How to Survive as a Paypal user

Paypal is not a bank. It is a middle man between a buyer and a seller.

As such, although they are regulated by some of the same laws as banks, they are free to make up any of their own rules as they want, so it is very important to read the Terms and Conditions.

After you sign up with them, then you will need to link a bank account or credit card to your PayPal account. This is very easy to do and to verify that it is actually your account, Paypal will put some small deposits in. Once you see these deposits in your account, then you can enter them in and your account will be verified.

As a buyer

Paypal is used on thousands of websites around the world. It is incredibly easy to buy something and pay for it almost immediately as long as there are funds in your account. If there are not enough funds, then PayPal can easily access your bank account and withdraw as much as it needs to complete the transaction.

Just like a credit card purchase, a PayPal purchase is protected if there should be anything wrong, such as the item does not arrive, or it is faulty in any way. All it takes is usually a complaint to PayPal and they will open a case to investigate.

As a Seller

Paypal is very easy to use. They allow you to put a button up on your website which lets people buy your products and services easily and quickly. The fees to receive a payment depend on where in the world you are, but for the U.K. They are 3.4% plus 20p of the Payment up to £1,500 and a tiered reduced rate for higher payments.

Unfortunately, although they actually started as a way to help the world,Paypal have been a bit arbitrary in their judgements over the years and a little heavy handed in their control of their own reputation, so I think it is necessary to have a strict policy when dealing with them.

Like everything else on the Internet, it is a good idea to do a quick search to see if they are any good and a search through Google, using the term “PayPal problem” brings up nearly half a billion web pages. Of course many of these will be duplicate content and some will be things like, ” I had a huge problem and PayPal fixed it for me”. but still, half a billion.

* Don’t keep a large balance in your PayPal account. Withdraw the funds into your bank account as soon as possible.

* Because all buyers are so protected under the Paypal system, your dealings and business are vulnerable on two sides, Paypal keeps an eye on all their sellers’ activity, and, as they say in their T&Cs at any time, they can do anything with your money, with your account, with your business and therefore, with your life. Secondly, buyers know that they are protected, so they can play all sorts of tricks to get their money back: non-delivery, faulty/broken item, problem, even weeks later, so it is vital to protect yourself as much as possible by using track able postage and accurate descriptions as much as possible.

* Do not forget the real world! In this country, there is a financial ombudsman, there are all sorts of agencies, there is the small claims court and, may e as a last resort, there are the police. It is a mistake to think that if it happens online, the. It stays online. If you have been badly treated by a buyer or by Paypal, then it is possible to get recourse through offline actions.

 

How to Survive A Violin – The Paypal way

I read today about the tragic story of a deceased violin. This was not just any violin (none of them are, are they?) but one which was at the centre of a dispute between a buyer and seller on eBay, which was, at one time, marketed as a website where the little people could buy and sell their unwanted things.

The whole story can be read here: http://www.regretsy.com/2012/01/03/from-the-mailbag-27 but the main details of what happened can be found below:

A smashed violin!!!

Dear Helen Killer (From the Regretsy blog)

I love your site and was thrilled to hear of your “win” against PayPal. I recently had a heartbreaking experience of my own with them.

I sold an old French violin to a buyer in Canada, and the buyer disputed the label.

This is not uncommon. In the violin market, labels often mean little and there is often disagreement over them. Some of the most expensive violins in the world have disputed labels, but they are works of art nonetheless.

Rather than have the violin returned to me, PayPal made the buyer DESTROY the violin in order to get his money back. They somehow deemed the violin as “counterfeit” even though there is no such thing in the violin world.

The buyer was proud of himself, so he sent me a photo of the destroyed violin.

I am now out a violin that made it through WWII as well as $2500. This is of course, upsetting. But my main goal in writing to you is to prevent PayPal from ordering the destruction of violins and other antiquities that they know nothing about. It is beyond me why PayPal simply didn’t have the violin returned to me.

I spoke on the phone to numerous reps from PayPal who 100% defended their action and gave me the party line.

Erica

Heartbreaking is not a strong enough word!

This is normal policy for Paypal, who can apparently order any item to be destroyed if they suspect that it is a fake. An objective observer might say, surely, if they have to deal with so many disputes a day, then it is reasonable to think that they must have to have the same policy apply to everyone.

But, crucially, what this does is to expose both eBay’s and paypal’s policy of only trusting the word of one party in nearly every dispute. They value their buyers so much that they unerringly seem to fall down on the buyer’s side nearly every time.

This is evidenced by the growing numbers of websites full of disgruntled sellers who have their accounts limited or frozen by arbitrary decisions which are churned out on a worryingly regular basis. Look for disgruntled buyers and they are there, but not legions like the sellers are.

In this case the seller listed that they had the violin checked by a luthier but the buyer disputed the authenticity. Well you could say that about anything, who are we supposed to believe? Would you walk into your local designer goods store and dispute their veracity? You would get laughed out of the shop. So, in a listing, which explicitly stated that it was authentic, why did PayPal not even investigate it?

Paypal are at the heart of millions of ecommerce solutions all over the web. They provide many, many families with a means to earn enough to pay their bills – and this does show in the many different reactions to this viral story all over the web.

from the Guardian website we have an antique violin dealer saying “only a fool would buy an instrument without playing it”

From various twitter feeds and social websites there is outrage at this obscenity

This is from Kottke.com

Hey Peter Thiel, instead of whining about the iPhone, Twitter, and internet not being innovative and life-changing enough, why don’t you fix this life-ruining piece of sh** company that you cr***ed into the world? That would definitely be a “net plus”.

But ultimately this is about a violin, which, if real, managed to survive seventy-plus years in this world, probably thruogh Nazi-occupied France, if you can believe it, but lost the fight against a nameless, faceless PayPal employee. How hopelessly sad.

  How do we survive this? If you feel strongly enough, then surely a complaint to paypal is justified or a comment on a relevant Facebook page.

We must rage against this dying of our humanity.

 

How to Survive Buying on eBay

If you are thinking of buying something online then eBay is a popular place where a lot of people start their search.

It is true that it is possible to buy a huge variety of things on eBay. This can range from designer shoes to a real crab necklace (really!).

So, how is it best to go about an eBay purchase?

Start off by just entering a term into the search box. It is good to be as specific as possible but without narrowing it down too much.

So, if you wanted to buy a 9ct gold dragonfly necklace, then that is exactly what you could enter. But if it was just a 9ct gold necklace, then a lot of other itmes would be shown.

I’m writing these obvious things down because of the ‘-‘ feature. In order to stop all the plated, tone and gold filled items from being shown, you can enter

9ct gold necklace -plated -filled -tone

et voila.

Once you have found the item, take a look at a small drop-down box at the top right hand side. This will say ‘Best match’. Some algorithm that eBay has in place favours certain sellers over others and these are the ones which are listed at the top. But these may not be the items that you want, so they can be re-sorted in terms of price or however else you want to sort them, then the next thing to do is to look at the seller’s feedback.

If they 100% positives and everyone is happy, then great. If there are a few negatives, then read the negs (you can click on the number to read just the negs). First, are they all from the same disgruntled buyer? Are they from people with low feedback themselves?

New buyers often have very high expectations and think that eBay is a giant company rather than a lot of stay at home mums, so they leave negatives about silly things. ‘Item was not as pink as I thought’ or
‘Size was right but item did not fit me’

If this is the case and the picture is positive overall, then there is no need to be too worried.

Sometimes sellers pull their act together. So there could be a lot of early negatives and then a lot of praise.

If there are a lot of recent negatives along the lines of ‘item never arrived, no communication’ then avoid at all costs. The seller has obviously gone AWOL.

Having found the item and made sure the seller is OK, then next, read the description. Then read it again. There is no point bidding for something you need by next Wednesday if the buyer takes two weeks to deliver it.

Finally, when all this is sorted out, do a quick Google search. It is not always the case, but sometimes, it is possible to buy a new item from an online store for less than a second hand one on eBay.

That’s it. Bid on the item to the amount that you are willing to pay and go away.
Do not stay online until the final second, because there may be someone who wants it more, who is willing to push the price up to silly amounts.

If you don’t win what you want today, there may be another one along in a minute, or tomorrow.

Paying through paypal is often a more secure way to pay because eBay have fairly hefty buyer protection policies in place. If your item never arrives, then you are almost certainly guaranteed a refund by opening a case with them.

And that is all.

Enjoy your item.