View Full Version : Paypal
johnallen
12-01-03, 06:44 AM
I really hate paypal with a passion. I wish so many people didn't use it. I just had someone do a chargeback for $330 dollars for multiple months. I had someone keep paying with Stolen accounts. I called paypal on the 2nd account to warn them it might have been stolen. They don't give a ****. They just want your money.
That is not true at all.
I had received a $140 dollar payment and called paypal to notify them that I felt it was a fraud, theyt ook the appropriate steps and turned out it was a fraud.
back to bed i go
Paypal is good at what it does.... Problem is, its a 3rd part payment processor and adds a 3rd level of complexity to an already muddy picture (Internet Merchant Accouns and Transactions)....
If youve outgrown Paypal (usually happens when you start to realize the headaches associated with a 3rd party payment processor), it may be time for you to consider a true internet merchant account (authorize.net, etc...)
My $0.02
johnallen
12-01-03, 09:39 AM
Robert, I'm telling you how it happened. I called them and told them I thought it was fraud. The call center rep said he couldn't do anything about it. You are basically calling me a liar and I do not appreciate that.
Andrew, your probably right. The only reason I accept PayPal is because a lot of people prefer to use it.
Hi Johnallen,
I dont think Robert was calling you a liar, its not his style at all....
It seems hes just conveying his experience, which is slightly different then what youve experienced...
At the end of the day, Paypal, like all 3rd party processors are inconsistent in the way they handle disputes...
Theres alot of fineprint, and seemingly 2 identical disputes are handled completly differently (however, more then likely, theres a subtle difference, and hence they have categorized them in different places)...
Alot of people do like to use paypal, but if you get a true merchant account, most people will switch right away...some will stay on paypal, so you would need to manage both - in the long run, you are much better off with a merchant account - gives you alot more control over fraud and chargeback issues....
Best of luck going forward...
johnallen
12-01-03, 09:47 AM
Andrew, do you have a company you recommend?
Originally posted by johnallen:
Robert, I'm telling you how it happened. I called them and told them I thought it was fraud. The call center rep said he couldn't do anything about it. You are basically calling me a liar and I do not appreciate that.
Andrew, your probably right. The only reason I accept PayPal is because a lot of people prefer to use it.
I'm not calling you a liar. What I am saying is, maybe you didn't explain it correctly or you got a rep who could care less.
When i received the order, I called paypal and explained to them that I received a paypal order that I belived to be a fraud. I asked them if they could verify some information for me such as his name and address. I stated the address I had, and they simply stated "yes or no".
I further asked them to contact the account holder and ask them if he did infact intitate a transfer of $140 USD Dollars from his Paypal account to mine. They did that and it turned out the owner did not signup, so I refunded the money.
Hi Johnallen,
We resell e-online data. They use authorize.net on the backend...
Now, this is NOT intended as Spam, so, if youre interested, please go directly to their site (www.e-onlinedata.com) and sign up vs signing up through our site.
They dont charge anything for setup of the merchant account, though they do charge a $70-$80 setup fee for the gateway...
Their rates are good (2.29%) and if youre patient, they waive the gateway setup fee every now and then...
Overall their service has been great - we and our customers are very happy with them...
There are many more options available, but this is the only one we really have ALOT of experience with - never had a need to look elsewhere...
Best of luck in your search....
Andrew
I agree.
We use e-onlinedata as well and I am very happy with the service. Never had to look back.
Go to paypalsucks.com/paypalwarning.com, Next time get there phone number and CALL THEM BEFORE YOU SETUP THERE ACCOUNT. If it's fraud tell paypal that you found out it was fraud and they will say thanks and will not freeze/close your account.
I cannot stresss enough people not doing this. When you receive a payment VIA paypal check there address and see if it's valid, get a phone number or driver lis #. Also place in your TOS that if you try and buy hosting with fruad card or order a charge back that since you agree to the TOS you will have to pay double of waht the chargeback or whatever it was and hope they live in the US and get a court order. After that sue them for twice as much as the charge back (only if it's $250+, not worth doing anyhitng under that) and then have them turned over to the local PD and arrested for fraud.
my $.02
Corey Bryant
01-11-04, 01:21 PM
I usually tell my customers to keep Paypal as only an option. But I also tell them to get a bank account for Paypal - in case Paypal freezes that account (and it has been known to happen).
If youve outgrown Paypal (usually happens when you start to realize the headaches associated with a 3rd party payment processor), it may be time for you to consider a true internet merchant account (authorize.net, etc...)
Kepep in mind that authorizenet.com is not a merchant account. It is a gateway that connects to a platform. Authorizenet.com's is a bit misleading as to the fact that it lets a lot of people to beleive it is a way to accept credit cards online.
Authorizenet.com uses a few different platforms:
First Data Corporation (FDC)
NOVA Information Systems
Paymentech Processing Services
Vital
Global Payment Services (GPS)
First Data Corporation of Omaha (FDCO)
First Data also owns a gateway as well - LinkPoint.
121merchant
01-12-04, 12:10 PM
I'm a ecommerce merchant service consultant and the rule of thumb I always tell people is the following.
"If you process less than 1K a month, stay will PayPal or other 3rd party processors. You will pay less. However, if you process more than 1k a month -US - I recommend opening a real merchant account. Beyond the better customer service, it adds legitimacy and better charge back protection."
Another rule of thumb regarding ecommerce merchant accounts is that you shouldn't have to pay more than 2.29%, $.35 a transaction, $10-$15 bank, $15-$25 gateway and NO set up fees. Many often come with ok shopping carts too.
Make sure who ever you sign with is a FDIC insured bank and remember, everything is negotiable. They all work off the "Interchange" rate set by Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover.
Good luck.
Michael
121merchantaccount.com
Originally posted by Dras:
Go to paypalsucks.com/paypalwarning.com, Next time get there phone number and CALL THEM BEFORE YOU SETUP THERE ACCOUNT. If it's fraud tell paypal that you found out it was fraud and they will say thanks and will not freeze/close your account.
I cannot stresss enough people not doing this. When you receive a payment VIA paypal check there address and see if it's valid, get a phone number or driver lis #. Also place in your TOS that if you try and buy hosting with fruad card or order a charge back that since you agree to the TOS you will have to pay double of waht the chargeback or whatever it was and hope they live in the US and get a court order. After that sue them for twice as much as the charge back (only if it's $250+, not worth doing anyhitng under that) and then have them turned over to the local PD and arrested for fraud.
my $.02
Well, I wouldn't go this far unless the customer owes an incredible sum of money.
maxhest
02-06-04, 06:52 AM
Haven't really had a problem with them, they are good if you don't have stolen accounts.
GordonH
02-11-04, 08:04 AM
Hello
We have had fewer problems with paypal than with our normal merchant account.
The only time we got hit hard was when we stupidly advertised on PPC with keywords like paypal domains or paypal web hosting. Within a few days we had been hit by loads of frauds using accounts which had been stolen using those emails which claim to come from paypal.
Anyway, I found out in time to get most of the domains deleted.
Here is how I handle the issue of fraud in general:
If I even suspect that something is dodgy I immdiately refund it and add the persons IP address (and usually the whole related class C) to our block list at the credit card processing level.
This prevents them ordering again and incurring further refund costs.
If we get a run of problems from a specific ISP or country we will then block that country at server or network level so they cannot even see our web sites.
We do not permit the registration of domains which include the words paypal or escrow as these are usually ordered with stolen cards and used for committing further fraud through "phishing".
Our system has banned words and refuses to permit domains like this.
This tends to keep fraud under control but where we still lose out is where a customer (usually a reseller or dedicated server) goes out of business and charges back all their monthly payments.
The worst we ever had was 28 months.
With the chargeback fees these can run into thousands of dollars.
To counteract this we get digned faxes from customers when they order. However, a lot of card companies now force through chargebacks before they even get the documentation so I am considering stopping asking for the faxes as they are becoming less useful.
In general I think fraud using stolen cards is quite easy to keep under control but there is no way to stop card holder fraud (where the real card holder really does use the service and then denies all knoeledge).
Gordon
Thats an interesting way of reducing fraud, there is no way companies or businesses can fully stop fraud though , but they can try prevent it and reduce it to only a few cases a year. which is probably what your fraud rate is like?
P.S how many people commit fraud with your company ( a month) is it 1,2,3 what eva
GordonH
02-11-04, 09:22 AM
We get about 4 chargebacks per month.
At least three of these will be card holder frauds (the card holder denying the transaction to obtain free services).
However once every two months we get someone charging back monthly payments going back more than one yea, but I treat these as one incident instead of 12 or 20 or whatever chargebacks.
Gordon
Do you press legal charges on them or don't you bother?
GordonH
02-12-04, 07:53 AM
They are usually in different jurisdictions so its not worthwhile.
In one case we had his signature on an order form and managed to appeal the chargebacks and have them reversed.
The guy was so mad about it he faxed us death threats continuously for 10 hours and mailbombed us with copies of the photoshop exe file.
There is a sense in which I want the money off these people, but I dont want to risk all the nastiness which can come of trying to get the money back.
Gordon
Death Threats, wow, he must of been a bit annoyed, as if, dangerous business web hosting.
Originally posted by 121merchant:
Another rule of thumb regarding ecommerce merchant accounts is that you shouldn't have to pay more than 2.29%, $.35 a transaction, $10-$15 bank, $15-$25 gateway and NO set up fees. Many often come with ok shopping carts too.
Be careful of the rates, i.e., make sure the person you're dealing with knows what the new rates, as promulgated by Visa and M/C, are.
I just received this notice from Card Service International:
1) Your new MC/V qualified rate will be 2.71%,
2) Your new MC/V mid-qualified rate will be 2.71% (which is calculated as your new MC/V qualified rate plus your MC/V mid-qualified surcharge of 0%, and
3) Your new MC/V qualified rate plus your MC/V non-qualified surcharge of 1.95%).
I called to find out what this means and
low and behold, any charges from Canada or any country out of the US will incur a rate of 4.66%.
I forgot to mention Linkpoint's per transaction charges of .30 and $25 monthly charge plus $10 customer service fee. and if you want paper statements, add $7.95 mo. to that.
Authorize.net works about the same way I believe.
Corey Bryant
03-14-04, 09:22 AM
Colden work with your agent - you can get that gateway reduced to $10 a month. That will save you $180 a year.
Yes unfortunately the interchange rates are being raised. We have had a lot of people switch within the past few days. Also, your Visa/MasterCard swiped qualified rate can also be reduced - by @ least 40 basis points unless you have some bad processing history or something.
inobelis
06-03-04, 12:49 PM
You have to remember, PayPal is not a bank, they simply are a payment processor.
If you receive money from hosting or other services you provide into your PayPal account, by all means take it out the moment you can.
Put it into a bank account not affiliated with PayPal or take it out with your PayPal ATM card. Whatever you do, just don't leave it in there and you should be fine.
Well that isnt true, I had a chargeback filed against me not in PayPal but through the CC itself (payment processor was paypal). The person filed a chargeback at his CC company. The money was taken from paypal i assume who took the money with my associated Bank Account and since i kept this one empty i ended up with Debt with my bank account.....Honestly there is no protection. I tend to make phone calls on a suspicous order and then record them for later use, and if the chargeback originates within Canada i persue it (unless it happens within 30 days then i dont much care for it).
StarGate
08-18-04, 12:29 PM
PayPal does suck.. ok ... BUT all 3rd party cc-processors do. And since the "PaySystems Desaster" (check my post in this forum about it) I come to love PayPal... cause it can't get worse!
Wilson Systems
08-29-04, 07:40 PM
I guess that I have been very lucky as far as paypal goes. I have received about 20 fraduelent orders in 1 year, but they were all caught due to the fact that I call each client before setting up their hosting account. I have had no chargebacks whatsoever. I have been using paypal for almost four years and have been very happy thus far.
Everybody has a horror story about some company. Just thought it might be nice to hear something good about the company that has treated me well for quite a while.
Oh yes i know what you mean, i dont hate paypal, i believe it is a good service. They need sctricter laws with buyers though.
Originally posted by GordonH:
We do not permit the registration of domains which include the words paypal or escrow as these are usually ordered with stolen cards and used for committing further fraud through "phishing".
Our system has banned words and refuses to permit domains like this.
I'm curious to the method of how you're doing this as it sounds like a good idea.
-drmike
dreifels
10-12-04, 08:06 AM
I only can say: we no longer do any business with PayPal. It's the most bad experience we made. We close all account in both directions. As seller and as buyer.
GordonH
10-12-04, 08:11 AM
Originally posted by drmike:
I'm curious to the method of how you're doing this as it sounds like a good idea.
-drmike
We take the domain name someone has searched for and see if the banned words are in it.
If they are we display a message asking them to contact us with a link to the contact form.
# List of words you wish to ban people from registering as part of a domain name:
my @banlist=qw(ebay escrow paypal paypa1 lottery merchantbank internationalbank viet nguyen earthlink);
foreach $word (@banlist){
if($stuff{'command'} =~ m/$word/i)
{
&fatal_error("Sorry, we do not permit the registration of domain names containing the word $word. For further advice please <a href=$contactform>Contact Us<\/a> .");
}
nameslave
10-12-04, 09:13 AM
They actually just made headline over at Yahoo:
PayPal Hit by Glitches in Online Payments (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041012/wr_nm/tech_ebay_paypal_dc)
I haven't been able to get into Paypal for a couple of days now due to their issues.
-drmike
GordonH
10-12-04, 12:10 PM
I can honestly say I have had no Paypal problems, neither has one of my staff who is an addicted ebayer. Maybe its because we access via their Irish servers rather than the US ones.
linux-tech
10-19-04, 03:55 AM
I can honestly say I have had no Paypal problems, neither has one of my staff who is an addicted ebayer. Maybe its because we access via their Irish servers rather than the US ones.
No problems here in the US either, and I've been using paypal for almost 5 years now (damn, it's been a while;)) .
Paypalsucks/paypalwarning are extreme cases, and, honestly, in most of those cases the individual's not telling the full truth. Remember, there are always two sides to every story.
Paypal has a tendency to suspend sites, I'm not denying that. However in most cases, it's due to ignorance on the end user, NOT fraud on paypal. Their TOS/AUP are very clear on what is and what is not acceptable, and most of the users that have been banned I'm quite sure violated those in one form or another, yet they're not telling you of that.
Now, this is NOT intended as Spam, so, if youre interested, please go directly to their site (www.e-onlinedata.com) and sign up vs signing up through our site.
Word of advice, from an eod customer:
DON'T sign up for their service.
Signing up for a merchant account is good, but go with someone who actually gives a damn about their customers. Personally, I recommend cdgcommerce (http://www.cdgcommerce.com), as these guys have been incredibly friendly every time I've had to deal with them.
EOD has a nasty reputation for taking money from accounts and not being able to tell WHY specifically for days on end. That's not a reputable merchant provider to me, that's a problem waiting to happen. Case in point:
June / July'ish, I had a customer chargeback stuff, even though he'd used the service, etc. When I initially saw the charge in my bank's online transactions, it was a Monday. This means that it HAD to have been processed on Thursday, as my bank doesn't do anything over the weekend, and it takes at least 24h to get to the bank.
Well, I call t hem up and ask what it is. Their response? "I don't know". Not just THEIR response, but their chargeback, risk, billing department and all . Nobody knew why the hell they'd taken my money.
I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but the customer lasted 2 months. Both times he charged back, both times it was the same damned response.
Thankfully, those have been my only 2 chargebacks in over 2 years (1 customer, over 2 years, not bad), but still, the problems with EOD are neverending, and 10:1 , one day we'll see them go out of business. Why? Because they don't give a rats tail end about their customers, and because they are entirely too spread out. Anyone in the banking industry that can respond 4-5 days after charging your account with "I don't know why we charged your account" is obviously incompetent.
Anyways, enough ramblings.
Paypal is good if you're small (< 500/month in business), but if you want to make it big time, you need to process cards directly. Stay away from 2co, as they're nothing but a major problem, use a real processor such as cdgcommerce / auth.net .
I'll add a vote for CDG commerce. Really good support that actually seems to care about you and any problems you're having. To the point they have called me several days after an issue was resolved just to make sure it was resolved and I was happy. That type support is unusual these days from vendors.
hostzodiac
03-04-05, 03:50 PM
I've been using PayPal as my processor for four years with no problems whatsover. I have also never had a chargeback (knocks on wood).
I do agree with some of the other posts about moving to a real merchant account once you get to making over a thousand a month as it will benefit you in the long run.
As far as webhosting providers having customers who do not want to sign-up with PayPal I have a work-around. I simply provide two options. Subscription Based Hosting and Non-Subscription Based Hosting.
I let my Subscription Based customers (the ones who have to have a valid PayPal account) have the option for monthly or annual payments. Along with that I provide a discount for pre-paying annually.
For my Non-Subscription Based hosting customers (the ones who simply use Paypal as a payment processor/no sign-up required) I give them the option of quarterly or annual hosting (again offering the annual discount). I don't do monthly hosting on the non-subscriptions simply because I don't want the billing headaches associated with it but quarterly payments are something I only worry about four times a year versus twelve times a year.
gaiahost
03-06-05, 11:08 AM
paypal [isn't good].. they ruined my credit history and everything i own... When i worked for angelnetworkz i was getting 400 a week to do a helpdesk job.. Well they told me that because no good was shipped they cant process money... So they put -800 balance on my account and went to my credit 1 week later. I called them asking why they did this and they said that "I" had reported fraudulent funds soo they claim all they were doing is taking the money out of the account.. THEN i called back and talked to the CEO of paypal and she told me that donna had filed fraudulent funds.. Which was another lie.. After which she hung up on me after i asked her why she lied.. THEN! paypal locked me entirely out of the account so i cant even begin to pay them $800 and they now have hit my credit 5 times... no one on their phone support wants to do anything.. I think paypal is full of [people I don't particularly care for] and i wish that enough of us companies would get together and form a REAL decent transaction service...
I highly recommend Paypal.
Never had a problem with them.
Hundreds and hundreds of flawless transactions.
kickmyserver
03-06-05, 11:53 AM
paypal [isn't good].. they ruined my credit history and everything i own... When i worked for angelnetworkz i was getting 400 a week to do a helpdesk job.. Well they told me that because no good was shipped they cant process money... So they put -800 balance on my account and went to my credit 1 week later. I called them asking why they did this and they said that "I" had reported fraudulent funds soo they claim all they were doing is taking the money out of the account.. THEN i called back and talked to the CEO of paypal and she told me that donna had filed fraudulent funds.. Which was another lie.. After which she hung up on me after i asked her why she lied.. THEN! paypal locked me entirely out of the account so i cant even begin to pay them $800 and they now have hit my credit 5 times... no one on their phone support wants to do anything.. I think paypal is full of [people I don't particularly care for] and i wish that enough of us companies would get together and form a REAL decent transaction service...
That's awful! You need to quickly call your charge company and do a charge back against paypal and receive your money back. I would then file fraud charges with your credit company against Paypal. I've had someone do the same to me before, start charing money on my credit card without my authorization because they "said" I owed them money - I promptly did what I said above, and got my money back
[Paypal] :uzi2:
bpendleton
03-10-05, 08:28 PM
I really hate paypal with a passion. I wish so many people didn't use it. I just had someone do a chargeback for $330 dollars for multiple months. I had someone keep paying with Stolen accounts. I called paypal on the 2nd account to warn them it might have been stolen. They don't give a ****. They just want your money.
Paypal doesnt care its not there money its "NCO" There the money managers. Paypal is just the webfront. They call wanting $210 from a client that did a reversal on me. Paypal doesnt give a flying :baghead: Its NCO.
linux-tech
03-10-05, 09:01 PM
Well, if they want money for "services", then tell 'em it's just that, "services", and yeah, that includes hosting.
I've had a paypal account for 4-5 years now (actually 2, one I closed to keep everything under one business name). People have TRIED the reversal thing on me, but as soon as I call paypal up and tell them that it was "service" and point them to my TOS/AUP, they instantly close the reversal. Of course, I haven't had too many try it, but you get the odd one that does every once in a while.
In the time that I've had an account, I've never once run across a problem or an issue with them. Maybe I'm lucky, but I don't see the problem with 'em.
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