I do think that overall if you are looking to increase your business, then you probably should go with Paypal.

Hope this helps.
Jenny